WILLIAM PHILLIPS
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for an anti-Stalinist intellectual- who among us was? - and his far–
fetched criticism of us for not paying enough attention to domestic
affairs. I assume he means that we left such things as welfare, social
security, taxation , etc . , to the journalists and the weeklies . Hook
also disingenuously spends a good deal of time praising Macdonald,
who, indeed, had many virtues . But Hook used to sneer at him as a
political thinker, and one can't help feeling that his newly-acquired
admiration for Macdonald is a ploy to downgrade the rest of us.
There are other inaccurate statements, whose purpose obviously
is to make us look bad. For example, Hook says we maneuvered
Macdonald off the magazine. In fact, the reverse is true; Macdonald
wanted to take over the magazine, and he proposed that whoever
could put out the next issue would inherit it. I guess he assumed that
he would, since he had some money and we had none. But we did
find someone to finance the magazine. Another strange "recollection"
is Hook's statement that he overheard Mary McCarthy telling Rahv
on a public telephone that she was leaving him for Edmund Wilson.
This would have been a miraculous coincidence - except for the fact
that it is well known that Mary McCarthy left a note for Rahv about
her change of domestic plans.
What is the point of dragging real and invented quarrels out of
the past? In a period already sufficiently confused about the major
issues of our time , Hook's and Epstein's nasty innuendos not only
add to the confusion but introduce an atmosphere of unsavory po–
lemics. At the very least, they make any fruitful intellectual ex–
change impossible.
It
is , indeed, surprising that the neoconservatives should allow
themselves to be represented by someone as small-minded as Joseph
Epstein. (Incidentally, it is something of a scandal that Epstein should
be using
The American Scholar,
the organ of Phi Beta Kappa, of which
he is the editor, for his factional politics.) After all, many of the con–
servatives do argue persuasively. Certainly their analysis of Soviet
intentions and of American foreign policy is more sophisticated than
most left opinion. In any event, the issues are arguable. Yet a party
liner like Epstein uses Stalinist tactics not to refute ideas but to de–
stroy the people who hold them. Fortunately, he is not very effective .
To be effective would require state power. God forbid.
w.p.
