Arguing the world : the New York intellectuals in their own words

231 Pages·2000·1.42 MB·English

by  Dorman

Arguing the World

Atheneum Books for Young Readers
An imprint of Simon & Schuster Children’s Publishing Division
1230 Avenue of the Americas, New York, New York 10020
www.SimonandSchuster.com
This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people,
or real locales are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and
incidents are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual
events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
THE FREE PRESS
A Division of Simon & Schuster Inc.
1230 Avenue of the Americas
New York, NY 10020
Copyright © 2000 by Joseph Dorman.
All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any
form.
The Free Press and colophon are trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.
Designed by Kim Llewellyn Manufactured in the United States of America 10 9
8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Arguing the world : the
New York intellectuals in their own words / [edited by] Joseph Dorman.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index.
1. Intellectuals—New York (State)—New York—History—20th century. 2.
Intellectuals—New York (State)—New York—Interviews. 3. New York (N.Y.)
—Intellectual life—20th century. 4. United States—Intellectual life—20th
century. I. Dorman, Joseph, 1958-.
F128.52.A75 2000 00-041076
974.7′1043—dc21
ISBN 0-684-86279-4
ISBN-13: 978-0-6848-6279-8
eISBN-13: 978-1-43913650-8
TO MY MOTHER, ELEANOR DORMAN, AND TO THE MEMORY OF MY FATHER, JACK
DORMAN (1915-99)
Contents
Acknowledgments
The Participants
The New York Jewish Intellectuals
A Note on the Text
1 A Lifetime in Argument
2 History at the Kitchen Table
3 A Harvard for the Poor
4 The Most Interesting Place in the Soviet Union
5 The Newness of Ideas
6 Darkness Descending
7 The Mood of Two Generations
8 The Neoconservative Revolt
9 Two Cheers for Utopia
10 Worrying with a Purpose
Selected Bibliography
Index
Acknowledgments
Armed with the biographer’s license to ask almost anything, I’ve had the great
fortune to have spent numerous hours talking with Irving Kristol, Nathan Glazer,
and Daniel Bell, and I wish to thank them for their enormous generosity in
agreeing to participate in both the documentary and this book. While I fear they
may have had no idea exactly what they were getting themselves into, they
nevertheless amiably persevered, particularly through the many inconveniences
of the filmmaking process. And though his untimely death prevented me from
spending as much time with Irving Howe, he, too, proved generous at a moment
when he had already begun to suffer from the illness which would eventually
take his life.
In his autobiography, A Margin of Hope, Howe tells the story of Partisan Review
editor Philip Rahv calling fellow New York intellectual and art critic Meyer
Schapiro “to check some fact and then listening openmouthed for an hour to a
lecture providing answer, background and foreground, until Rahv turned to his
wife and said, I’ve just received an MA over the telephone!’” Being in the
presence of these four men has also seemed to me a graduate education unlike
any other I might more conventionally have received.
Thanks and acknowledgments are also due to my friend and colleague Jonathan
Oppenheim, a wonderful film editor and arguing companion who was
instrumental in originally helping to shape this material. During the making of
the film I also relied on the insights of Morris Dickstein, Arnold Labaton, Gail
Segal, and Emily Shapiro. Terry Cooney’s research led me to the excerpts from
James Farrell’s diaries as well as the correspondence between Leon Trotsky and
Dwight Macdonald quoted in chapter 4. As well, I am indebted to John Patrick
Diggins, Deborah Dash Moore, Russell Jacoby, Neil Jumonville, Maurice
Isserman, William O’Neill, and Ronald Radosh.
My longtime friend Alex Goulder proved a supportive and wise reader of the
present manuscript. His sharp insights, suggestions and sense of humor have
made the book better than it otherwise might have been.
The documentary film on which this book is based was funded largely by the
National Endowment for the Humanities. In a time when it seems harder and
harder to make serious films, they remain a critical source of funding. Without
them, Arguing the World could not have been made. I would also like to
acknowledge the support of Tamara Robinson and WNET in New York, Richard
Gilder, the New York Council for the Humanities, and the National Foundation
for Jewish Culture. At The Free Press, I wish to thank my editor, Paul Golob,
whose expertise and thoughtful suggestions helped transform the original film
into this book. His assistant, Alys Yablon, helped guide me through the
intricacies of readying a manuscript for press. And finally, thanks are due to
publisher Paula Barker Duffy, who first approached me with the idea of the film
translating to the printed page and therefore without whom this book would not
exist.
The Participants
Daniel Bell (b. 1919) is the Henry Ford II Professor of Social Sciences,
Emeritus, at Harvard University and previously taught at the University of
Chicago and at Columbia University. He has held senior editorial positions at
The New Leader and at Fortune and is the author of The End of Ideology, The
Coming of Post-Industrial Society, and The Cultural Contradictions of
Capitalism, among other works. With Irving Kristol he cofounded The Public
Interest, and most recently he cofounded Correspondence, a quarterly journal of
ideas and cultural commentary.
Nathan Glazer (b. 1923) is Professor of Education and Sociology, Emeritus, at
Harvard University and has also taught at the University of California at
Berkeley. He is the author or coauthor of numerous works of sociology,
including The Lonely Crowd (with David Riesman), Beyond the Melting Pot
(with Daniel Patrick Moynihan), The Limits of Social Policy, and We Are All
Multiculturalists Now. A former assistant at Commentary magazine, he is
presently coeditor of The Public Interest magazine.
Irving Howe (1920-93) was Distinguished Professor of English at the City
University of New York as well as the founder and editor of Dissent magazine. A
longtime leader of America’s socialist movement, he was also an influential
literary critic and scholar of Jewish history. His many books include Politics and
the Novel, World of Our Fathers, Socialism and America, and The American
Newness.
Irving Kristol (b. 1920) is the John M. Olin Distinguished Fellow at the
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research in Washington, D.C.
Previously he was an assistant editor at Commentary magazine, and coeditor of
the magazine Encounter, before becoming an editor at Basic Books. In 1965, he
and Daniel Bell cofounded The Public Interest, for which he has served as
coeditor ever since. He is the author of several books, including On the
Democratic Idea in America, Reflections of a Neoconservative, and Neo-
Conservatism: The Autobiography of an Idea.