8
PARTISAN REVIEW
ness they undertook a respectable professional life. But what they
wanted to be was "persons." With my generation, he said, it was
very different.
Speaking of this to Diana: she, expectably, took a very dim
view of it - referred to its psychological roots - went on to say, "Of
course what they want to be is writers" - which of course is true - the
boy referring to something I had said about "a Kansas girl going to
Chicago" (if she had had trouble with the community at home) said
"a writer doesn't speak in those generalities ."
For the rewriting of my Penn. essay this is of the greatest im–
portance - also for the novel- perhaps for the little one too.!
Aug
13 [1956?]
Speaking with D . of Norman Podhoretz's dilemma about E. E. C.2
- he has no real connection with E., saw him only a very few times
before going to work for
Commentary
and not at all since then, and yet
he feels that he should remain until some time after E's return to sus–
tain him against the Greenberg brothers
3 -
I said that he was like
Razumov in Conrad's
Under Western Eyes:
he sits alone in his room, a
quiet conservative young man, consciously so, and consciously, if 1
remember correctly, a lover of his country and a supporter of the
state; and in walks a revolutionary fleeing from the police and claim–
ing his help and protection - there is nothing for him to do but to
give what is asked, and we feel that there
is
nothing. D. recalled that
years ago Mark Van Doren spoke of this book, or perhaps it was the
moving picture, and said that all through it he had me in mind - it
seemed to him that such a fate could easily befall me. And this is
true, and has proved itself true.
[1956?]
My habit of telling tailors at a certain point in a friendly conversa–
tion that my father was a tailor. They do not like this, they ignore it,
they do not want to serve the sons of tailors, they want to serve
gentlemen - professors.
8 March [1957]
Norman
&
Steven
4
call on D . D's account of their conversation - sex
-Don Juanism is what they say they want-Norman: "I ask myself
1
This probably refers to novels he has
in
mind.
2Elliot E. Cohen, the editor of
Commmtary,
has been away
ill.
3Clement and Martin Greenberg.
4Steven Marcus.
