Dwight Macdonald: sunburned by ideas by Joseph Epstein At a rg80 symposium at Skidmore College tagious. Answering a reader wvho accused set in mrotion by a normally portentous him of taking a sniide tone in an article essay by George Steiner about the death of 011 the Ford Foundation in The Nrew Yorker culture in America, Dwight Macdonald, in I954, he put the blame for the article's long established as a slashing critic of pop- tone on himself, writing: "after all, I've Lar cuilture and politics, sitting on a panel done a lot of 'snide' writing in my time, on "Film and Theatre in Anerica,' seemed [anid] am indeed rather an SOB, on paper to have little of interest to say. He was at lcast?' seventy-four years old and a fairly serious I once greatly admired D-wight Macdon- boozer who had written almost nothing of ald, and I esteemed precisely that uinforgiv- interest for more than a decade. He seemed ing, relentless SOB side of him above all. As the intellcctual equiivalenit of the boxer who a graduate of Mencken University. with a has taken way too many shots to the head. major in what I took to be anti-BS and a His death by congestive heart failure was minor in radical politics, I thought Mac- tvo years away. Reacting against the ten- donald, when I first came across his writing dency in the discussion to take a-Lrrent-day in the late 195oS, ncxt in succession to 1H. L. mo-ies and plays seriously, Macdonald Mencken himsclf. To read Macdonald on emitted- one almost hears him muttering t-he barbarity of General George S. P'atton, -a remark that could stand as the epigraph the goofy gadgetrv of Mortimer J. Adler's for hlis long career in intellectual journalism: Syntopicon to the Great Books, the depre- "LVOThe1e I say 'no' I'm always right and -when dations upon the King James Bible com- I say 'yes' I'm almost alwvavs wrong" mitted by its new English translators w^as to Dwight Macdonald was the intellectual hear melodious bells go off and have the sky par excellence, whichi is to say without any fill with firewvorks. specialized knowledge he was prepared to Macdonald got away with muclh that ,he comment on everthing, boisterously and did through style. The trick of this style was always with what seemed an unwavering to be sharp and intimate simultaneously. He confidence. He was the pure type of the wrote to a correspondent that the secret to amateur, and gloried in the status. And why successfiUl lecturing was to speak as if talking not? "What's wrong with leing an ama- to no more than three or four people, and teur," one easily imagines him saying. "Look he seemed to write the same way. His gen- wvhere the professionals have got us." eral tone was that of the unconnable ad- Perhiaps this is too mucl in the spirit of dressing the already highly skeptical. He put-down. But then this was also Macdon- never condescended to his readers, assum- ald's reigning spirit, and possibly it is con- ing that they were on his intellectual level. The Newv Criterion NToPember 2001 252 Dwighlt Macdoniald by Joscpb Fpstein A brilliant counterpuncher, specializing in Lucc's inew mnagazilne, devoted to chronii- mockery of his opponents, he wrote un- cling the high romance of in;dustry an:id shapely essays in whiclh the best thingias were commerce. He spoke well of Luce per- often to be found in ungainly asterisk foot- sonally- thoulgh often m1ockin1g h£im, once notes. His witticisms seemned truth-bearin-g. referring to him as "Il I aLce"8-but Timec 'IThe first sentence of his article on the Ford Inc. was a persistent force for evil in the Founidation ran: "The Ford Foundation is culture drama that played in Macdonald's a large body of money completely sur- hcad. "For fourteen years." he wrote of his rounded by people who want somce frienld James Agee, "like ana elephant learn- ing to deplcoy a parasol, Agec devoted his Born in 1906, the soTn of a father who was prodigioLus gifts to Lucean journialism:' a lawyer and a n other with s(ocial preten- Feeling lirmself stifled by working for sions, Dwight iMacdonald was by back- Fortune, Macdonald, with twvo Yale class- ground upper-middle class. He was a prep mates, Frecd Dlupee and George L. K. Mor- school boy (Exeter) and an Ivy League iman ris, began, as a moonlghting venture, a (Yale), whose first job out of school was in magazirie calledMvisrelany, a bimonthly that the executive training program at Macy's. lasted niearly tvo years. Througzh Dupee he Yet straight out of the gate he was a rebel, wvas put in touch with Philip RLahv and Wil- antagonizer division. At Exeter, at fourteen, liam Phillips, who had recently removed the he and a frienid formed a group called The nagazine Partisan Revien', out from unider Hedonists, vhose motto was "epater tes the Stalinist sway of the John Reed Club, baurgeois." Altlhough as a young man he and -were lookinig for financial supporters to held many of the prejudices of his social keep it alive. Along with Dupee anid Morris, dass-racism, anti-Semitism-a strong be- Macdonald became one of the magazine's lief in religion was not among themi. "Liter- five principal editors. ature and knowledge, wisdom and wnder- Macdoonald had been driftirg leftward. standing, intellect, call it what y0ou will, is "Marx goes to the heart of t'he problem;" he my religion:" These woyuld be the gods he wrote to a college classmate ini I936. To the worshipped ail his life. samne man he wrote: "I'm growing more "I have a prose mind,' the young Dwight and more intolerant of those who stand-or Macdonald wrote in college. "1 want to rath-er squat-in the way of radical progress, Write serious criticism:' At irst, though, he the mrore I learn about the conservative was swept away by the vigor of businessmen, businesses that run this country and the whoim he found "wvere keenier, more effi- more I see of the injustices done people cient, more sure of their power than any col- under this horrible cap-italist svstem.' Earlier lege prof I ever knexw' Upon discovering hle hie had noted that "my greatest vice is nmy had n10 mind for bush ess, he took up a n0o- easily aroused indignation-also, I suppose, tion he found in readiing Spengler: that there one of m-.y greatest strengtlhs. I cani work up w'ere MAen of Truths and Men of Action, and a mora i ndigiiationi quicker thian a fat ten- he was clearny among the formner. Even then nis player can xvork up a swTeat? Over the he liked to have an idea-not vet ar, ideol- vears his similes would improve, if not his ogy-in support of at y move he made. temperamenit. Macdonald's next step was to a job at By the time he was thirty, Macdonald was Time nagazine, which he got through a Yale filily formied, in-tellectually and emotionally. classmate. Henry Luce, on- of the two Politically, he was anti-Stalinist and anti- fo'unders of Ti7te, was hirnself a Yalie, and statist vet also anti-capitalist, In the 1936 for many years Yale functioned as a farn president al electoion, he voted for Earl team of sorts for Time, Inc. Macdonald Browder, tihe Communist candiidate. For a began by writing finan-ie and businiess few years he was a member of the 'Trotskyite stories, and soon was transferred to Foaurtue, WNorker Party. But he had only to join a 26 The New Criterion November 2001 Dwight Macdonald byJoseph Fpstein group to find it objectionable and thus left A vorazl r7 anper is fiLled with amusing and the Workers Party in 194i. Trotsky himself interesting material, some of it unknown to had referred to him as a "Macdonaldist?" (In me, -who has long felt glutted with accounts an article left in his dictaphone mnachine of the New York Intellectuals. I knew that before his death, he describcd a -Macdonald Macdonald's wvife Nancy had served as bus- piece as "very muddled and stupid?') lM7ac- iness manager-the unkniowin soldicr of donald always took the high road-that most little magazines-of Partisan Revieiv, "morat indignation" again-preferrinig clar- but I dtidn't know that for a good spell ity over complexity in politics and keeping a much of the daily dr-udgery of briniginig out palette restricted to two colors, black and the magazine fell to the Macdonalds, in white, with very little interest in gray shad- whose Tenth Street Village apartment it wvas iings or texture of any sort. His un-willing- actually produced. At one point Macdonald ness to grant America tlhe least virtue led wished to do aw,ay with Dupee and William himn to m--ake somne impressively idiotic Philips as members of the editorial board statemen-ts, notable among them:`"vuropc and replace them with Harold Rosenberg hlas its Hitiers, but we ha.e our Rotarians?" and Clement Greenberg. Macdoniald felt He settlcd into a lifelong bumptiousness. that the magazine, bogged dowIn in "Raiv's His ton1e and spirit were heavily polemical. cautiotus negativistic policies," had becomc This was not helped by his drinking, which n0 noore than a periodical anthology, did not tend to make himn more courtly. The publishing the best things scnt to it, which ultimate art form of the Partisan Review mav have had its uses, "but it's not the sort crowd may have been the go-scrcw-yourself of magazine I would want to give any large letter, which they were a-ways sending one amount of titne to right now' another: choice examples of Macdonald's What Macdonal3d xvanted was a more use of the form are found in A Moral directly political magazine thanl Partisan Temper, a new collection put together by his Review.