The latest Commentary has a great piece by Joseph Epstein about a guy I'd never heard of, Isaac Rosenfeld, a critic/writer in the New York Intellectual set who was supposed to be Saul Bellow's peer as a talent and who died young, at 38, in 1956, with indifferent literary leavins. (One fault in the longish piece is that Epstein doesn't tell how Rosenfeld died, or I didn't see it anyway; Epstein, enlighten me.) The headline is "Isaac, with Love and Squalor," which is very nice.
The unconscious theme of the piece is that Bellow's rivalry with Rosenfeld did Rosenfeld in. This is tragic. Rosenfeld went around comparing himself to Bellow all the time, and imagining that Bellow envied his talent, and hoping, as Bellow saw transparently, that Bellow would fall on his face.
The rivalry may be why Bellow uttered (to Philip Roth) a great wisdom about New York writers, that he avoided the New York literary scene because "I never won any of my struggles there, and I never responded with full human warmth to anything that happened there," a wisdom anticipated by Hemingway's devastating line in Green Hills of Africa that New York writers are "angleworms in a bottle," starved, competitive, malformed.
Related to this wisdom is the best line in the Epstein piece, from A.J. Liebling, the New Yorker food/boxing/war correspondent. (The piece is not online, so I'm quoting from my subscription copy.) Liebling's wife Jean Stafford suggested that they go to a party of the New York Intellectuals and he said, "I don't want to go. There'll be sheenies who are meanies." Not that all the NY Ints were Jewish, Epstein says, but most were.
There are a few reasons this is the best line in the piece. One reason is that Commentary knows it, and doesn't try to promptly spank Liebling with anti-Semitism charges, the way that Dershowitz does in Chutzpah, where he derides everyone from Mark Twain to Hemingway for being "diseased" by anti-Semitism.
And if you don't spank Liebling, you can hear the wisdom in it, which echoes Bellow's wisdom. That wisdom is that in Jewish urban culture there is a lot of open rivalry that can be debilitating; whereas in Liebling's gentlemanly WASP culture that sort of competition is looked down upon. I'm not saying that WASP culture is better, hon; it has its points, and so does mine, Jewish culture. But I reflect that Israel is hurt by this competitive culture. A Jewish academic friend, a big deal at a state university, who went over to Israel on academic business some years ago told me that he found the academic culture there dispiriting. Every lunch or every dinner, he first had to hear all about who he had had lunch with the day before, and what a schmuck that person was, and then who he was having lunch with the next day, and what a schmuck they were, etc etc. Everyone was gossiping to everyone else, and putting the knife in.
I say this is one of the great things about the Diaspora, that this sort of brilliant viciousness is tempered by the presence of the Other. Which leaves two residual issues: For all the "genius" Jews there, Israel has not produced a writer anywhere on the scale of the Jewish greats here, and there's a reason for that. And 2, I wonder whether the legendary New York Intellectual scene wasn't a little hyped, and the smart ones escaped, Roth and Bellow, while Rosenfeld succumbed.
Related posts:
{ 20 comments }
180 limits 2008 long thus browser
increasing prepared cupcake doi likely
Abbott Joseph Liebling (1904-1963) was Jewish. Whatever circles he moved in at various times he never attempted to disguise or deny this. Andrew Patner — Chicago
Phil, did you miss this? 11th Commandment: The Key Difference Between Israelis and Americans http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/818353.html Thou shalt not be a freier http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/818353.html
Oops. Link for 11th Commandment: The Key Difference Between Israelis and Americans is: http://tpmcafe.talkingpointsmemo.com/2009/07/02/i...
More on the Israeli national character: snip– Israelis will keep up their insufferable and necessary barrage of self-assertion. And yet we still dream of peace and the day when I am standing in line at an Israeli cash register and an Israeli shopper sees a chance to butt in front of me, and — miracle of miracles — she will not try to take it. http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/17/opinion/17brook... I experienced the same thing in Chicago for years while living in certain areas with lots of Jewish people.
Antisemites hate Jews for the most inane reasons.
Anti-jews, you mean, since jews aren't actually semites. And, no, no, we don't hate them for inane reasons at all, unless you call hating the Israeli Mossad for their role in 911 inane, or the jew banksters for their role in the global economic breakdown etc. Our reasons for hating jews are far from inane. Rather, it is you, Ismail, who is inane (and insane). 911=USrael
Here we go, another ignorant asswipe thinking the word "antisemitism" has anything to do with semites. Babette, get an education. Phil, how many idiot antisemites post here? Aside from babette, strahl, LI, Ed?
Ismail's type is well known in Postville, IA–revealing clash of cultures there as depicted in that book on the locals versus the koshers from NY. Gives new meaning to the word "inane."
Don't leave out the king of Jew haters, Martillo.
For those who read/or commented on this blog a day or so ago under Phil's latest article on the Israel spy case, especially Franklin's talk regarding the US intelligence agents' use of the term "Izzies," here's a an interview with a former agent that covers his inside view of where things are going and why, including many issues addressed on this blog over the last months: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=45526 Includes what Obama is dealing with, Ross's value to Obama and to Israel, what Obama needs to do, the nature of Hamas (Witty note the agent's definition), Hezbullah, and their strengths, considerations regarding Iran's power, the blunt power of the big US news guys that keeps the tiny mutt wagging the Big dogs tail where and when it wants, etc
That was a superb interview. Thanks for the link, Citizen.
Yeah, that was a fascinating article, Citizen, except that Baer is dead wrong about fibre-optics. To cope with this deluge and also to share findings with its allies, the NSA applies advanced technology aggressively. An intercept network run by the agency and its counterparts in Canada, the UK, Australia, and New Zealand reportedly snares cellular, fiber-optic, satellite, and microwave traffic from intercept stations all over the world [see photo]. Some details about technology used with the network, known in the 1990s by the code name Echelon, came to light in books and press accounts in the mid-1990s. http://ieeexplore.ieee.org/ielx5/6/21038/975021/9...
Some do. There are people who project everything they fear onto an all-powerful Jewish cabal. Stormfront and VNN are full of this kind of "chimeric anti-semite." Many so-called anti-semites, though, are quite rational and don't hate Jews. They hate (or simply oppose) the agenda and behaviour of self-identified Jewish groups and individuals. Any group with political and media power is going to have opponents. It's better to understand them then simply resort to name-calling.
You prefer no one notice the eager group who hate everyone not-the-same-as-them. Among them you, thedhimmi, wear a crown. You model the behavior of bigotry to anyone coming to this site; the constant repetition of it is like a training program in that 'fine art'. I have great admiration for those with the discipline not to mirror your behavior; the provocation is powerful. The power of Israel – hate.
As if anyone cares what Fedup admires.
Or that good dual citizen Doctor Baruch Goldstein
Thanks, MRW, I was wondering about whether fibre-optical transmission was as immune as he says; in his book he makes the same claim for Iran's fibre-optical system.
The article you gave us does not list the source of the claim fibre-optical transmissions are being intercepted. That's a problem itself. However, even if they are, here's an article that says any such interceptions are very quickly detected, much more so apparently then other forms of communications, hence by implied deduction, interceptions may bring little useful fruit: http://books.google.com/books?id=B0Lwc6ZEQhcC&...
Comments on this entry are closed.