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low-travellers. He may have overdone this, but without his efforts the war
might not have been fought so successfully. And more recently, when the left
reappeared in a less authentic and recognizable form, Hook again was lead–
ing the battle, despite his age and failing health. Toward the end of his life he
was active in exposing the educational sherianigans at Stanford University.
Even in private gatherings he never let up. He was always the peda–
gogue. One evening at my home at a small party for Arthur Koestler who
had just arrived in this country, Hook tangled with Koestler. Koestler was
known as one of the toughest opponents of the peace movements supported
by the Communists. But on this occasion he was taken with Mary McCarthy
and apparently thought he would impress her by defending Ghandi's
neutralist and pacifist stance. Hook, who was oblivious to such devious and
perverse behavior, responded as though he were in a seminar. He began to
give Koestler a political lecture, but Koestler, who knew his politics as well as
Hook, cut him off with a typically arrogant and rude Koestlerian answer: "I
didn't come three thousand miles to hear this nonsense."
Because Hook was always embattled, he became a controversial fig–
ure, and even those who shared his general views felt there were a number
of disputable statements in his recently published autobiography. Yet his large
achievements overshadow these flaws. His death marks the passing of one
of the last survivors of an earlier generation of intellectuals who transcended
their special fields and have had a decisive influence on the thinking of the
times.
*
Politics, as they say, used to make for strange bedfellows. However, in
recent years politics has separated them.
The untimely death of Mike Harrington reminds us of the corrosive
effect of politics on human relations, since the advent of Stalinism. We had our
disagreements with Mike, but we always respected his openness and
polemical vigor. Everyone liked Mike. Perhaps
glasnost,
which indicates that
all of us were wrong in one way or another, that ideological stands are often
dissolved by history, will restore a measure of civility to political and
intellectual life.
In
any event, Mike 'will be missed as a radical spokesman and
as a civilized opponent.
*
Donald Barthelme was a literary friend who also died young. We
had differences, but they were literary, not political. He was a kind of mini–
malist, and I suppose we could be regarded as maximalists. But whatever
one's relation to Barthelme, he will be remembered by everyone as a writer
so dedicated to his idea of himself and his craft that he did not give in to
