LETTERS
To the Editor:
Herbert Lottman begins his
review of my book
Emigre New
York
by stating that "a reviewer
must resist the temptation to blame
the author for not having written
the book he or she hoped to read."
And denial, as the New York wag
put it, is not just a river in Egypt. As
if to confirm the pertinence of that
give, Mr. Lottman, before long, tells
us he is in fact "speaking of
Mehlman's book as rewritten by
Lottman." As to what Mr. Lottman
would rather I had written, it
would appear to be a book about
"real men," not "ethereal beings."
And the ideal type of the "real
man," we are told, is Andre Breton
at his most pugilistic. Unfortunately
for him there are no known
instances of punch-outs involving
the "pope" of Surrealism on Fifth
Avenue. So the reviewer is reduced
to grumbling dismissively about the
mere fact that I had decided
to
write about the likes of Simone
Weil and the octogenarian Maurice
Maeterlinck, who is dismissed,
despite the numerous plays he
wrote in New York, as irrelevent.
As though the drama of irrelevence
were not both that of many a
Maeterlinck protagonist and that
par excellence of the emigre.
Mr. Lottman, I suspect, was
aware of the unfairness (not to say
irrelevence) of his review. For
which reason he takes the odd step
of envisaging the possibility that
his comments may be nothing but
"bloodthirsty." For my part, I was,
I admit, more interested in the sig–
nificance of the books written by
my cast of characters than in the
spectacle of them "punching
lapels" (punching lapels?), Mr.
Lottman's stated preference. Yet he
has my sympathy: if his thoughts
on the subject are pursued at the
level of su brlety evidenced by his
review, surely somewhere down
the line he will discover
to
his cha–
grin that "real men," as he calls
them, don't even speak French.
Jeffrey Mehlman
Boston Uniuersity
Herbert Lottman replies:
Yet I thought that my position
was very clear. Few of Professor
Mehlman's personae are compelling
examples of "French Intellectuals in
Wartime Manhattan," to employ
his subtitle. My point was to ques–
tion his odd choices, and his seem–
ing reluctance
to
deal with others
for whom the adjective "wartime"
would have true significance.
The author's irritation is excus–
able, but not his failure
to
recognize
the reviewer's sense of humor. He
needn't have reported the barroom
brawls. But there was a Vichy clan,
and a Gau llist group, and a good
many others committed
to
neither
faction. The title of Mehlman's
book leads us to believe there will be
more interaction in it, if not action.
