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PARTISAN REVIEW
though it did not further abstract theory or practical thinking. But these
panaceas, while being politically soothing, were little more than eu–
phemisms for impossible solutions. In the end, Macdonald never let go of
his moral and anarchist stances, but he embarked on a new career as a
feature writer for
The New Yorker
and
Esquire,
where he could safely
shock the system from within the system.
Clearly, Macdonald's biographer does him a disservice by elevating a
series of rebellious impulses into an intellectual saga, presumably represen–
tative of the intellectual history of the period. Wreszin makes each of
Macdonald's stages out to be much more than the temporary political
flings that they were. For example, Wreszin makes too much of
Macdonald's ostensible Trotskyism, in which Macdonald dabbled for a
little while. He also inflates Macdonald's contributions to the question of
mass and high culture. No doubt Macdonald wrote quite lucidly and
sharply on the subject, but he was expanding on the ideas of Clement
Greenberg and others. He borrowed heavily from Greenberg's famous
piece, "Avant-garde and Kitsch," which appeared in
Partisan Review.
I must also note several unfortunate errors in the biography, which
could have been avoided if its author had consulted me before writing his
book. One is the statement that the early
Partisan Review,
in its short exis–
tence as an organ of the John Reed Club, was funded by the
Communists. This is untrue. The magazine never received a cent from
. the Communists nor, as a matter of fact, did the John Reed Club. I cer–
tainly knew the sources of our funding - which came from sales of the
magazine and the proceeds of lectures - as I was on top of financial as
well as literary matters at
Partisan Review,
and I was secretary of the John
Reed Club, which, according
to
the Soviet model, was the top position .
(Costs of publication at the time were very low.) The other error has to
do with the source of the money necessary to put out the next issue of
the magazine when we broke with Macdonald. This fact is documented
in my memoir,
A Partisan View.
Other aspects of the biography are also debatable. For example, while
Wreszin does talk about Macdonald's anti-Semitism, in the end he plays it
down . Actually, I am convinced it was an indelible component of
Macdonald's character and one of his weapons in his competitive struggle
with Philip Rahv, Delmore Schwartz, and myself. In fact, one day he
tellingly blurted out
to
us in the heat of an argument, "You Jews are no
smarter than we are."
Despite these faults, the biography is a work of great diligence, and it
is full of a good deal of documentary material about intellectual life during
much of this last century. It is too bad, however, that the prose is not
always up to the high standards of Macdonald's own writing.
W. P.
