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PARTISAN REVIEW
defense against terrorist attacks on it are somehow criminal. I think the
force used by Israel has been, if anything, overly restrained.
Fred Siegel:
I just want to ask a general question. One of the things
which struck me since
9/1
I
and since the European response to the
events in the Middle East is a collapse in the standing of Europe in much
of the United States. But before that happened, it seemed to me that for
fifty years, since the symposium, European intellectual life, outside of
the universities, outside of the people Jack talked about, has had a
declining impact on America. There are very few European authors peo–
ple read; there isn't a great deal of attention paid
to
Europe. I just won–
dered why you think Europe has declined substantially over the last fifty
years in terms of its broad impact on American life. At the
Partisan
Review
symposium there were almost entirely European writers. Are
there any new European writers since Camus, since the generation of
that period? Outside the academy, unless I am wrong, there are very few
who have had much influence on the United States.
Edith Kurzweil:
Well, the French say
it
n'y a personne-there's
nobody.
But there are quite a few writers coming out of the former East.
Fred Siegel:
I have no doubt that there are good writers, but one of the
differences between
1952
and now is the declining influence of Europe,
in the broad sense.
It
is interesting that at a time when European intel–
lectual influence in the academy is at a zenith, in the life of the American
educated public, it is at its nadir. Is that unfair? In other words, if I think
of the educated public in the United States, and I think of Europe-leave
aside all the hostility to France, the fourth member of the Axis of Evil
and all that-I'm sort of struck that in the days since
9/II
it's not just
hostility
to
Europe politically, but a contempt for Europe as a civiliza–
tion. Are there Europeans who are influential? And if not, why not?
Audience Member:
There was Solzhenitsyn, there was Milosz.
Fred Siegel:
Solzenitsyn thinks of himself as from a different civilization .
Audience Member:
That's not true.
John Patrick Diggins:
I want
to
respond
to
something Norman Pod–
horetz said . I don't think that the fall of communism can be attributed
entirely and who ll y to the American military-industrial stance . To say
that, we have
to
ignore that that military arsenal was never used, except
