TRIBUTES TO WILLIAM PHILLIPS
191
the Goethe prize in Germany. William had an affinity for these people
without being taken in by them, which I suppose is comparable to my
feeling for the French. So maybe we failed to agree on who were the bet–
ter Europeans, but we never quarreled about it, because we loved each
other, each in his way, and what more is there to say at a graveside?
FRANCES KIERNAN
For two years, whenever I could manage it, I read to William Phillips. I
read for no more than an hour, on Tuesdays, at four. I never called him
William. For me, he was always Mr. Phillips.
In
winter it was sometimes
dark when I arrived.
In
summer there was a break, when he and his wife
Edith went
to
the Cape. I had never done anything like this before. Why
I stayed on I was never quite sure. There was nothing heartwarming
about the experience. That was not Mr. Phillips's style.
I first came
to
know Mr. Phillips through Mary McCarthy, when I
interviewed him in the spring of
1990
for a biography I was writing. He
was the second person I spoke to. The first had been Alfred Kazin, who
had no use for the subject of my book. Where others saw beauty and
intelligence, Kazin saw a long Irish jaw and a "wholly destructive criti–
cal mind." The morning I came
to
interview him, Mr. Phillips was not
feeling well, but once I was on his doorstep, he was not about to turn
me away. On the other hand, he was not prepared to linger in my com–
pany. At most the interview lasted twenty minutes-long enough for me
to
note that the living room was more spacious than those found in
most modern apartment buildings and that my host was handsomer
than most of his early colleagues at
Partisan Review.
I did not mind his cutting short the interview. For one thing, I had
been told that the state of his health had always been a source of press–
ing concern. For another, I liked what he had to say. He was more for–
giving of Mary McCarthy's physical shortcomings than Alfred Kazin
had been. "Her legs weren't good, but the upper part was good," he told
me. More important, he did not find her mind wholly destructive, even
though he faulted her for confusing aesthetics with morality, a failing he
believed had led her astray in
Hanoi,
her book on North Vietnam.
On my second visit, a year later, I stayed for almost two hours. Again,
he never made any pretense of being objective. But while he was tough
Frances Kiernan's biography of Mary McCarthy,
Seeing Mary Plain,
was
published in
2000.
