[lbo-talk] Re: Podhoretz on Ginsberg

[Chuck Grimes]

.... but in that book he talks about people more interesting than
himself, so that counterbalances his stupifying dullness and unlike
his other work I read it.  Although it's only interesting insofar as
relating what actually happened, not his lame-o attempts to try to
figure out what made these people tick.  For example, Podhoretz
accuses Ginsberg of being a heterosexual who pretended to be a
homosexual just to seem more bohemian, or radical, or to sell more
books or something.  Lance Murdock

-------------

Absolutely. Podhoretz is completely transparent, in a way that he
probably can't see which only makes it all the more fascinating. His
strange inability to grasp Ginsberg's rebellion doesn't illuminant
Ginsberg, but Podhoretz. In other words it shines a light on the inner
workings of the very sensibility that constructed that moral rigidity
with all its insecurity, intolerance, and stupifying density.

Another way I am looking at it is by considering the `lame-o' attempts
as an explanation not of its object, but its subject. 

I agree with Dennis Perrin's `tin ear' in the sense that Podhoretz
has an amazing inability to read--the very attribute he makes claim to
as an editor. And this quality in literary work appears to be
intimately related to his blindness to the implications and
consequences of his political positions.

Some pages after the Ginsberg section he introduces the next chapter
on Trilling with a quote from Gide. What Podhoretz didn't realize is
that Gide was mocking the French public and the literary establishment
with his comment that Victor Hugo was considered the greatest French
poet. Podhoretz thought Gide was just reluctant to admit the vastly
popular Hugo deserved his reputation. In fact, Gide thought he didn't.

It's a subtle point, but in making this mistake, Podhoretz was mocking
himself by accident---shooting his own sensibility and literary
judgment in the foot so to speak.

A much more interesting problem is why Gide thought Hugo was
terrible. It was question of craft. Gide specialized in extremely
tight plots, very closely arranged to open the qualities of the
characters who were living out the consequences of their
sensibilities. Hugo on the hand runs amok in plot complications that
take whole sections to unwind and lead nowhere, while contributing
nothing to the over all development. In Gide's mind, that was lousy
craftsmanship. 

Thinking on that now, I have to wonder if Podhoretz would have been
able to see Gide's objections, or if he ever read enough of either to
see the problem in the first place.

Chuck Grimes