Gutter Rousseauists

...Although clandestine publishing of this kind always had existed in France, in the years before the RevoJournalists are suckers for any politician who shows the least bit of interest in intellectual matters...

...The Washington politician now lives in a glass house and so is engaged in an unequal battle with the journalist...

...Yet it is instructive to note that the men of letters who most influenced French public opinion during the last days of the Old Regime were not in the distinguished mold of Voltaire, Diderot, or D'Alembert...

...Essayists, by which I mean writers of nonfiction (academic sociologists and political scientists, magazine journalists, writers for the daily press), serve her argument much better...

...Writers of nonfiction-let us call them men of letters-frequently have been half in love with revolutionary change...

...Whereas in France men of letters generally see themselves as adversaries to those in power, their English counterparts typically have regarded themselves as advisers, exploring possibilities for reform...

...As men of letters, they tend to hold in highest esteem those who write books-especially academics who shuttle between major universities and Washington- the implication being that if such men were governing, the United States would be in better shape...

...Meanwhile, the sunshine laws passed in the mid-seventies have made it difficult for congressmen to deliberate in secret-to hide from the press long enough to think about an issue before making statements about it...

...left-leaning writer, Sartre and Brecht only played at being Communists...

...Rarely do writers speak of the poor deluded fools in their own midst-the thousands of aspiring writers who, ambitious of fame if not power, come "bright as dimes" to countless creative-writing classes pandering to their delusion...

...He has litle room to maneuver and a tremendous amount in which t® slip up...

...Good men still run for office...

...The problem is not that America's adversary journalists are revolutionary or anti-American...

...It was the hacks of the Old Regime, not the stars of the Enlightenment, who were instrumental in undermining support for the Old Regime...

...After all, the Writing Class comprises a wide variety of people, from Marxist academics to apolitical novelists and poets...

...If he talks too little to the press, he appears evasive or vapid...

...Of course, not all the French have been advocates of radical change (even Voltaire was no out-and-out revolutionary), but Sartre-the Sartre who continually excoriated the bourgeoisie-is a more typical French man of letters than, say, Raymond Aron, who seems closer to the British tradition...

...revolutions were good for others, but they didn't want to subject themselves to revolutionary discipline...

...Although the American public likes to think the worst of those it elects to office, it has not lost faith in representative government...

...Of the major English novelists and poets of the last 200 years, we cannot find a single revolutionary among them...

...While there are surely too many tales of government corruption and incompetence, some of these do point to real abuses of power...

...I realize such a generalization is risky...

...Theodore Draper has rightly pointed out that Henry Kissinger maintains his high standing with the press primarily because he is regarded as a distinguished man of letters...

...But they also generally lack the influence of adversary journalists, periodical writers, book reviewers, and essayists...

...Most French men of letters still drink at the fountain of the French Revolution...

...Stephen Miller GUTTER ROUSSEAUISTS Political obsessions of the Writing Class...

...It was their pamphlets, libels, and chron-iques scandaleuses that created the image of an ancien rigime rotten to the core, bringing about "a political mythology that made many Frenchmen feel they were slaves- even though the Bastille was almost empty by 1789...

...Although the arts may bring more grace, joy, and fulfillment to American life, their triumph- their vast expansion-may also result in vast numbers of dissatisfied American artists and writers falling, as Darnton says of the literary underground of the Old Regime, "easy prey to the psychology of failure-a vicious combination of hatred of the system and hatred of the self...

...Insofar as foreign governments depend on the American press for an understanding of American politics, such stories abet a crisis of confidence-leading even close allies to wonder whether the United States is fit to exercise world leadership...

...At a recent conference on "Our Country and Our Culture,"* Joseph Epstein stated that "the contemporary literary scene is rife with writers whose chief stock in the trade of ideas is a crude anti-Americanism...

...To put it another way, nonfiction writers often are strong advocates of changing society, looking to the future to usher in a world more attractive, to borrow a phrase from Irving Howe...

...It is unlikely that the vast expansion of the arts in the United States will lead more Americans to appreciate, in George Will's words, "the dignity of the political vocation and the grandeur of its responsibilities...

...Journalists are suckers for any politician who shows the least bit of interest in intellectual matters...

...According to some observers, anti-Americanism has been especially evident in the literary world...

...French men of letters, however, have been more disposed to welcome revolutionary change than their English counterparts, perhaps because the French Revolution looms so large in their minds...

...Rather, it is their membership in what might be termed the Writing Class, where condescension toward-if not contempt for-the politician is the norm...

...In Writers and Revolution: The Fatal Lure of Action (1975), Renee Winegarten goes further, arguing that writers have been seduced by the example of the French Revolution...

...While it is true that many novelists have been fascinated by the revolutionary character, fascination does not mean approval: those revolutionaries who inhabit the pages of Conrad, Dostoevsky, and Turgenev are for the most part distasteful, if not loathsome...

...These would-be poets, essayists, and novelists dream of being praised for their work, but most end up unknown if not dishevelled...

...Even among Continental writers, the revolutionary pickings are slim: Sartre, Brecht, and Aragon on the Left...

...Although the revolution was not caused by men of letters, their political tracts played an important part in turning public opinion against the monarchy...

...Some contemporary journalists prefer to practice what Irving Kristol calls advisory journalism- spelling out the difficult policy choices politicians face rather than trying to unmask politicians-but professional ambition and rewards usually push journalists in the direction of adversary journalism...

...Even among recent novelists or poets few have preached revolution-the major exceptions being the Chilean Pablo Neruda and Gabriel Garcia Marquez...

...Where Winegarten goes astray is to combine novelists, poets, and dramatists with essayists...

...For one thing, the growth of the federal government and of modern technology has made Washington the center of attention...

...After the downfall of the Old Regime, it no doubt dawned on many French writers that they had worked wonders, and they began to regard themselves as a major force in French politics...

...The future will bring either more of the same-human nature being incapable of change-or worse...

...Journalists, it must be kept in mind, are men of letters...

...In recent years, as if to make amends for American philistin-ism, many leading American businessmen have turned to praising the arts effusively...

...Like Voltaire who spoke of the need to ecraser Vinfame, they continue to attack all that smacks of prejudice and superstition in the hope of remaking society...

...Is it because they are thought to be more cultured, better educated...

...Most ended up on Grub Street, writing pornography, spying for the police, and composing pamphlets that denounced a society that had humiliated and corrupted them...

...Revolution," she says, "has fascinated and haunted creative writers-poets, novelists, dramatists, essayists-for more than two hundred years.'' Winegarten's charge is puzzling...

...a conformist, a slave to public opinion, someone who uses words to hide rather than to clarify- a master of dissimulation and obfus-cation...

...The work of these "gutter Rousseauists," as Darnton calls them, was crude, inaccurate, and simplistic, but its effect was deadly...

...Or so it seemed to thousands of young Frenchmen...

...Contemporary American practitioners of what we call adversary journalism are in many respects descendants of this French literary underground...

...According to our adversary journalists, each of the last five American Presidents has been incompetent: Johnson a megalomaniac, Nixon erratic and vindictive, Ford stupid, Carter obsessed with detail, and Reagan lazy and confused...

...lution the gutters simply overflowed...

...Winegarten herself could affix the label "revolutionary" to a mere handful of contemporary writers...

...The beggars have changed places," wrote Yeats, "but the lash goes on...

...These developments have put politicians on the defensive...

...But whatever their politics, almost all look down on the politician...

...In a lecture on "Poets and Politicians," Stanley Kunitz said that poets "simply distrust anybody who makes a vocation out of the pursuit of power...

...Few major nineteenth- and twentieth-century writers have been revolutionaries, or even sympathetic to revolution...

...Robert Lowell, in "July in Washington," pointed to something else: The elect, the elected . . . they come here bright as dimes, and die dishevelled and soft...

...O Lord," Augustine said, "make me chaste, but not yet...

...Celine (and Ezra Pound) on the Right...

...The chairman of the board of Philip Morris, for example, quoted approvingly an art historian's remark that "perhaps we can look to the arts...

...Foreign leaders, by contrast, are treated with much greater respect...

...Many aspire to write something more ambitious than daily news stories- novels or works of history or analyses of contemporary politics...

...And the knowledge that the press is out to get them keeps many a politician honest...

...The Triumph of the Arts, these critics Stephen Miller is executive assistant to the Board of Radio Free Europe and author of Special Interest Groups in American Politics, to be published this month by Transaction Books...

...After all, American journalists have been practicing adversary journalism since colonial times, but democracy has survived...

...They are haunted by loss, decay...

...Finally, the growth of the federal government has left the Washington politician overwhelmed by the many issues he is expected to know something about...

...to assure us of a national life that has more joy, more human fulfillment, and more ordered grace.'' So eager are men of affairs- politicians, lawyers, businessmen, bankers-to appear untainted by Babbittry that praising the arts has become commonplace, and even good politics...

...One might say, so what...

...If adversary journalism does have its uses, then why is it such a problem today...

...The politician thus is more in danger of appearing the fool than the knave...

...What these inside scoops on the incompetence of our Washington politicians serve to do is to sow dissatisfaction with representative government, making it more likely for Americans to prefer direct democracy...

...True, contemporary journalists don't lie, or at least they are usually more careful with their evidence...

...The United States, we are often told, is a predominantly commercial nation whose citizens are so preoccupied with getting on in the world-so driven by materialism and consumerism-that they neglect high culture, scorning art, music, and literature as unmanly...

...Novelists and poets, on the other hand, usually regard the future with suspicion...

...If he says too much, he is in danger of cutting off all possibility of compromise on an issue-in danger of contradicting former statements, in danger of appearing confused, having talked at length about an issue he may not know enough about...

...Like many a Proceedings of the conference are now available from The Orwell Press, 211 East 51st St., New York, NY 10022 ($3.95...

...For the first time in history, it was possible to be a writer without being independently wealthy or subservient to a patron...

...Rather, as Robert Darnton points out in The Literary Underground of the Old Regime, t they were the scribes of Grub Street...

...If we include TV journalism, more journalists than ever are covering Washington politics, and national politicians are in the public eye as never before...

...How many youths," Darnton says, "must have dreamt of joining the initiates, of lecturing monarchs, rescuing outraged innocence, and ruling the republic of letters from the Aca-demie Franchise or a chateau like Ferney...

...Of course the best artists-especially the best novelists and poets- are not condescending to politicians, and these writers often puncture the complacency of the arts world...

...Kunitz was implying that the politician is the opposite of the poet...

...Few had the talent and shrewdness to pursue respectable careers...

...suggest, has often meant the triumph of second-rate art that is shoddy, mindless, and -even worse - infected by anti-Americanism...

...Yet there are some sour voices among the chorus...

...These observers complain about the vulgarization and trivialization of the arts-the vulgarity of blockbuster art exhibitions, the triviality inherent in the awarding of grants to popular culture enthusiasts...

...What both groups have in common is a distrust of those in power and a desire to unmask them- to find the "inside story" that will reveal those in power as corrupt, dishonest, or-more commonly nowadays-quarrelsome, vacillating, confused, incompetent, lazy, even stupid...