FRANK KERMODE
663
puts it, perhaps a shade too strongly, in his study of the whole affair, he
was " charged with masterminding the ideological offensive against the
Soviet Union." His colleague, possibly boss, at the congress, operating
from Geneva, was Michael Josselson, now known to have been a CIA
agent. Josselson always took a paternal if not censorious interest in the
contents of
Encounter
and was often in London, as was the secretary of
the congress, the elegant Nicolas Nabokov, cousin of Vladimir, com–
poser and peripatetic agent of Cold War culture. Berry gives a
formidable list of the celebrities involved; they included Malcolm Mug–
geridge, a representative of the congress in Britain who "took part in
the money-laundering that launched
Encounter."
The office in Panton Street was not at all grand, but there was al–
ways the feeling, encouraged by most of the operations of the congress,
that there was plenty of money around for travel, lunches, and parties.
My entry into the office and the peculiar congress atmosphere occurred
in 1965. Lasky was always the true boss of the magazine; Spender, who
did not love him, allowed that this was so, and even submitted to be
called "Steefen," which was Lasky's spelling pronunciation, or perhaps a
sort of quiet reproach to the poet for not spelling his name, American
fashion, with a "v."
As I say, the invitation was a great surprise to me, though perhaps if
I'd been wilier it need not have been. I was so far from being known as
a political commentator that I could well have been thought a political
innocent. I made this point, but it was dismissed as irrelevant. After all,
Lasky spent his whole life looking after the politics. What he wanted was
a co-editor to handle the literary component. But this was hardly a
reason to choose me; numerous writers and journalists in London could
have done the job at least as well as I; and then there was the disadvan–
tage (or benefit, depending on how you looked at it) that I was living
in Gloucestershire, had a job in Bristol, and most weeks couldn't spend
more than a day, or at most two, in the office. No matter how hard I
might try, I couldn't have much influence in the principal content of the
magazine. But what I took to be a handicap was in fact my chief quali–
fication . Somewhere in my mind or heart, mixed in with mere vanity,
and that disability of which I have spoken, my reluctance to disregard
the wrong road, I knew I was being set up.
Of course I persuaded myself that I had fully considered all the snags
before accepting the job. This process included imperfect investigation of
those rumors floating around London about the past funding of
En–
counter.
They were constantly repeated but never with anything like cer–
tainty, and in any case, there was no secret about who was at present
