DAVID LEHMAN
193
But the prevailing irony of the congress was that its loudest
voices succeeded, as often as not, in discrediting themselves rather
than their targets. At least that's the way it seemed to many "non–
aligned" observers-that is, those whose minds were not made up
from the start. To the extent that the left succeeded in politicizing
the congress, to that same extent it failed; and this was so whether
the battle be construed as one for the high moral ground or, in more
pragmatic terms, for the center of political gravity. A comparison
might be made to the Columbia student demonstrations in April
1968; the police bust, as ordered by the Columbia administration,
swung all sympathy to the protestors, as to the victims of police bru–
tality. At the PEN Congress, by contrast, the left painted itself into a
corner, and stayed there. By the closing session that Friday, Mailer
- who fancies himself an existential radical and would be mortified
to have his leftist credentials called into question - was publicly call–
ing the left "the avatars of entropy," an impressive-sounding phrase
that may not mean all that much but certainly shows which way the
wind was blowing.
The George Shultz affair, which dominated the first few days,
set the tone and the pattern for what followed. Mailer, as President
of American PEN, had failed to consult his fellow board members
before issuing what he would later term a "pro forma" invitation to
the Secretary of State. To Mailer's evident surprise, Shultz accepted
and was duly scheduled to address the throng at the New York Pub–
lic Library on the congress's opening night. E.
L.
Doctorow '..vas only
the most audibly indignant of the prominent PEN pals for whom
Shultz's appearance came as an affront. It was not merely a proce–
dural issue, though Doctorow-in an article for
The Nation
that was
reprinted, in abridged form, on the op-ed page of
The New York Times
- did take Mailer to task for making the decision unilaterally. Far
more important in Doctorow's mind, and far less forgivable, was
Shultz's political affiliation.
"It
is more than a shame - it verges on
the scandalous - that those in the stewardship of American PEN and
the conference should have so violated the meaning of their organiza–
tion as to identify it with and put itself at the feet of the most ideolog–
ically right-wing administration this country has seen." Doctorow's
reasoning was highly questionable at best. Since when does the
scheduled appearance of a speaker imply advance agreement with
the views of that speaker? And if the act of listening is really tanta–
mount to an act of capitulation, can censorship be far behind? To be
fair to Doctorow, such questions probably never crossed his mind.
