Sky Redoubt sent me a couple of bits from the New Yorker worth reading. One comes from the collection last week of Norman Mailer’s correspondence touching on political issues over the years. To Diana Trilling in 1966:
I am friends with people because they make me feel good when I talk to
them and since everything on earth is extraordinarily limited I often
don’t want even to have too good an idea of them. I don’t want to have
too much of a hypothesis to be proved or disproved—rather there’s an
animal pleasure in friends. One feels a little safer or a little
merrier, one shores up a small bulkhead against the large dread that
always waits outside the doors so if we’re friends it’s not because we
necessarily have a good idea of what the implications of the other’s
thoughts might be, but because we are simpatico. Because in a funny way
we are family, as opposed to the other sorts of friends who start as
associates. For that reason I think it is no accident that we’ve never
had a serious political conversation. Each of us is all too aware that
it might be harder to remain friends afterward. Yet I see no
inconsistency in this. Your ideas would have a negative importance to
me if I did not believe in your good will and good conscience, just as
my ideas would be finally intolerable to you if you did not believe in
my essential good intent. What I think it comes down to is that our
experiences have been so different that ultimate ideas are much at
odds, but to me this is far less important than the fact that we have a
friendship. That is what is real. I’ve never for a moment considered
whether I’m talking to the real Diana Trilling, because I know
damn well I am, you damn adolescent, and the way I know is that I have
the clearest impression of not knowing who I’m talking to when I’m with
someone that I don’t know, which is to say, that I don’t feel
comfortable with. Besides, I feel your ideas and my ideas are going to
become more and more unimportant.
Second bit is from a piece from one issue before by Luke Menand on Lionel Trilling (how things connect!) and touches on some political subjects, neocons etc as well as Jewishness:
continued long after his death. Irving Kristol called Trilling one of
the two major influences on his neoconservatism (the other was Leo
Strauss); Diana Trilling claimed that Kristol and his wife, Gertrude
Himmelfarb, [now most famous as the progenitors of a New York Times columnist who pushed for the Iraq war] were mistaken in thinking that Trilling shared their views.
“I am of the firmest belief that he would never have become a
neoconservative,” she announced in her memoir of their marriage, “The
Beginning of the Journey.” “Nothing in his thought supports the
sectarianism of the neoconservative movement. Everything in his thought
opposes its rule by doctrine.” It was possibly a just fate for a man
who believed that, as Trilling once told the sociologist Richard
Sennett, “between is the only honest place to be.” If you wrap yourself
in enough nuance, people will understand you as they see fit. Few
critics have spun more nuance than Trilling.
And this:
“It is never possible for a Jew of my generation to ‘escape’ his
Jewish origin,” Trilling explained, in a symposium on Jewish writers in
1944. Still, he said:
cannot discover anything in my professional intellectual life which I
can specifically trace back to my Jewish birth and rearing. I do not
think of myself as a “Jewish writer.” I do not have in mind to serve by
my writing any Jewish purpose. I should resent it if a critic of my
work were to discover in it either faults or virtues which he called
Jewish.
Around
the same time, Trilling was asked to address Jewish students at
Columbia. There is no innate quality of Jewishness, he told them. The
culture of an American Jew is not Jewish; it’s American. Jewishness
exists only because of “the belief of non-Jews that Jews constitute a
racial entity and a certain kind of action on the part of non-Jews
based on this belief.” Without this prejudice against the Jews, “the
idea of Jewishness would largely disappear.”
Weiss comments: These statements are all from a while back, and fascinating. Sky says that Mailer’s policy is still a workable one, and I agree. I am learning to bite my tongue with friends with whom I disagree out of the pleasure of their being. Still I wonder whether Mailer always maintained that policy. I talked to Mailer in the year before he died and he regretted the loss of his friendship with Norman Podhoretz, said how much he’d liked him, and when I said new-ageishly that he ought to call him up and get back together, Mailer said he couldn’t, because of the Iraq War. So sometimes ideas really are important. And maybe Mailer didn’t see that in 1966.
Trilling also did not look at the extent to which the ghetto is something that Jews seek. That ethnocentrism has served Jews for a long time. And also he was writing and speaking at a time when it was impolite to speak of Jewishness. As Grant F. Smith demonstrates in his splendid new book on the birth of AIPAC, America’s Defense Line, at the beginning of the 60s liberal Jews bridled at the idea of a Jewish vote. Long time, passing.
I assume that Jews are independant persons, not even defined as American, in the odd way that "American" has come to be (transformed from the accepting the teems of humanity, to resenting the teems of humanity).
Mailer, Trilling, others loved the period of time that contrasted their relatively open and friendly New York life with the hateful life of Europe.
While you claim to have moved on from your parents' generation sentiments, this essay is an embracing of it.
Both Phil's article and Witty's comment seem very insular to me, American Gentiles just stick figures here and there, otherwise hazy shadows also outside the window.
I'm reminded of George Grosz paintings, and his autobiography, a Little Yes and a Big No.
"the hateful life of Europe?"
Interestingly phrased– Who is the hater and who is the hated? To phrase this a different way, Jews like Witty think it is their right always to hate Europe, and they imagine that Europe will always hate them.
The illogical series of steps goes something like this:
Germany=Europe=Christianity=humanity
Witty's view of Jewish intellectual life in the 50s and 60s has been consciously or unconsciously edited. According to Joel Kovel it was a period of fear and intellectual intimidation in the aftermath of the Rosebergs' trial and execution, and the organized Jewish community created AIPAC with the intent to discourage Congressional scrutiny of Jewish subversion either on behalf of the Soviet Union or for the sake of Israel. See Israel Lobbying in Comparison with Ordinary Lobbies, Eastern European Ethnic Ashkenazim and Security.
The thead Strauss, Heidegger and Their Fans might be interesting in conjunction with Phil's retrospective on Trilling.
Both Phil's article and Witty's comment seem very insular to me, American Gentiles just stick figures here and there, otherwise hazy shadows also outside the window.
Witty completely missed the point and probably this.
Concerning the rule you seem to suggest: If Richard Witty agrees there must be something wrong "insular" Phil's post. There is one big problem you should consider in this contex. Richard is a very inattentive.
Friendship & politics is a very interesting topic.
There must be something "insular" about Phil's post.
Phil writes as if every Jew is caught up in "identity politics". This was his parents' generation of intellectuals, people that shared similar life-experiences, similar historical sympathies.
His and my parents were young adults in the 60's. My parents were born in 25 and 26. I don't know how old his mother and father are, but they are quite close in age, maybe a couple years younger.
If you didn't take it in before, my parents and Phil's parents were fairly close personal friends, through my aunt's family who were really one family with the Weiss's.
Much of Phil's comments are about how his parents' view of the world, their historical experience is anachronistic. He states that there is no longer anti-semitism, so any worldview that prominently includes any response to anti-semitism is no longer relevant.
But, Jewish intellectuals of the time wrote similar contrasting sentiments and about similar issues, the role and relative importance of Jewish identity relative to human and American.
I stated that for me HUMAN identity is far more important than American. I greatly appreciate America, but I identify as a human being, and a Jew.
Persecution by others for being an American citizen could motivate me to identify as an American, as my wife's uncle stated to me "Hitler made me a Jew. I was a scientist. Hitler made me a Jew."
But, my proudly native identity is as a human being.
If you didn't take it in before
I did take it in in more than ample quantity. I also remember auntie in both your and Phil' specific memories. But I am sure we will hear about it again and again.
concerning Phil: He states he did not experience antisemitism. And I think its fair he lets his fellow Americans know.
One very large obstacle to reasonable discussions of these things is sitting right behind terms like "Jew" and "American".
We know what they mean, until it's really crucial to use them precisely, then we don't know what they mean at all.
I've been viciously informed – in online comments threads about Iraq and the neocon putsch etc – that being Jewish is a religious description, and I've been viciously informed, in the same or similar context, that being Jewish is an ethnic description.
Canadians are Americans, as are people from Chile and Brazil and Argentina. And Mexico and everybody else south of the US border.
All Americans.
The words themselves become smokescreens, behind which the most villainous men of our times conduct their business in secret.
Tom Robbins said once that precision in language is vital, because it's the only real bridge we have to each other.
The inverse is just as true.
Keeping things vague allows the bad guys to go unnamed.
-
Also Phil, if you read this, was
Also Phil, if you read this, was "Martillo's Post on Zionists Manipulating Markets for 50 Years Is Antisemitic" link to tinyurl.com
– that thread – edited/moderated/censored by you?
I had a comment there that disappeared overnight.
It seems enough unlike you that I'm wondering.
If it was, and you didn't even bother with saying that you had and why, I'll be saddened.
If it wasn't, I'll be slightly more spooked than I am already.
The point about our personal histories is that we live in the same world, though now somewhat divided.
Phil is urban oriented. I've lived rurally most of my adult life.
I married a holocaust survivor, had Jewish children (one now a Lubavitch, his commitment occurring all in the course of this year posting here), shifted from a radical "career" to conventional.
Phil married a non-Jewish liberal (we still share quite a bit), didn't have children, shifted from conventional career to radical.
But, all in the same periphery of pallette of possible values and positions, and all directly emerging from the palette of common values that our parents shared.
Phil CANNOT possibly deviate from that value-system more than within a range.
And that is because the value system includes ethics, and particularly the stream of liberal Jewish and progressive ethics.
Phil nor I will never become Stalinist apparatchiks, nor libertarians, nor hold hateful affects of any of our political theses.
Maybe I'm wrong. Maybe Phil has determined that political conclusions trump moral ones now, and that the prospect of current forced dislocation of 450,000 Jews is acceptable, in punitive "justice" for the former forced dislocation of 450,000 Arabs 60 years ago.
For Roy Belmont –
I checked whether your comment was deleted. It is still there on the previous comment page.
As for the term Jew, it has three very distinct meanings:
A lapsed Jew like a lapsed Catholic is someone who comes from a religious background but is no longer religious himself. In 1973 (after the October War) I was debating a pro-Zionist position at Pingry. My opponent accused me of a sneaky and intellectually dishonest shifting of the definition of Jew whenever it suited my argument and explained the different meanings of the word Jew. He won the debate.
I discuss terminology in How to Talk about Zionism, a New Guide.
Your equation of Zionism with Naziism is sick.
There is a difference between the assertion of a refugee community to determine to have a homeland, and naziism with "final solution" (literal genocide) as a large component of its agenda.
A Jew is one that sincerely self-identifies as a Jew. While the sephardi have distinct customs and some conflicts with some ashkenazi, to describe the definition of being a Jew as arbitrary, is a malevolent falsehood.
There is no boilerplate to the means by which people self-identify. It OFTEN includes a predisposition of common culture (which Jews throughout the world have) and also an external oppression that firms the self-identification.
It IS nationalism.
If your comment is a critique of nationalism at all, that would be an interesting discussion.
And, in the case of all genuine refugees, homeless, in a full world, there is inevitably some "ethnic cleansing" or some process by which residents move with some coercion.
There is excess, but to keep a people homeless, is also excess.
The task is goal-oriented. What to accomplish, NOT what to resent?
Both the assertion that Jews are a "race", and the assertion that Jews cannot self-identify because they are not a "race", is FALSE, malevolently so.
Zen of Radical Rural Accountants, 2008
They're out there.
They're waiting to persecute us again.
Others self-identify
Why can't we?
Others have peace after conquest
Why can't we?
Others plunder
Why can't we?
Before, I never had to plunder. Hitler made me a plunderer.
Zen of the vast majority of Jewish persons:
1. We have a right to self-govern
2. We have a right to live in peace
The dialog within the Jewish nation:
1. We have to expand (plunder) in order to survive (Likud)
2. We don't have expand in order to survive. We can live and let live. (Meretz)
I am not sure that any poll of Jews from 1881 through 2008 has ever shown a majority wanted to self-govern, and in point of fact the majority of Jews live outside of the State of Israel.
It is just an admission of Witty's bigotry against non-Jews that he believes that Jews have the right to live in peace and security in a country stolen from non-Jews, on land for the most part stolen from non-Jews, and in homes often stolen from non-Jews.
Could anyone possibly incite hatred against Jews more efficiently than Richard Witty?
And BTW until Meretz takes the position that the State of Israel must repatriate the native population and return all movable and immovable property to its rightful owner, Meretz is not advocating any reasonable modus vivendi.
Will Mister Witty please inform us if the Gypsies constitute a nation in the same sense he views Jews as a nation?
Is there a "World Gypsydom" as akin to "World Jewry?"
Help us understand your constant abstract generalizations.
Your formula condemns all that do not have current land base to permanent refugee status.
You are one of those that hate immigrants (and their children, grandchildren ad infinitum), even as you are an immigrant.
The only humane approach is to assert, but to only assert for enough, not for greed.
That is what Meretz represents.
Thats what peace is, meeting multiple needs, rather than meeting single resentments.
Anon,
You don't like Gypsey's either?
If they desired to self-govern and on fixed home-land, they would deserve it.
Witty, I will ignore your personal insults. You don't know me, nor my family. Now, please answer my question instead of spinning your cheap money out of thin air.
BTW, Witty, you said I had a formula. How did you determine that?
Inquiring minds wish to know.
PS: My friend has a Gypsy girlfriend. She needs a place to settle down with her kids.
Can she have some of your property for this purpose? She cannot afford to pay you anything, but she only wants to assert her needs, to only assert for enough, not for greed.
Anon,
"Your formula" was in response to Martillo.
I did directly answer your rhetorical question.
If you were less snarky, it would clearer when you are asking "serious" questions.
Martillo, thanks for the clarification r.e. ethnicity/religiosity, but no, the comment I'm talking about isn't there, or anywhere, except in my text archives here at home. It was on this thread:
link to tinyurl.com
/>
Was there after I wrote it, though I did notice there was some weird fluctuation in comment order, before and after I read the thread and then commented.
When I went back the next day it was gone, as was at least one other. Both were edgy, somewhat dangerous given the climate.
Somebody didn't like them, I'm just wondering who it was.
They're out there.
They're waiting to persecute us again.
Others self-identify
Why can't we?
Others have peace after conquest
Why can't we?
Others plunder
Why can't we?
Before, I never had to plunder. Weimar and the events that led up to it made me a plunderer.