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PARTISAN REVIEW
the procession. Kazin, self-portrayed "New YorkJew," speaks of "the
culture that I share with Adams" (letting the patrician's nasty anti–
Semitism pass this time) . Criticism veers toward memoir, toward
autobiography, toward a mode Kazin identifies with America itself.
"American writing is personal," he writes in his last sentence, con–
cluding with Fitzgerald's famous sentence at the end of
The Great
Gatsby
about the "transitory enchanted moment" appearing in Amer–
ica for the "last time in history."
An American Procession
strikes its own elegiac note, its own
lamentation for something lost: an older idea of America (and of
American literature?) appropriated from the likes of Adams and
Fitzgerald . "In the deepest sense," Kazin once wrote, "we can never
study modern literature or art; we can only be part of it. " The book
contemplates its subject by becoming an example of it.
ALAN TRACHTENBERG
A SENSE OF THE EIGHTIES
CUTTING EDGES: MAKING SENSE OF THE EIGHTIES.
By
Charles
Krauthammer.
Random House, Inc. $17.95.
Much has been written lately about the supposed shift in
emphasis in the pages of
The New Republic.
It
is argued that the sev–
enty-two year-old magazine , long considered one of the cornerstones
of American liberal thought , has, under Martin Peretz's direction,
drifted dangerously to the right. Critics cite the fact that editorials
and think-pieces in the magazine call for a tough foreign policy,
strong defense measures and an end to racial quotas . Many diehard
readers have canceled their subscriptions, accusing the editor-in–
chief and his brash young staff of breaking ranks and taking up with
- horrors! - the neoconservatives.
Of all the writers Peretz has brought to the magazine, perhaps
the one who gives hardline left-wingers the greatest distress is Charles
Krauthammer.
Cutting Edges,
his first book of essays, which gathers
pieces written for
The Washington Post
and
Time
magazine, as well as
for
The New Republic,
offers a clear indication of what all the fuss is
about . The author addresses such diverse subjects as the invasion of
