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us. In addition, we were not yet important enough for the Party to take
action against us.
Another failure to understand the politics of the Party is Teres's refer–
ence to the Popular Front as a cultural movement.
It
simply was a
strategic maneuver by the Party to attract more supporters, including
those who were frightened by a revolutionary line - especially since the
Soviet Union was not promoting a revolution. Indeed, the Party did not
care what writers wrote, so long as they were friendly to or did not criti–
cize the Soviet Union.
In keeping with his search for a radical usable past, Teres faults
Parti–
san Review,
and particularly Rahv and myself, for not supporting trendy
causes. In making this charge, Teres does not seem to understand our true
aims and achievements. We were concerned with literary, cultural ques–
tions as writers and editors - as were the long list of distinguished
contributors to the magazine. We were not political activists, nor did we
take part in political issues and causes. The same bias is evident in his
treatment of some of the women who wrote for the magazine. He is
quite sympathetic and generous in his portraits of Mary McCarthy, Eliza–
beth Hardwick, and Susan Sontag, but he has the same complaint against
them: they did not support the feminist movement. The fact is, they were
not anti-feminist, but their concerns were literary and cultural.
Similarly, in his last chapter, which is in part a tribute to Lionel
Trilling, Teres criticizes Trilling for not participating in the radical causes
of his time. Again, Teres ignores the fact that this was not Trilling's mis–
sion nor his aim. And in doing so, Teres does not do justice to Trilling's
large literary and cultural contributions. Teres suggests that our early his–
tory be used as a model for current leftist thinking. It is in this sense that
he praises our early skirmish with the Communist Party, for then we op–
posed all political dictates to writers, from a radical perspective. He seems
to suggest that some such position is desirable today.
The other revisionist work is "The Cosmopolitan Intellectual Cri–
tique:
Partisan Review,"
a chapter in Paul Gorman's book. Here we learn
that our big mistake was to be opposed to mass culture. Gorman seems to
take it for granted that it was incumbent on us to be for popular culture
and that by shirking our prescribed task, we were guilty of that terrible
cultural sin: elitism. He mocks Clement Greenberg's famous essay,
"Avant-garde and Kitsch," and dismisses Dwight Macdonald's "Mass Cult
and Mid Cult," which was one of his best pieces.
This was not a good year for serious writers. In quick succession, Harold
Brodkey, Joseph Brodsky, Eleanor Clark, and, more recently, Meyer
Schapiro died. Brodkey and Brodsky were too young, Eleanor Clark in