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PARTISAN REVIEW
Norman Podhoretz:
The United States does not have an honorable
record with respect to China. I would agree with that. The funny thing
about China is that by moving in the opposite direction from the one
Gorbachev moved in-they've chosen to liberalize economically rather
than politically-they probably will eventually make their way out of
the totalitarian system without first collapsing as the Soviet Union did.
In other words, they are sneaking capitalism into the system rather than
liberalism. But I am not a supporter of American policy toward China,
either in the period of detente and triangulation or today. I don't think
this is one of the glories of American foreign policy.
Sanford Pinsker:
I can speak with some authority to the person who
was asking about high school teachers: my wife is a high school teacher
and runs an international baccalaureate program in the town where we
live . The kind of history courses she and others teach are engagements
with what they think is mater ial that kids should learn and the interest–
ing and lively ways in which they can think about that material. So the
question is not whether you know a lot of facts about Napoleon-you
need to know those-but you also need to be able to engage the ques–
tion of whether Napoleon was good or bad for France. And at least try
putting together an argument. But when high school students come to
college they often run into professors who don't think there are good
works and bad works of literature, only different works. "Different" is
the great equalizer. We don't talk about actions that are noble or actions
that are base, as if there's any guide to behavior we can talk about. At
the end of the day, discussion of literature has all the human meaning
drained out of it. Trilling's notion of moral realism isn't worth a fig now.
There's all kinds of other questions to ask, none of which have any rela–
tionship to the pleasure and the power of reading. So all the worries that
Partisan Review's
participants had in 1952-TV had just gotten started,
other things weren't even imaginable-washed over culture until you
now have what Edith was ta lking about. You've got biker culture and
surfer culture and all kinds of culture, but no
real
culture.
Edith Kurzweil:
There also isn't enough time for reading.
Sanford Pinsker:
There is no time. Philip Roth, who can be theatrical
about his disappointments, asks what chance words on the page have.
Well, he has a lot of readers who pay attention to his work, but not
nearly as many as he wants. Is he vital to the culture? Probably not. My
students don't know who Philip Roth is. We live thirty miles from
Shillington, and they don't know who Updike is.
