A PARTISAN VIEW: Five Decades of the Literary Life

by William Phillips ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 1, 1983

Phillips, co-founder and longtime editor of Partisan Review, is unhappy with the ""distortion' in recent writings on the leftwing/literary scene--especially Norman Podhoretz's Breaking Ranks and William Barrett's The Tiruants. So here, along with brief glimpses of dozens of writers, is his version of that political/cultural history, always stressing the relative consistency of his centrist-radical stand--fiercely anti-Communist, but not going the neoconservative route. From a feuding Bronx-Jewish family (sketched in a funny-grim opening chapter), Phillips went to City College and N.Y.U. grad school, discovered modernism, joined the John Reed Club--and began Partisan Review as a Reed Club offshoot. Soon, however, disenchanted with the narrow Party line on literature, he re-founded the magazine (1937)--along with Philip Rahv, Dwight MacDonald, and Mary McCarthy. And the rest of the book then alternates between thumbnail sketches of Partisan contributors and more detailed discussions of key controversies. The portraits are flat for the most part, occasionally anecdotal; many figures receive a single short paragraph, while the critical comments tend toward the bland or obvious. (Irving Howe ""is certainly a first-rate critic""; Saul Bellow is ""a writer of major stature."") Among the more forceful closeups: a defense of Lionel Trilling, not ""a forerunner of neoconservatism""; a tense dinner with the Trillings and the Podhoretzes; Meyer Schapiro, ""the nearest thing to a superb intellectual machine that I have ever met""; a falling-out with Hannah Arendt; the visiting, ""arrogant"" Simone de Beauvoir; Norman Mailer--perverse, narcissistic, yet admirable. And, as for the controversies, there's the magazine's troubles at Rutgers, the break with flamboyant, unstable co-editor Rahv (a too-central figure Lu The Truants, argues Phillips)--but, above all, the McCarthy period: Phillips reprises the anti-Lillian Hellman evidence, grumbles about recent rehashed ""hysteria"" (Victor Navasky, Gary Wills), and contends that ""The true meaning of the McCarthy episode. . . lay not in the injustices perpetrated by the Senator, but in the bad faith exhibited on both sides."" Irving Howe's Margin of Hope is a more involving, persuasive presentation of the center-left sensibility; Phillips writes with far less zest than Barrett about Partisan personalities. But, as a record of the attempt to occupy ""a kind of aesthetic and political middle ground,"" this has value and some low-key, common-sense appeal--and in a few areas it effectively counters The Truants, which was indeed accepted too uncritically in most quarters.

Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1983

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Stein & Day

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1983

Categories: NONFICTION