H.
J.
KAPLAN
Homage to Norman Podhoretz
Ex-FRIENDs: FALLING OUT WITH ALLEN G INSBERG, LIONEL AND D IANA
TRILLING, LILLIAN HELLMAN, HANNAH ARENDT, AND NORMAN MAILER.
By
Norman Podhoretz. The Free Press. $25.00.
"I
have often said that if I wish to name-drop," says Norman Podhoretz in
the opening sentence of his new book, "I have only to list my ex-friends.
The remark always gets a laugh, but, in addition to being funny, it has the
advantage of being true." And thus does this well-known curmudgeon go
straight to the heart of his matter. Although now in his "reclusive dotage,"
he warns us, and no longer as "merry" as he used to be, he produces his
Podhoretzian flourish, this time with a dash of melancholy, and we're off
and into his latest offering,
Ex-Friends.
It is worth noting at the outset that these memoirs, together with his
earlier work in literary criticism and his remarkable performance as editor
of
Commentary,
have quite filled his life and become-in their very per–
sonal approach to public issues-a distinctive and recognizable part of the
American scene. Which is not to suggest that his work has assumed its final
shape-on the contrary. He provides much that is new in this book, and if
he reverts to some of the themes and stories we have heard before, he does
so in a different key.
It's still the same partition, however, the one which came to such a
crescendo in 1979-wi th the Cold War still on and no end in sight. At that
point he was deeply worried about The Present Danger, as he called it in
a pamphlet published the following year, but
Breaking Ranks
was essential–
ly about his decision to part company with the so-called "Movement," and
the effect of this move on his relations with the New York intelligentsia
and his career as a critic and editor. Earlier, he had recounted his boyhood
in Brooklyn, his remarkable literary training, and how he had put aside his
misgivings and taken control of
Commentary.
There his mentors had been
two almost legendary New York figures, Elliot Cohen and Robert
Warshow, who together with Irving Kristol, Clement Greenberg, and
Nathan Glazer, had already begun to realize their dream of transforming
Commentary
from an essentially Jewish organ to a significant factor in our
national culture-inscribing first a sweeping movement toward the Left
during that turbulent period of social and political change, with Vietnam
