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PARTISAN REVIEW
in a sense, to give a semblance of
order.
Even those intellectuals who dealt
with aesthetics were trying to give some kind of social model. By con–
trast, writers are not that way. At best, they are driven by some lyrical
sense of the language they operate with. And I don't think a writer,
when he sets out to write a novel, is possessed by the notion of this or
that social order which he is going to convey and advertise to you. No,
he tells a story, and when you tell a story it already has its own mind, or
else you invent it as it unfolds on paper before you, but at any rate it
does not come into being according to any political philosophy . What
really is mitigating is the writer's sense of language , of harmony. For the
moment, that's all I have to say.
Qllestion:
I will address my question to Mr. Bellow, since, of all the pan–
elists' work, I am most familiar with his. It may seem a little inappropri–
ate, but it's about the main differences between the American and the
long-existing non-Communist European people and how they are influ–
enced by media and special interest groups like businesses. This is some–
what related to what Brodsky and Ellison said, about the projected needs
of the people. For example, do writers and the intellectuals project what
they want to see, and do businesses project what they want to get? What
influence do special interest groups have in Europe and in America, and
what are the differences?
Saul Bellow:
Well, I'm for all the good things and against all the bad
ones. Not to make this trivial, though, judging by what happens in the
United States, the forerunner, both the model and the menace of people
in other countries, there will be a development in Eastern Europe of
popular cu lture of unexampled magnitude, owing to the triumph of
television over almost everything. We live here in America now, and let's
not kid ourselves, the prevailing cu lture is what we see on television. This
of course has its sponsors and its profiteers. But even more than that, it's
a kind of assemb ly of the country's mental life. In itself, at the moment,
it is not very promising. I don't think that Eastern Europe is going to
go any other way, certainly Western Europe hasn't. If you want to think
about it, this is the mental misery of the future, at which we ought to be
looking.
Qllestion:
Do you think the excess of personal products of communi–
cation, like computers, will help liberate the people more than the new
democratic institutions can?
