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PARTISAN REVIEW
Communist country perhaps, then this man would have seriously chal–
lenged Gottfried. He would have been that forever recurring figure, the
second in command (whether organizationally so or by virtue of personal–
ity), who splits the organization. Like Frank Cooper, he would have
taken half the "cadres" with him, formed a rival group, and calumniated
those left behind. Ken Graham took no part in power struggles. His was
the voice of moderation, that person who absorbs animosity and discord,
who stabilizes a group, often using humour to do it. He was essentially a
Labour Party personality, and when he got back to England, that is what
he joined.
Long decades later I came to know a man with much experience of
the process of government, and he said that most revolutionaries could be
diffused by offering them jobs. Nearly all are people of unused or under–
used capacity. They do not realize that what they are suffering from is
frustration. The job offered must be chosen carefully, without cynicism,
giving room for this natural critic's talents for useful reform. If this idea
had been put to me then I would have dismissed it with a string of con–
temptuous epithets, but now I wonder if it isn't true.
If there is one thing hard
to
be dispassionate about, looking back, it is
the amount of contempt and dislike we projected on to everyone not ac–
tually one of us. "Who is not with us is against us." Religion again: it is
rooted in the self-congratulations of religion. Communist, left-wing,
revolutionary groups generally legitimize envy. Nowhere is this more
easily seen than in attitudes to art and literature.
In countries with a Communist Party, there is a framework - more, a
formula - for the need to cut down, destroy, denigrate, established artists.
If Thomas Mann or Proust is a lickspittle lackey of the ruling class, then
that disposes of
him
-
and the field is clear for the talents of the critic who
often aspires to be a writer. The writers (or painters) swept out of the way
are always the ones still on the scene, the generation just before the crit–
ic's. The classics are safe - they may be venerated, for they are dead. This
process has been at work in country after country in our time. When
there is no Communist Party, no intellectually respectable place to put
envy, and the need to slash and burn predecessors, then the denigration
may take nationalist forms. He - or
sh~
- is fouling the nest, has turned his
back on the homeland, because he lives abroad, or (feminist) is male, or
(male) her writing is of interest only to women. Or it is a time when
there is no organized or institutionalized place to put envy, and then the
phenomenon may be seen for what it is. Sometimes you will see a review
or critical piece in a newspaper or journal written by a new name, and it
is radiant, incandescent, with hatred for the writer's elders. You know this
person has just come out of university, has been given a job by an uncle,
