If you want the inside story of what Norman Mailer said to Lillian
Hellman one boozy night in Brooklyn, don't bother with this. Bloom
isn't interested in cultural chitchat; he's on the track of bigger
game. He is, in fact, attempting nothing less than to trace what
the New York intellectuals of the past three-and-a-half decades had
in common (Jewish immigrant parentage, confidence in their own
powers, a drive for prominence and influence), what divided them
(Trotskyism, the Stalin Trials of the 30's, liberalism, HUAC) and
what eventually drove them irretrievably apart (ancient frictions,
age, security, success). It's a mind-boggling task Bloom and by and
large, Bloom's handled it admirably. The roster of "prodigal sons"
is impressive: Lionel Trilling, Philip Rahv, Saul Bellow, Sidney
Hook, Clement Greenberg, Leslie Fiedler, Norman Podhoretz - all
those shovers and makers at The Partisan Review, Dissent.
Commentary, et al. As Bloom points out, these "intellectuals" moved
at various times from radicalism to liberalism and some, most
recently, to neoconservatism. When he states that their drift to
the right coincided with their movement toward the centers of
power, Bloom is merely reiterating a dogeared truism: "Have-not's
are against the statusquo; have's defend it rigorously." Not all
Bloom's insights are quite this obvious. When he discusses the
impact of the Holocaust disclosures, for example, the author is
perceptive. When the horrifying details of the "Final Solution"
became clear, the intellectuals began emphasizing their Jewishness
for the first time. Soon, they came to the conclusion that the
Jewish "sense of isolation" typified the human condition in the
20th century, thus positioning themselves as advisors to the world
at large. For readers interested in New York intellectual life
since the Depression, Prodigal Sons is a concise and highly
readable guidebook to what was obviously very exotic and frequently
very perilous territory to traverse. (Kirkus Reviews)
"A herd of independent minds," Harold Roseberg once labelled his
fellow intellectuals. They were, and are, as this book shows, a
special and fascinating group, including literary critics like
Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, Irving Howe, Leslie Fiedler, Philip
Rahv, and William Phillips; social scientists like Nathan Glazer;
art critics and historians Clement Greenberg, Harold Rrosenberg,
and Meyer Schapiro; novelist Saul Bellow; and political journalists
Irving Kristol and Norman Podhoretz. Their story winds through
nearly all of the crucial intellectual and political events of the
last decades, as well as through the major academic institutions of
the nation and the editorial boards of such important journals as
Partisan Review, Commentary, Dissent, The Public Interest, and The
New York Review of Books.
So deeply entrenched in our intellectual establishment are these
people that it's easy to forget that most grew up onthe edge of
American society--poor, Jewish, the children of immigrants.
Prodigal Sons retraces their common past, from their New York City
ghetto upbringing and education at Columbia and City College
through their radicalization in the '30s to their preeminence in
the postwar literary and academic world. The book examines their
youthful efforts to ignore their Jewish heritage and their later
rediscovery of this heritage in the wake of the Holocaust. It shows
how they moved toward the liberal center during the Cold War and
how the group fragmented in the 1960s, when some turned toward the
right, becoming key figures in the Neo-Conservative movement of the
1970s and '80s.
As Bloom points out, there is no single typical New York
intellectual; nor did they share all their ideas. This book is
concerned with how the community came to be formed, and what it
thought important, how and why it moved and changed, and why it
ultimately came undone. We learn some of the ways in which
intellectuals function and justify their own places and a great
deal about the political and cultural landscape over which New York
intellectuals passed.
A fascinating portrait of New York intellectual life over the past
half-century
.Based on interviews with many of the leading figures and 10
years of extensive research
.Takes us behind the scenes at Commentary, Partisan Review, The
Public Interest and other influential publications"
General
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