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on Mary McCarthy, he was also tough on himself-at one point insist–
ing that in his battles with Philip Rahv he had never been the victim that
William Barrett had portrayed in
The Truants.
"I was no saint," he told
me. In addition, he let me know that despite his various differences with
the subject of my biography, he admired her as a woman and a writer.
"I guess you could say I had a soft spot for Mary McCarthy," he said.
There is a lull between finishing a book and its official publication.
If
you are fortunate, you have already begun work on a new project. Oth–
erwise, those months can seem endless. In late October of
1999,
three
months before my book was due out, I was having lunch with Linda
Healey, who had worked at one time as Managing Editor at
Partisan
Review.
How was Mr. Phillips? I asked. On my second visit he had been
recovering from a broken hip and been forced to rely on a walker to get
around the apartment, but his spirits had been better than the first time
we'd met. Now, it seemed, his eyesight was failing and he was confined
to bed. Once a week Linda was going to the apartment to read to him.
I felt a rush of sympathy for William Phillips. Perhaps it was the sym–
pathy of one longtime editor for
anoth~r.
But there was more to it than
that. The celebrated writers I'd interviewed-from Irving Howe, Clement
Greenberg, and Lionel Abel to Diana Trilling, Isaiah Berlin, Saul Bellow,
and even Alfred Kazin-all had "qualities" (to use a word employed by
Mr. Phillips to suggest a measure of respect without conferring whole–
hearted endorsement). However, for the most part they tended to see
things in black and white. While this made for quotes that suited my pur–
poses, it did not necessarily make me want to know them any better. In
contrast, Mr. Phillips's tone was detached, direct, and on occasion ironic.
Rereading my transcripts, I had gained an appreciation for his dry wit.
A friend of mine had been reading
War and Peace
to William
Maxwell-a distinguished writer and editor of fiction and my first boss
at
The New Yorker-in
the months before his death. Briefly, visions of
a valedictory journey to the Russia of Tolstoy danced in my head. As it
turned out, Linda was reading to Mr. Phillips from the galleys of
Parti–
sans,
a new book about the women associated with the golden age of
Partisan Review.
It
was something I would never have read on my own.
First of all, this was material I thought I knew cold. Second, I feared this
book (quite rightly, as it turned out) was going to compete with mine
for the same audience. Nonetheless, I was curious.
The first afternoon I showed up to read to William Phillips was a
model for all the afternoons that would come after. A young Russian
woman who spoke virtually no English greeted me at the door. After I
found a place for my coat, she escorted me down a mirrored hallway to
