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jflflivs and reviews The New York intellectuals, then and now by Joseph Cohen The story of that remarkable “herd of independent minds,” the famed group of writers and thinkers known as the New York Intellec tuals (with a capital I) has been told, in all of its ramifications, diversities and complexities by Alexander Bloom in his compel ling. highly readable social history "Prodigal Son: The New York In tellectuals and Their World” (Ox ford University Press, $24.95). A large cast of characters, Bloom introduces them in sequence, de scribing the immigrant socialist Jewish milieu from which they came. Among those of the first generation were Philip Rahv (died 1973). William Phillips (the family name was Litvinsky), Sidney Hook, Mary McCarthy (no Brownsville immigrant daughter, she), Lionel Trilling (one of the two great Amer ican iiterary critics of our time, died 1975), his wife, Diana (nee Rubin), Meyer Schapiro, Clement Greenberg, Harold Rosenberg (died 1978), Dwight Macdonald (died 1982) and Elliot Cohen (curiously from Mobile, Ala., a Yale gradu ate, he was the brilliant first editor of Commentary, died by his own hand in 1959). The second generation consisted of Irving Howe, Irving Kristol, Daniel Bell, Delmore Schwartz (died 1956), Leslie Fiedler, Sey mour Martin Lipset, Nathan Glazer, Alfred Kazin, Robert Warshow (died 1955), Melvin Laskv. Isaac Rosenfeld (died 1956) and Saul Bellow. A third generation includes Lionel Trilling’s student, Norman Podhoretz, his wife. Midge Decter, and Steven Marcus. lo follow the progress of the New York Intellectuals in polictics and literature is to retrace Ameri can history from the 1930s to the present. Though they began as Marxists, they ran the gamut in their political persuasions, moving from a pro-Stalinist position to an anti-Stalinist one, commenting on Roosevelt’s New Deal policies, playing footsie for a time with I rotsky, endorsing proletarian lit erature, then turning from it to modernism, essaying the roles of Eliot, Pound, Kafka and Joyce, welding connections between poli tics and literature, arguing that the goals of the political polemicist and the literary critic were parallel •n shaping the thinking of both the masses and the elite. Through the Partisan Review, and, subsequent ly, Commentary, Dissent—one can’t help being reminded of Woody Allen’s waggish observation that it those two journals merged they could call the successor “Dysen tery”— and the New York Review °i Books, they did indeed mold public opinion to the extent that by the 1950s the pages of the New York Times, the Washington Post and other prestigious papers and lournals were open to them Rarely in agreement and fre quently at war with one another, they had something cogent to say about every important issue and event of our times, the Second World War, the Cold War, the McCarthy investigations, Jewish identity and alienation, the Jewish literary renaissance, making it in America, postwar liberalism, the civil disorders of the 1960s and the counterculture, Allen Ginsberg and the Beats, the “New Left," Hannah Arendt’s theories of totalitarian ism, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg and the Alger Hiss Case, and the emergence of neo-conservatism w ith its swing in recent years to the Reagan right, in this latter con text, Bloom explores at length the emergence of Norman Podhoretz as the controversial King of the Mountain, recalling the dismay with which his friends and associates tried to dissuade him from publish ing “Making It” (1968), the first volume of his autobiography which announced with consummate bad taste his capitulation to fame and success in America. To many read ers, it appeared to be a sellout of principle. In retropsective, “Making It” merely confirms that Podhoretz was headed toward the right all along. That’s OK, but the fact that he has moved Commentary com pletely into his own corner has in censed so many contemporary A- merican intellectuals they have now established a new liberal journal, entitled Tikkun, to replace the now lost formally broad-visioned re ceptivity of Commentary. Bloom's “Prodigal Sons” pays attention to the closely intertwined personal lives of its subjects, relat ing them to their professional activities. The cast of characters is always alive, as people as well as intellectual demigods. This makes a study that is already engaging, erudite without being pedantic, and symphonically rich, even more satisfying and fulfilling. You’re just the type. Donate Blood. + American Red Cross © The American National Red Cross 1981 THIS NEW YEAR, SHOFAR IS PROUD TO REVEAL ITS MOST IMPORTANT INGREDIENT Rabbi Leon Katz Rabbi Nathan Zuber Rabbi Harry Neiman Our most important ingredient is no secret. It’s the people who make SHOFAR Kosher Foods everything they are. And that’s 100% kosher. . . , . ^ . Because our board of Kashruth supervisors is made up of some of the stnctest, most acting Rabbis, anywhere. Their rigorous super- sion is our assurance and yours, that only the very jest, highest quality kosher meats are used in our 1-beef hot dogs, salami, bologna, delicatessen... /erything that shows the SHOFAR name. ' So while others might keep their mgredi- us a secret, we re proud of our most important le. Because it's the one that says we’re kosher. AH om all tl lappy, Healthy and Kosher New Year he people at SHOFAR Kosher Foods. Rev. Nathan Fetman Howard Levine, Mashgiach Rabbi Baruch Neuman PAGE 25 THE SOUTHERN ISRAELITE September 19, 1986