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of work. By the time I retired from the foreign service and found a place
in New York (not far from his, as it happens), the world had changed
markedly, and we had practical things to do together, like making sure that
Pat Moynihan and not Bella Abzug would represent us in the United
States Senate. But the point is not who was right and who was wrong dur–
ing the missing years, nor that it doesn't matter. Obviously it matters-but
in a very different way as we grow older.
Out of our quarrels with others we make politics, said Yeats, and
poetry out of our quarrels with ourselves. This may be a bit of a simpli–
fication, but it strikes me as essentially true. Having begun as a literary
critic, Podhoretz became increasingly political during the
Commentary
years. He was "merrier" in the old days, he tells us in this latest book–
but his poetic renditions of Ginsberg, Mailer, Trilling, Arendt, and yes,
even Lillian Hellman, bring to mind another thing they say in New York:
It ain't over until it's over.
So let us hope he will continue in the vein of
Ex-Friends-and
become merry again.
SAUL S TEINBERG
1914 - 1999
