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films. He even asks Harold to find him a lawyer of the right kind who can
handle things vis-a-vis his former wife Toady, for the sake of his son,
Danny. The letters provide a necessary diary for Clem; Harold gives some
kind of echo, or leash-or silence-on which Clem can bounce back on
himself.
These are youthful years and very touching. Clem reveals his
loneliness, often his confusion; his terrible self-depreciation as well as
ambition and self-confidence. Someplace he feels and knows he is the best.
His appetites never dwindle. He reads everything (in any of several lan–
guages), and searches out concerts, exhibitions, theater, films. Harold was
the recipient of Clem's considered opinions-Marianne Moore, W. H .
Auden, Edmund Wilson, Mary McCarthy, Margaret Marshall (of
The
Nation,
for which Clem wrote reviews regularly) all get a going-over. Yet
from the beginning, he strives to be a poet. One can see him flowering into
the prewar/wartime intellectual world. Along the way, we are occasion–
ally given a look at many of his sketches, and eventually learn of his dis–
covery of the joy of painting. He really
listened
to music, really
stared
at
paintings and knew when he was deeply moved. Once moved, he was
confident enough to pontificate! As he searched for the truth around him
he openly gives us, through Harold, the truth about himself.
Clem's curiosity stretches all over-he engages people, sizes them up
and then, often disappointed, discards or exposes them (follow his rela–
tions with Harold Rosenberg, Lionel Abel, etc.). As for his love life, it
was pretty messy. His marriage to Toady dissolves before Danny'S birth.
(The boy is soon, in turn, abandoned by his mother who left him to be
fostered by her own disturbed mother.) While he writes a good line about
his desperate longing to see the child, it hardly ever comes to fruition. He
counts on occasional photographs and then moans to Harold his hopes
and verdicts for Danny. Over the years we follow Clem's descriptions of
Danny'S plight and doomed future. This is no moral scene.
Clem describes his yearning for glamour and society. Jeanie Connolly
fills the bill, almost the apotheosis of international high life in the intel–
lectual world. Before she leaves London for New York, her husband,
Cyril Connolly (editor of
Horizon),
suggests that she contact Clem, the
result of which is a long, hot love affair. When Jeanie and Clem are not
in bed they are part of an active social life that includes some of the
kingpins (and their satellites) of the international literary and art
worlds. The nucleus included the ever-forming
Partisan Review
crowd,
with all its side-taking intramural webs.
For postwar babies, the picture of Clem's intellectual, political,
and financial life (what a dollar could buy!) during the 1930S and
1940S is fascinating. He rejected Stalinism, embraced socialism, and
