Matusow: Boomerang Boy
Clement, Travers
III. Mafusow: Boomerang Boy Travers Clement But cruel are the times, when we are traitors And do not know ourselves, when we hold rumour From what we fear, yet know not what we fear, But...
...District Court of New York...
...What he mistakes as identity is his name in headlines or on the cover of a book...
...This does not add up to any value judgment...
...In New York: Cameron & Kahn...
...Whiskey and guests were gone...
...It is impossible to overlook the old amalgam trick...
...That New Conservative Mind at Work "I think that the error of judgment which led Wyndham Lewis to hope, in 1931, that some good might come out of Adolf Hitler's projects (an error which he quickly recognized and acknowledged the following year) was in considerable part a product of Lewis' liberal optimism and liberal individualism, impatient at the cant and the muddling of those years...
...Or, as an obscene footnote on obscene times, I give you the depressing picture of the President of Queens College mounting the stairs to Matusow's cold-water Greenwich Village flat and the subsequent lunch at the hamburger joint around the corner...
...What I am trying to point up here is the present balance (or rather lack of it) between the two forces in the U.S...
...Then the liars and swearers are fools, for there are liars and swearers enow to beat the honest men, and hang them up...
...Joe was in his undershirt...
...My self-esteem climbed to new heights...
...And must they all be hanged that swear and lie...
...In his dreams he is always seeking that hero's welcome ("I fully expected that hero's welcome that those who had gone before me had received: Herbert Philbrick, Elizabeth Bentley, Whittaker Chambers...
...Matusow has made it clear that he is not personally concerned with whose tool he may be at any given moment...
...which makes the Government's present internal struggle against Communism so ludicrous that it is little wonder that what is referred to as the Free World hesitates to accept U.S...
...Every one...
...Not, let us hope, with all the results that the publishers, sponsors, and perhaps even author of the book anticipate, but we will come to that later...
...I know of nothing else in print which illustrates so graphically the kind of menagerie that is turned loose when society starts persecuting people for what it supposes they think rather than prosecuting them for what they do...
...At the outset it is only fair to give the book its due...
...I wanted identity," he cries at the very opening of his book after informing us that the Bronx didn't cheer the week Matusow was born...
...Here I was, a professional witnessinformer, being sought out by the distinguished president of a college...
...They might have saved themselves the trouble, however, of trying, by such labored implication, to create the impression that there probably never was such a thing as a Communist in the U.S., that Communist infiltration of other (even exceedingly respectable) organizations was a pipe dream, that CP domination of certain labor unions was never a problem, etc...
...The real significance of Matusow's confessions lies in the fact that as a member of the subversive Communist Party his opportunities for subversion seemed circumscribed, to say the least...
...No argument previously advanced for repeal of the Sniith Act (or the equally nefarious Humphrey "Communist Control" Act) is quite so eloquent, it seems to me, as that which emerges from Matusow's story of how the problem of linking Alexander Trachtenberg with Vishinsky's book was solved—the account beginning with that weird conference with Roy Cohn in a crowded, overheated sedan parked with the engine running on East River Drive and ending in the U.S...
...no man with so small a concern for debt could really care much about cash...
...I am not suggesting that the totalitarians of the "right" are any more subversive than those of the "left...
...Why, one that swears and lies...
...It is not difficult to understand what drove Matusow: his every ism has been an affectation born of a morbid love of admiration and the vision of what everyone would say as he walked his garish way...
...Who must hang them...
...255 pp...
...As a friend who glanced over my copy of the book remarked, in the flashbulb-lighted world of Harvey Matusow there is no future and no past...
...surely this is a combina tion which has recurred frequently enough in history with consequences that by now should have taught us something...
...Paper $1.25...
...about need a bit of stiffening...
...But once linked up with the FBI, the Department of Justice, the various House and Senate investigating committees, Counterattack, police departments, boards of education, Legion groups, and state anti-subversive bodies from New York to Texas, his chances for subversion, in the true sense of the word, seemed limited only by plane schedules...
...Hell for him is the condition of going unnoticed...
...some measure, perhaps, this generally Cloth $3...
...Every one that does so is a traitor, and must be hanged...
...In whatever manner he may have reformed, his peculiar bent (one might describe it as a negative sort of gen ius) for indiscrimination and irresponsibility remains unaffected...
...From an appreciative essay on Wyndham Lewis in the Yale Review, Summer 1955, by Russell Kirk, an intellectual leader of the NewConservatism...
...He kept himself busy as a bee circulating petitions for the defense of Eugene Dennis and soliciting subs for the Sunday Worker...
...MACBETH, IV, 2. Unless man is to seedy book* written by a rather drop to all fours, backbones round * FALSE WITNESS, by Harvey Matusow...
...In an excellent article in The Progressive (April 1955), Murray Kempton points out: But our interior motives are seldom that simple to ourselves, and Harry Matusow seems to have dreamed of glory more than money, which never seemed really important to him, unless you count the ten, twenty, and hundred-dollar bills for which he scrabbles to buy himself a new suit or get himself through the next two weeks...
...As I was about to say good night, Joe saw me to the door and handed me a hundred-dollar bill...
...It is like setting fire to one's house to toast marshmallows...
...The party broke up about 4 A.M...
...Joe had just drained his last drop of whiskey from his glass...
...He hoisted his undershirt and proudly displayed a scar which almost divided him in two...
...It is this, no doubt, that gives particular vividness to some of its incidental passages...
...But then we shouldn't ask too much of harassed authors and publishers...
...which will put the name "Matusow," spelled correctly at long last, in neon lights ten stories high...
...Perhaps here from the ranks of the anonymous mass is emerging the trigger-happy ideal man geared for survival in an atomic age...
...He feels himself delivered fresh every morning like the bottle of pasteurized, homogenized milk at the doorstep...
...In all the justifiable attention given the Smith Act, there is not the slightest hint, of course, that the Communists, as the great patriots of that day, supported it at the time of its passage, headed the cheering section when it was used to jail the Minneapolis Trotskyists, and suggested it be used against the Socialists for opposing entry into the war...
...WHATEVER MATUSOW'S iNTENTiONS in writing the book, the circumstances surrounding its publication seem to clear up a few questions...
...Mafusow: Boomerang Boy Travers Clement But cruel are the times, when we are traitors And do not know ourselves, when we hold rumour From what we fear, yet know not what we fear, But float upon a wild and violent sea Each way and move...
...I suggested we get some more...
...Given the general climate of these times, laws which invite heresy-hunting, an eager professional witness, a zealous prosecutor on the make...
...It seized on a remark of his to the effect that as a young man he would do anything for a fast buck...
...He said: "Well, you can put it this way—yes...
...But does he...
...There is no way of telling how many lies and half-truths (a term of which Matusow is particularly fond, for the reason, one suspects, that it may enable him to "beat the rap" on perjury charges) are bound up in these incidents...
...Any discerning reader will dismiss this aspect of the book for the hog-wash it is...
...Together with three-quarters of the nation, I suppose, I watched Joe McCarthy for hours during the ArmyMcCarthy hearings, but never saw him so clearly as on this briefly described Wisconsin Walpurgis Night: When I arrived it was after midnight and he [McCarthy] was raking in the money in a fast game of sheepshead, a card game popular in Wisconsin...
...Will he ever discover what identity is...
...leadership against Communism abroad where the menace is real indeed...
...I flipped him two bits...
...Why, the honest men...
...Because Matusow Iied, the implication, hammered at until the senses reel, is that every one who ever took the stand and testified on the subject did likewise...
...He travels fast, furious and light, with no excess baggage...
...With that he pulled a $20 bill out of his pocket and sent me on my way...
...It would be interesting to know just how heavy-handed Kahn, Cameron and Associates had to be in shaping these memoirs to their liking...
...Go buy yourself a new suit, but, you son of a bitch," he swore, "if you tell anybody I gave it to you, I'll . In dealing with the incidents of this book, however, whether merely of the hilarious variety or of the sort that makes men bleed, I am well aware that the reviewer opens himself to the charge of treating as fact the word of a self-confessed and consummate liar...
...The fact that much of this book has been in the headlines and that it is written in the style and with the values behind those headlines, simply with a reverse twist, renders long sections of it stale and dull...
...In one important respect, however, the early publicity surrounding Matusow and his book did him an injustice...
...And be all traitors that do so...
...What is a traitor...
...seedy, no longer quite-so-young, young man may supply it...
...But the point to be made here is that whether or not these things happened as Matusow relates them, they do not strike one as being in the least incredible...
...Yet there is a touch of artistry too...
...I'll show you my scar for a quarter," he offered, referring to the incision made during his operation...
...Even though the courts take Matusow seriously enough to grant Trachtenberg and one of his co-defendants a new trial, no jury will convict Cohn on the unsupported word of a selfconfessed liar whose professed reformation may be simply the new "gimmick" to keep his name in the headlines...
Vol. 2 • July 1955 • No. 3
