Saturday, March 18, 2017

Family feuds …

… Norman Podhoretz Still Picks Fights and Drops Names - The New York Times. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

“Every morning,” he wrote in the 1967 memoir “Making It,” “a stock-market report on reputation comes out in New York. It is invisible, but those who have eyes to see can read it. Did so-and-so have dinner at Jacqueline Kennedy’s apartment last night? Up five points. Was so-and-so not invited by the Lowells to meet the latest visiting Russian poet? Down one-eighth. Did so-and-so’s book get nominated for the National Book Award? Up two and five-eighths. Did Partisan Review neglect to ask so-and-so to participate in a symposium? Down two.”
Small world. In more ways than one.

2 comments:

  1. I was a pre-adolescent barbarian in the forests of Ohio when the book came out, but it seems to me that I have since read that Esquire's review had the title "Norman Podhoretz's Dirty Little Secret: It Isn't Very Dirty, But It Sure Is Little".

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  2. You know, I seem to remember that also, and by that time I was already a journeyman scrivener.

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