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PARTISAN REVIEW
Sanford Pinsker:
At a faculty meeting, I once threatened to have us lis–
ten to a tape of someone hitting a log with a stick for ten minutes. Or
to ten minutes of Mozart. My colleagues understood that ten minutes of
listening to Mozart would be a good idea, and ten minutes of someone
hitting a log with a stick is less to the point. I take it as self-evident that
professors should pursue the truth. We may not get to it, but we should
pursue it. Yet, you have people in your midst who say, "Look, there is
no truth, there is no beauty." I agree with the person from England. You
turn off the lights, you put the money to planting trees.
If
we can't say
some books are better than others, and quarrel about that, there isn't
any point.
John Patrick Diggins:
One of the ironies about hierarchy is that it goes
all the way back to Thomas Jefferson and John Adams. Those who
claimed to believe in sameness and equality, like Jefferson and Patrick
Henry, turned out to be the most reactionary people. Not only were they
slaveholders, but they defended Napoleon's putting down the uprising
in Santo Domingo . Those who believed in some kind of aristocratic ele–
ment and hierarchy, like Alexander Hamilton and John Adams, were
very critical of slavery, and had a better sense of justice and freedom for
America's future . So I think that those who, today, deny differences in
hierarchy in the name of equality are the most elitist people in their lives
and in their conduct. And those who admit that hierarchy is inevitable,
that it cannot be gotten rid of, usually are honest with themselves.
Audience Member:
Could you say something about the state of literary
magazines at the time of the
1952
symposium? Were they more impor–
tant in our culture then? It seems that they were more urgent. Or was it
that just as many people were reading literary magazines then as today,
but the culture is more fragmented now and there are more magazines
out there?
Edith Kurzweil:
Many more people were reading, yes.
Sanford Pinsker:
Partisan Review
through the middle forties and mid–
dle fifties was of central cultural importance. People literally waited for
each issue to come out. Now, I have students who, if you mention that
this was the banner, premiere magazine, that it is first rate, will go out
and subscribe; then they want to ta lk to me about the articles, especially
if they happen to be ones that I wrote. That's wonderful. But you're only
going to have a few of those, and maybe you always had only a few.
