Washed in public
KENNETH ALLSOP
Making It Norman Podhoretz (Cape 36s)
The eminent editor and critic is taking the pulse of the state of English literature and western civilised values. 'Did so-and-so have dinner at Jacqueline Kennedy's apartment last night? Up five points. Was so-and-so not in- vited by the Lowells to meet the latest visiting Russian poet? Down one-eighth. Did so-and- so's book get nominated for the'National Book Award? Up two and five-eighths. Did Partisan Review neglect to ask so-and-so to participate in a symposium? Down two.'
And how is the eminent editor and critic himself scoring with the publication of his collected journalism? 'I hardly dared look at the listings for fear of finding myself wiped out, but when I finally worked up the courage to take a sidelong glance at them, I discovered to my surprise that after much active trading my stock had registered an impressive gain.' Even at this distance one can hear the agitated rustle of newsprint and feel the vibrations of trembling fingers in those East 70s and West lOs apartments. This, of course, is Manhattan, that Saigon of the sensibilities, where one never knows when to expect a rocket attack from the New York Review of Books or a lightning thrust by regrouped author guerrillas. These Groves of Academe are crawling with assassins and carpeted with booby-traps.
Norman Podhoretz knows what a merciless war of attrition it is to become and stay top dog in their intellectual Mafia, for in the 'fifties he was the coruscating Brilliant Young Man who crashed that most impregnable establish- ment, New York's egg-head in-crowd, Now in his mid-thirties, he retraces, the journey : from immigrant Jewish larooklyprghetto to the remote cultural summits just across the East River. His eyes had seen the glory of the coming of the magna cum laude, stage one, on the way to feastiiiHtftke tables of the great. Great? Great! That's where he was, at first unknowingly, headed from the start. He was 'a natural, one of your prodigious over- achievers. In his neighbourhood gang zoot suit, he pulled down -straight A's at his Blackboard Jungle school, shot by scholarship to Columbia, soared on 'a Fellowship to Cam- bridge (where Leavis blessed- him and opened Scrutiny to his thoughts) and'was accepted by Harvard for his PhD.
Thus creaking slightly?o Under the weight of his laurels, the star student advanced upon
the home-town commanding heights—and the golden gates flew open. for him like electronic- eye supermarket doors.> 'Come on up and :join us, Norm,' cried the arbiters. In his first crit (for Commentary, which he later edited after some dazzling karate that demolished the oppo- sition) he cut'Saul Bellow into paper-dolls, and overnight 'everybody' was talking about him.
Welcomed to the elite Partisan Review's pages, he also began making real bread by doing tsooks for the New Yorker. and Esquire—and 'for Show at 750 dollars a column, he'll have you know. It wasn't easy : God, the lakes of martinis drunk and the mountains of marzi- pan nibbled on that twisty road to the Park Avenue salons, preparatory to grabbing `literary distinction, fame and money all in one package.' You need not only talent but strong nerves and a strong stomach to pull off a deal of those dimensions.
Is Making it, then, so vulgarly brash and garish? Is this merely the public preening of a meteoric hustler—What Made Norman Run from the winner's mouth? Not quite. Mr Podhoretz is genuinely concerned with working out not only the ,higher calculus of fame in America,' but also the conflicts ensuing from the commercialisation of scholarship. It is an attempt to examine whether the drives of the society of big prizes, with its kitsch and cor- ruption and middlebrowism, can be accommo- dated, without grave rupture, along with a cadetship in western liberal humanism.
This, in short, is a seriously undertaken expe- dition into his interior, and many perceptive soundings are made en route. Yet down there, Inside Podhoretz, is an arid and fustily airless world. He is nice about the Trillings—who are as generous as they are dedicated—and also about Mailer. But mostly the beautiful people, his peers and punching partners, are focused only momentarily in chiaroscuro as his shadow falls upon them. As, chamois-footed, he has ascended the slippery slopes, his vision seems not to have expanded but shrivelled, narrowed to those daily bulletins wherein he tensely checks up on his Tam Rating. .
Among educated Americans success may, as he says, have replaced sex as D. H. Lawrence's `dirty little secret,' too crude and ignoble to he discussed, plombe along with the bonds and diamonds. But Mr Podhoretz challenges too aggressively, like a drinker, tanked up with courage, blurting: `My integrity is more integral than any man's in the room.' As the girl said, if you're going to be raped you might as well lie back and enjoy it—and Mr Podhoretz does not entirely convince us that he aches for a lost virginity or that he hated being ravished by the bitch goddess, less than happy though he is with the dew brushed off. His plea for sympathy is at once too upright and too schmaltzy—one feels one is being both wheedled and hectored. The `secret,' like his linen, looks no cleaner for being washed in public in such a lather.
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