DOCSLIB.ORG

Copyright 2012 Robert Henn

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Copyright 2012 Robert Henn Copyright 2012 Robert Henn CLASS WORK: NEW YORK INTELLECTUAL LABOR AND THE CREATION OF POSTMODERN AMERICAN FICTION, 1932-1962 BY ROBERT F. HENN DISSERTATION Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in English in the Graduate College of the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2012 Urbana, Illinois Doctoral Committee: Associate Professor William J. Maxwell, Chair Professor Michael Bérubé, Director of Research, Pennsylvania State University Professor Robert Dale Parker Associate Professor Kathryn J. Oberdeck Abstract This dissertation argues that American literary postmodernism was profoundly shaped by midcentury intellectual workers’ resistance to the bureaucratization of their labor. An Introduction establishes the significance of the dissertation to debates over both postmodernism and the New York Intellectuals, and summarizes each chapter’s contribution to the overall argument. Part I, “Class Unconsciousness,” then offers three chapters that detail the birth, growth, and eventual eclipse of a theory of “brain workers” as a class in the labor-radical circles of the New York Intellectuals. In the 1930s and 40s, authors Tess Slesinger, Mary McCarthy, and Lionel Trilling sounded an increasingly shrill alarm over what they imagined was a pro- Soviet intellectual class of bureaucratic mental workers in America. I argue that while their class-conscious fictions laid foundations for postmodernism’s arrival decades later, their increasingly indiscriminate hostility toward a class-conscious left nevertheless also hindered later recognition of the intellectual and class origins of postmodernism. Part II, “The Groves of Postmodernism,” begins with an Interlude that offers a theory of the literary and sociological meanings of the postwar campus novel in America. Three final chapters then explain how the antibureaucratic academic fictions of Trilling, McCarthy, and Vladimir Nabokov helped create the characteristic themes and even forms of this emerging genre—and thence of postmodernism itself, whose early canon includes such campus novels as Nabokov’s Pale Fire (1962) and John Barth’s Giles Goat-Boy (1966). I contend that these authors’ liberal satire of academia, influenced by the earlier theory of an intellectual class, was rooted in a passionate desire for intellectuals’ autonomy, and a corresponding critique of their bureaucratic labor in the academy. Thus I argue that the early postmodern, even for such avowedly apolitical writers as Nabokov, may be read as the protest of mental and professional ii workers against the bureaucratic confines of their work. Against recent accusations that postmodernism represented a “libertarian turn” colluding with the New Right, a brief Epilogue then insists on the importance of this early and antibureaucratic postmodernism to the successes of the New Left in the 1960s, as well as to present-day academic workers seeking their own autonomy in a rapidly proletarianizing workplace. This dissertation thus excavates a history of postmodernism’s labor-left origins, thereby challenging familiar accounts of postmodernism’s roots in a 1950s or 1980s political conservatism, as well as notions of the New York Intellectuals’ hostility toward or irrelevance to postmodernism. Along the way, it suggests postmodernism’s continuing relevance to white-collar anxiety and academic activism. iii Acknowledgments As Mary McCarthy knew already in her first book, The Company She Keeps, we are defined by the company we keep, by our relationships with others. I’ve kept excellent company over the years I’ve been writing this dissertation, and all that is good in what follows reflects that. Here I am happy to express my profound gratitude for all who’ve accompanied me. My dissertation committee gets first thanks. It’s hard to know where to begin to thank Bill Maxwell. On the grand side, his course on “Writers as Intellectuals in American Literature” inspired the topic of this dissertation and many of its ideas. Simply put: no Bill, no dissertation. But there’s also the more specialized help he’s given. Bill has taught me modernism high and low. He’s taught me proletarianism of literary and theoretical varieties. He’s taught me to break up sentences like they were so many fights, and he’s taught me to get rid of parentheses and colons (note well: mostly it’s worked). When my graduate employee comrades at the University of Illinois and I were occupying an administrative building for recognition of our union, he brought us a big ol’ bucket of KFC. He is, in short, a great intellectual and political role model. He kept patient when many another advisor might have lost patience altogether, and had faith in the project throughout. Michael Bérubé gave me my first formal introduction to postmodernism, and this covers only the broadest and most direct aspect of his influence on this dissertation. I came to Illinois many years ago largely because I saw someone teaching there who seemed to share my intellectual interests. But I had no idea then how helpful it would be to share that community of interest with someone who had a bigger and more flexible mind, and who allied such formidable traits with a real kindness and generosity. Michael’s life as an intellectual and his reflections on both postmodernism and intellectual life itself have challenged and inspired me. iv I’ve taken more courses with Bob Parker than with any other professor at Illinois, and it’s paid off: he’s made my recalcitrant brain think about literary theory, identity, history, and American literature in nuanced ways, and he’s offered another valuable role model for what a professor—a teacher—could do and be. In one course he introduced me to Tess Slesinger’s The Unpossessed, which started me on the road to the first chapter. In all my courses with him he’s struggled valiantly to make me write genuinely readable prose. His work never stops in this regard: soon after my defense, he sent me an email that kindly praised the dissertation’s contents and its clarity, but then enumerated with uncanny and alarming skill all the rote phrases that lingered. For every error of thought and expression in what follows, try to imagine four others you were saved from. Then thank him. I gained an interest in American intellectual history through an undergraduate course, but as I entered grad school I wasn’t sure I’d ever pursue the topic again. Taking a fascinating second course on it from Kathy Oberdeck helped push me from this stage of insouciance to my current conviction that I am as much intellectual historian as literary critic. Her course also had a direct effect on this dissertation by introducing me to the scholarly work of Michael Denning, and to the provocative essays of New York Intellectual Dwight Macdonald. She has been unfailingly helpful whenever I’ve asked. Then there are friends. Amihan Huesmann fed and entertained me, keeping me in mind of life outside the dissertation. But she also encouraged me in my work, and aided it. She not only gave me seasoned graph-making advice for my sudden foray into quantitative aspects of the campus novel (see the Interlude), but—and here’s the glory of knowing an atmospheric scientist, for those of you who don’t know—when I fashioned an article from Chapter Four, she researched the New York City weather report for what turns out to have been “a cold, early v winter’s day” in December of 1933. Lionel Trilling coped heroically with highs in the low forties, it turns out. Ellen Samuels, dear friend for nearly two decades, has now become a mentor as well. Between episodes of Deep Space Nine and Mad Men, then, she’s listened to more than her fair share of whining. But she’s also worked on this thing. In particular, when I’d begun to despair of Chapter Three altogether, she generously took it from me and commented in detail on issues both macro and micro, allowing me to patch the chapter together for the first time. She also performed crucial research on the arcana of MLA citation policies as I was preparing part of Chapter Five for publication. Lisa King talked with me about several chapters, watched 1940’s Dance, Girls, Dance (screenplay by Tess Slesinger) with me, and wrote a dissertation that made me want to read Hannah Arendt. She is still one of my cherished models of the passionate and political intellectual. Her influence shows most tellingly in Chapter Five, though she hasn’t seen it and would likely disagree with some of it. Samaa Abdurraqib, Carrie Conners (“my agent,” as I like to call her in honor of her enthusiasm for the project), John Bradley, Xochitl Gilkeson, and Sara Phillips all read and responded to parts of the later chapters and encouraged me in finishing long past when it seemed fruitful to do so. Other friends had less influence on the dissertation’s content, but I wouldn’t have gotten through it without them. Charlie Cooney demonstrated early on in my college years that intellectual ability and interest weren’t synonymous with pretension. Rychetta Watkins offered much encouragement and by her example gave me hope that there was life after the dissertation. Gretchen Soderlund encouraged me early on, as we read Walter Lippmann together. Mark vi Dahlquist frequently housed me in Champaign and made the MLA more enjoyable. Ryan Jerving, Edward Burch, Riley Broach and the others in the Viper and His Famous Orchestra’s stable of musicians and significant others cracked me up and kept me musically informed, if not hep. (Rachel Leibowitz kvetched with the best of them, especially about academic matters.) Toby Higbie listened patiently to a number of oral summaries. Loretta Gaffney chatted with me late into the night as she finished her own dissertation, and really doesn’t deserve to be called what I regularly call her.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • University Microfilms, a XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan the RADICAL CRITICISM OP GRANVILLE HICKS in the 1 9 3 0 *S
    72 - 15,245 LONG, Terry Lester, 1936- THE RADICAL CRITICISM OF GRANVILLE HICKS IN THE 1930’S. The Ohio State University in Cooperation with Miami (Ohio) University, Ph.D., 1971 Language and Literature, modern University Microfilms, A XEROX Company, Ann Arbor, Michigan THE RADICAL CRITICISM OP GRANVILLE HICKS IN THE 1 9 3 0 *S DISSERTATION Presented in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Graduate School of The Ohio State University By Terry L. Long, B. A. , M. A. Ohe Ohio State University 1971 Approved by A d v iser Department of English PLEASE NOTE: Some pages have indistinct print. Filmed as received. University Microfilms, A Xerox Education Company TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. Hicks and the 1930*s ....................................... 1 II. Granville Hicks: Liberal, 1927-1932 .... 31 III. Granville Hicks: Marxist, 1932-1939 .... 66 IV. Hicks on the Marxian Method................... 121 V. Hicks as a Marxian A nalyst ........................ 157 V I. The B reak With Communism and A f t e r ..... 233 VII. Hicks and Marxist Criticism in Perspective . 258 BIBLIOGRAPHY......................................................................................... 279 i i CHAPTER I HICKS AM5 THE 1930* s The world was aflame with troubles In the 1930fs. They were years of economic crisis, war, and political upheaval. America, as Tennessee Williams said, "... was matriculating in a school for the blind." They were years of bewilderment and frustration for the common man. For many American writers and thinkers, the events of the decade called for several changes from the twenties; a move to the political left, a concern for the misery of the masses, sympathy for the labor movement, support of the Communist Party, hope for Russia as a symbol of the future, fear and hatred of fascism.
    [Show full text]
  • Mary Mccarthy and Vassar
    Mary McCarthy and Vassar 1 Mary McCarthy and Vass ar An Exhibition Catalogue VASSAR COLLEGE LIBRARIES 2012 2 3 Mary McCarthy and Vass ar An Exhibition Catalogue VASSAR COLLEGE LIBRARIES 2012 2 3 CONTENTS Mary McCarthy and Vassar page 5 The Company We Keep: Mary McCarthy and the Mythic Essence of Vassar page 7 Checklist of the Exhibition page 15 All essays 2012 © the authors 4 5 Mary McCarthy and Vassar By RONALD PATKUS 2012 marks the 100th anniversary of the birth of Mary McCarthy, one of 20th century America’s foremost writers and critics. She was born on June 21, 1912 in Seattle, Washington, the first child and only daughter of Roy Winfield and Therese (“Tess”) Preston McCarthy. McCarthy and her three younger brothers (Kevin, Preston, and Sheridan) were orphaned in 1918, when both parents died in the influenza epidemic. For a time the children lived with their great-aunt and her husband, but then McCarthy moved back to Seattle to live with her maternal grandparents, while her brothers were sent to boarding school. This was a privileged environment, and McCarthy at- tended excellent schools. In 1929 she enrolled in the freshmen class at Vassar. No one could have known it at the time, but McCarthy’s arrival on cam- pus was the beginning of a long relationship between her and the college, even though there were ups and downs at certain points. While a student, McCarthy was busy, making friends with classmates, writing for several un- dergraduate publications, and taking part in plays and other activities. Her academic responsibilities did not suffer, and she graduated Phi Beta Kappa in 1933.
    [Show full text]
  • Limited Editions Club
    g g OAK KNOLL BOOKS www.oakknoll.com 310 Delaware Street, New Castle, DE 19720 Oak Knoll Books was founded in 1976 by Bob Fleck, a chemical engineer by training, who let his hobby get the best of him. Somehow, making oil refineries more efficient using mathematics and computers paled in comparison to the joy of handling books. Oak Knoll Press, the second part of the business, was established in 1978 as a logical extension of Oak Knoll Books. Today, Oak Knoll Books is a thriving company that maintains an inventory of about 25,000 titles. Our main specialties continue to be books about bibliography, book collecting, book design, book illustration, book selling, bookbinding, bookplates, children’s books, Delaware books, fine press books, forgery, graphic arts, libraries, literary criticism, marbling, papermaking, printing history, publishing, typography & type specimens, and writing & calligraphy — plus books about the history of all of these fields. Oak Knoll Books is a member of the International League of Antiquarian Booksellers (ILAB — about 2,000 dealers in 22 countries) and the Antiquarian Booksellers Association of America (ABAA — over 450 dealers in the US). Their logos appear on all of our antiquarian catalogues and web pages. These logos mean that we guarantee accurate descriptions and customer satisfaction. Our founder, Bob Fleck, has long been a proponent of the ethical principles embodied by ILAB & the ABAA. He has taken a leadership role in both organizations and is a past president of both the ABAA and ILAB. We are located in the historic colonial town of New Castle (founded 1651), next to the Delaware River and have an open shop for visitors.
    [Show full text]
  • Mary Mccarthy
    Mary McCarthy: Manuscripts for in the Manuscript Collection at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center Descriptive Summary Creator: McCarthy, Mary, 1912-1989 Title: Mary McCarthy, Manuscripts for The Group Dates: 1953-1964 Extent: 2 boxes, 1 galley folder (.63 linear feet) Abstract: The Ransom Center’s holdings for Mary McCarthy comprise her draft chapters, final manuscript, and galley proofs for the novel The Group . RLIN Record #: TXRC05-A10006 Language: English . Access: Open for research Administrative Information Acquisition: Purchase, 1968 (R4493) Processed by: Bob Taylor, 2003 Repository: The University of Texas at Austin, Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center McCarthy, Mary, 1912-1989 Biographical Sketch Born in Seattle on June 21, 1912, Mary McCarthy was the eldest of four children born to Roy and Therese McCarthy. Orphaned upon their parents’ deaths in the flu epidemic of 1918, Mary and her brothers eventually found refuge with their maternal grandparents in Seattle. Following her graduation from Vassar College in 1933, McCarthy, intending to pursue a literary career, moved to New York City, where she soon attracted attention for her essays and dramatic criticism. In the late 1930s she began to write short stories, several of which served as the nucleus of her first novel, The Company She Keeps, published in 1942. As one of the major figures in contemporary American cultural and political thought, Mary McCarthy wrote widely in fiction( The Oasis, Cast a Cold Eye, The Groves of Academe ), theater criticism( Mary McCarthy’s Theatre Chronicles, 1937-1962 ), memoir( Memories of a Catholic Girlhood and How I Grew ), and broad-ranging commentary( Venice Observed and The Mask of State: Watergate Portraits ).
    [Show full text]
  • History 600: Public Intellectuals in the US Prof. Ratner-Rosenhagen Office
    Hannah Arendt W.E.B. DuBois Noam Chomsky History 600: Public Intellectuals in the U.S. Prof. Ratner-Rosenhagen Lecturer: Ronit Stahl Class Meetings: Office: Mosse Hum. 4112 Office: Mosse Hum. 4112 M 11 a.m.-1 p.m. email: [email protected] email: [email protected] Room: Mosse Hum. 5257 Prof. RR’s Office Hours: R.S.’s Office Hours: T 3- M 9 a.m.-11a.m. 5 p.m. This course is designed for students interested in exploring the life of the mind in the twentieth-century United States. Specifically, we will examine the life of particular minds— intellectuals of different political, moral, and social persuasions and sensibilities, who have played prominent roles in American public life over the course of the last century. Despite the common conception of American culture as profoundly anti-intellectual, we will evaluate how professional thinkers and writers have indeed been forces in American society. Our aim is to investigate the contested meaning, role, and place of the intellectual in a democratic, capitalist culture. We will also examine the cultural conditions, academic and governmental institutions, and the media for the dissemination of ideas, which have both fostered and inhibited intellectual production and exchange. Roughly the first third of the semester will be devoted to reading studies in U.S. and comparative intellectual history, the sociology of knowledge, and critical social theory. In addition, students will explore the varieties of public intellectual life by becoming familiarized with a wide array of prominent American philosophers, political and social theorists, scientists, novelists, artists, and activists.
    [Show full text]
  • Dr. Lionel Trilling Jefferson Lecturer the Blakelock Problem
    Humanities New York City, a sheaf of rolled-up canvases under his arm, while Blakelock bargained; as often as not, they’d return to the same dealers with the same pic­ tures just before closing, Blakelock desperate and willing to accept almost anything for his work. He was a self-taught artist, born and raised in New York City, who headed west after graduation from what is now the City University of New York, sketch­ ing his way across the plains to the coast, returning by way of Mexico, Panama, and the West Indies. At first he painted pictures in the Hudson River style— romantically colored panoramas identifiable with the locales he had visited. But as the years passed, the children came, and fame, fortune or even a minimal income eluded him, Blakelock started building on canvas a world of his own: dark scenes, heavy with overarching trees Dr. Lionel Trilling brooding over moonlit waters, highly romantic Indian Jefferson Lecturer encampments that never were. Bright colors left his palette, the hues of night dominated. Dr. Lionel Trilling will deliver the first Jefferson Lec­ Blakelock did build up a modest following of col­ ture in the Humanities before a distinguished au­ lectors, but in the 1870’s and 1880’s, $30 to $50 was dience at the National Academy of Sciences Audi­ a decent price for a sizable painting by an unknown, torium, 2101 Constitution Avenue Northwest, Wash­ and his fees never caught up with his expenses. Only ington, D. C. on Wednesday, April 26 at eight once did light break through: in 1883, the Toledo o ’clock.
    [Show full text]
  • Nathan Glazer—Merit Before Meritocracy - the American Interest
    Nathan Glazer—Merit Before Meritocracy - The American Interest https://www.the-american-interest.com/2019/04/03/nathan-glazer-... https://www.the-american-interest.com/2019/04/03/nathan-glazer-merit-before-meritocracy/ WHAT ONCE WAS Nathan Glazer—Merit Before Meritocracy PETER SKERRY The perambulating path of this son of humble Jewish immigrants into America’s intellectual and political elites points to how much we have overcome—and lost—over the past century. The death of Nathan Glazer in January, a month before his 96th birthday, has been rightly noted as the end of an era in American political and intellectual life. Nat Glazer was the last exemplar of what historian Christopher Lasch would refer to as a “social type”: the New York intellectuals, the sons and daughters of impoverished, almost exclusively Jewish immigrants who took advantage of the city’s public education system and then thrived in the cultural and political ferment that from the 1930’s into the 1960’s made New York the leading metropolis of the free world. As Glazer once noted, the Marxist polemics that he and his fellow students at City College engaged in afforded them unique insights into, and unanticipated opportunities to interpret, Soviet communism to the rest of America during the Cold War. Over time, postwar economic growth and political change resulted in the relative decline of New York and the emergence of Washington as the center of power and even glamor in American life. Nevertheless, Glazer and his fellow New York intellectuals, relocated either to major universities around the country or to Washington think tanks, continued to exert remarkable influence over both domestic and foreign affairs.
    [Show full text]
  • The Representation of the First World War in the American Novel
    The representation of the first world war in the American novel Item Type text; Thesis-Reproduction (electronic) Authors Doehler, James Harold, 1910- Publisher The University of Arizona. Rights Copyright © is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the University Libraries, University of Arizona. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation (such as public display or performance) of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author. Download date 07/10/2021 07:22:59 Link to Item http://hdl.handle.net/10150/553556 THE REPRESENTATION OF THE FIRST WORLD WAR IN THE AMERICAN NOVEL ■ . ■ v ' James Harold Doehler A Thesis aotsdited to the faculty of the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Graduate Co U e g e University of Arisom 1941 Director of Thesis e & a i m c > m J::-! - . V 3^ J , UF' Z" , r. •. TwiLgr-t. ' : fejCtm^L «••»«[?; ^ aJbtadE >1 *il *iv v I ; t. .•>#»>^ ii«;' .:r i»: s a * 3LXV>.Zj.. , 4 W i > l iie* L V W ?! df{t t*- * ? [ /?// TABLE OF CONTENTS Chapter Page I. INTRODUCTION ..... .......... < 1 II. NOVELS WRITTEN DURING THE WAR. 9 III. NOVELS WRITTEN DURING THE 1920*8 . 32 IV. DOS PASSOS, HEMINGWAY, AND CUMMINGS 60 V. NOVELS WRITTEN DURING THE 1930*8 . 85 VI. CONCLUSION ....................... 103 BIBLIOGRAPHY ..................... 106 l a y 4 7 7 CHAPIER I niiRODUcnoa The purpose of this work is to discover the attitudes toward the first World War which were revealed in the American novel from 1914 to 1941.
    [Show full text]
  • Robert Johnson, Folk Revivalism, and Disremembering the American Past
    The Green Fields of the Mind: Robert Johnson, Folk Revivalism, and Disremembering the American Past Blaine Quincy Waide A thesis submitted to the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in the Folklore Program, Department of American Studies Chapel Hill 2009 Approved by: William Ferris Robert Cantwell Timothy Marr ©2009 Blaine Quincy Waide ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii Abstract Blaine Quincy Waide: The Green Fields of the Mind: Robert Johnson, Folk Revivalism, and Disremembering the American Past (Under the direction of William Ferris) This thesis seeks to understand the phenomenon of folk revivalism as it occurred in America during several moments in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. More specifically, I examine how and why often marginalized southern vernacular musicians, especially Mississippi blues singer Robert Johnson, were celebrated during the folk revivals of the 1930s and 1960s as possessing something inherently American, and differentiate these periods of intense interest in the traditional music of the American South from the most recent example of revivalism early in the new millennium. In the process, I suggest the term “disremembering” to elucidate the ways in which the intent of some vernacular traditions, such as blues music, has often been redirected towards a different social or political purpose when communities with divergent needs in a stratified society have convened around a common interest in cultural practice. iii Table of Contents Chapter Introduction: Imagining America in an Iowa Cornfield and at a Mississippi Crossroads…………………………………………………………………………1 I. Discovering America in the Mouth of Jim Crow: Alan Lomax, Robert Johnson, and the Mississippi Paradox…………………………………...23 II.
    [Show full text]
  • Congress Is Weak Because Its Members Want It to Be
    CommentaryJULY/AUGUST 2018 DOUBLE ISSUE Congress Is Weak Because Its Members Want It to Be BY YUVAL LEVIN Game of Peacock Thrones BY SOHRAB AHMARI Should Jews Flee Europe? BY MELANIE PHILLIPS Commentary How Israel Became a JULY/AUGUST 2018 : VOLUME 146 NUMBER 1 146 : VOLUME 2018 JULY/AUGUST TV Powerhouse BY HANNAH BROWN Philip Roth’s My Time Among Joyless the Exuberance Anti-Israelites BY RUTH R. WISSE CANADA $7.00 : US $5.95 BY ARDIE GELDMAN We join in celebrating Israel’s 70 years. And Magen David Adom is proud to have saved lives for every one of them. Magen David Adom, Israel’s largest and premier emergency medical response agency, has been saving lives since before 1948. Supporters like you provide MDA’s 27,000 paramedics, EMTs, and civilian Life Guardians — more than 90% of them volunteers — with the training, equipment, and rescue vehicles they need. In honor of Israel’s 70th anniversary, MDA has launched a 70 for 70 Campaign that will put 70 new ambulances on the streets of Israel this year. There is no better way to celebrate this great occasion and ensure the vitality of the state continues for many more years. Please give today. 352 Seventh Avenue, Suite 400 New York, NY 10001 Toll-Free 866.632.2763 • [email protected] www.afmda.org Celebrate Israel’s 70th anniversary by helping put 70 new ambulances on its streets. FOR SEVENTY Celebrate Israel’s 70th anniversary by putting 70 new ambulances on its streets. please join us for the ninth annual COMMENTARY ROAST this year’s victim: JOE LIEBERMAN monday, october 8, 2018, new york city CO-CHAIR TABLES: $25,000.
    [Show full text]
  • Lionel Trilling's Existential State
    Lionel Trilling’s Existential State Michael Szalay Death is like justice is supposed to be. Ralph Ellison, Three Days Before the Shooting IN 1952, LIONEL TRILLING ANNOUNCED THAT “intellect has associated itself with power, per- haps as never before in history, and is now conceded to be in itself a kind of power.” He was de- scribing what would be his own associations: his personal papers are littered with missives from the stars of postwar politics. Senator James L. Buckley admires his contribution to American let- ters. Jacob J. Javits does the same. Daniel Patrick Moynihan praises him as “the nation’s leading literary critic.” First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy writes from the White House, thanking him for the collection of D. H. Lawrence stories and hoping to see him again soon. Three years later, President Lyndon Johnson sends a telegram asking Trilling to represent him at the funeral of T. S. Eliot. Politicians liked having Trilling around. He confirmed their noble sense of mission as often as they praised him.1 Trilling’s accommodating relation to power alienated many of his peers, like Irving Howe and C. Wright Mills, and later provoked condemnations from historians like Christopher Lasch and MICHAEL SZALAY teaches American literature and culture at UC, Irvine, and is the author of New Deal Modernism and The Hip Figure, forthcoming from Stanford University Press. He is co-editor of Stanford’s “Post*45” Book Series. 1 Trilling thought that the political establishment embraced intellectuals because it was “uneasy with itself” and eager “to apologize for its existence by a show of taste and sensitivity.” Trilling, “The Situation of the American Intellectual at the Present Time,” in The Moral Obligation to Be Intelligent, ed.
    [Show full text]
  • Neoconservatism Hoover Press : Berkowitz/Conservative Hberkc Ch5 Mp 104 Rev1 Page 104 Hoover Press : Berkowitz/Conservative Hberkc Ch5 Mp 105 Rev1 Page 105
    Hoover Press : Berkowitz/Conservative hberkc ch5 Mp_103 rev1 page 103 part iii Neoconservatism Hoover Press : Berkowitz/Conservative hberkc ch5 Mp_104 rev1 page 104 Hoover Press : Berkowitz/Conservative hberkc ch5 Mp_105 rev1 page 105 chapter five The Neoconservative Journey Jacob Heilbrunn The Neoconservative Conspiracy The longer the United States struggles to impose order in postwar Iraq, the harsher indictments of the George W. Bush administration’s foreign policy are becoming. “Acquiring additional burdens by engag- ing in new wars of liberation is the last thing the United States needs,” declared one Bush critic in Foreign Affairs. “The principal problem is the mistaken belief that democracy is a talisman for all the world’s ills, and that the United States has a responsibility to promote dem- ocratic government wherever in the world it is lacking.”1 Does this sound like a Democratic pundit bashing Bush for par- tisan gain? Quite the contrary. The swipe came from Dimitri Simes, president of the Nixon Center and copublisher of National Interest. Simes is not alone in calling on the administration to reclaim the party’s pre-Reagan heritage—to abandon the moralistic, Wilsonian, neoconservative dream of exporting democracy and return to a more limited and realistic foreign policy that avoids the pitfalls of Iraq. 1. Dimitri K. Simes, “America’s Imperial Dilemma,” Foreign Affairs (Novem- ber/December 2003): 97, 100. Hoover Press : Berkowitz/Conservative hberkc ch5 Mp_106 rev1 page 106 106 jacob heilbrunn In fact, critics on the Left and Right are remarkably united in their assessment of the administration. Both believe a neoconservative cabal has hijacked the administration’s foreign policy and has now overplayed its hand.
    [Show full text]