H.J. KAPLAN
433
* * *
The plot of
Ex-Frimds
is laid out in its subtitle:
Falling Out with Allen
Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilliltg, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and
Norman Mailer.
Each of these familiar names evokes a rich and complicat–
ed personality with which Norman Podhoretz had to come to grips at
some level, at whatever degree of friendship and intimacy or (as in the cases
of Allen Ginsberg and ultimately Diana Trilling, for example, antagonism
and distance) before they could "fallout" for whatever reason. This would
seem on the face of it to be a recipe for a
potpourri
of essays, served with
wry toast, and with only the author's nostalgia or lingering rancor for a
center, but these are not just occasional essays, they are chapters in the
Work, which unfolds like a legend-the archetypal tale of the youth who
sets out to seek his fortune and learn the world, with nothing but his native
wi t and a thorough grounding in our culture to guide him. He finds the
going tough in the big city, suffers reverses and disappointments, but by
dint of talent and courage and perseverance he is bound not only to suc–
ceed but also to inspire us all with his example.
This is the kind of story which speaks to us most deeply because
we've heard it before and keep wanting to hear it again, especially as we
grow older. Personally, I am much older than Norman Podhoretz and the
last thing I want to hear is a new story, if such a thing exists. It would
only add to the ambient confusion and remind me that societies have a
terrible tendency to fall apart; whereas this new book of his about falling
out with various people ends by beautifully falling together, as part of that
trajectory he has been tracing in his own way, bringing his characteristic
mix of qualities to it-his ardor, his dogmatism, his humor and style-so
that it continues to hold us in thrall and we remain (as we always do when
we listen to a really good storyteller) at once gratified as the plot thick–
ens and in suspense, not to say worried, about whether it will end as we
wish.
Perhaps the wish is father to the thought, but the direction in which
Podhoretz is moving is apparent, it seems to me, not only in the first and
last chapters, "How Our 'Family' Broke Up" and "Requiem for a Lost
World," but also and especially in the evocations of Lionel Trilling, who
never really became an ex-friend, and Lillian Hellman, who did; and above
all of Norman Mailer, who "comes alive" for me in these pages as never
before-perhaps because Podhoretz has continued to feel a regretful empa–
thy for the man whose work he now sees as having so dismally failed to
keep its promise. In any event, we are constantly reminded that, while
Podhoretz has learned and told us a great deal about how the world works,
he has given us very little literary criticism as such since
The Bloody
