Last Call: Anti-Communist, Anti-Neocon
Shattan, Joseph
"Last Call: Anti-Communist, Anti-Neocon" by Joseph Shattan Anti-Communist, Anti-Neocon ALTHOUGH DIANA TRILLING, who died on October 23 at the age of 91, was best known as the wife of the great...
...Matters did not appreciably improve after Mrs...
...This seemed to sadden her...
...Trilling, who informed me that Little, Brown refused to publish a collection of her essays, one of which was critical of Scoundrel Time...
...Trilling promptly replied: I'm delighted to have your letter...
...What a career you have gone on to...
...Fiercely anti-Communist but otherwise politically liberal, she published two collections of her literary reviews, edited two volumes on D.H...
...After reviewing—or rather, furiously denouncing—Lillian Hell-man's Scoundrel Time I received a letter from Mrs...
...But my worst faux pas of the afternoon came when I told her that, prior to reviewing Scoundrel Time, I'd barely heard of Lillian Hellman, and had no knowledge of her Stalinist past until I did some research for my review...
...Nonetheless, Mrs...
...Oh, I'm quite certain he read it," she replied, somewhat curtly...
...Mrs...
...Clever lady, that Mrs...
...Lawrence, wrote an account of the Jean Harris trial at the age of 76, and in 1993, her vision badly impaired, dictated a memoir of her life with Lionel, The Beginning of the Journey...
...Indeed, I wish I had written it myself...
...But no and again no, I'm not going to talk politics with you except to congratulate you on your personal success in your career of political folly...
...I wish I had had it the moment it came from your pen...
...Trilling was a gracious hostess...
...Still, Mrs...
...It was the most enthusiastic piece of fan mail I have ever gotten...
...This was awfully flattering, and since her letter invited me to tea next time I was in New York, I decided to look her up...
...I replied that my dissertation dealt with Soviet arms transfers to the Third World, and that my favorite novel was Mario Puzo's The Godfather...
...Trilling had completed A Visit to Camelot, an account of the evening she and Lionel spent with the Kennedys...
...I mean, don't presidents have speechwriters who tell them to say things like that...
...Trilling told me that when she and her late husband (Lionel Trilling died in 1975) visited the Kennedy White House, JFK informed them that he had read, and much enjoyed, Lionel's The Liberal Imagination...
...Trilling, all I get is an image of Julia Child...
...Trilling...
...I told Mrs...
...LAST CALL by Joseph Shattan ,r1 ,,,p-tnimpi?..t.„, III yAnti-Communist, Anti-Neocon ALTHOUGH DIANA TRILLING, who died on October 23 at the age of 91, was best known as the wife of the great literary critic, Lionel Trilling, she was quite a literary force in her own right...
...When my basement flooded two years ago, and I was sifting through the wreckage, I came across her 1976 letter, which inspired me to drop her a line...
...You really think Kennedy read it...
...Although you and I never discussed current affairs," I concluded, "I suspect you must find my professional résumé utterly appalling...
...You've touched every neo-con base, haven't you...
...According to her New York Times obituary, shortly before her death Mrs...
...She brought out a tray of watercress sandwiches and, as I munched away, told me that Lillian Hellman was in Cairo at the moment, but would undoubtedly sue me for libel as soon as she returned to New York...
...Trilling and I stayed in touch for a short while, then fell out of touch for a long while...
...Mrs...
...Trilling about my wife, my kids, and my career as a speech writer for Jeane Kirkpatrick, Elliott Abrams, William Bennett, George Shultz, and Dan Quayle...
...But I do recall our meeting...
...It began: Your review of Scoundrel Time has just circuitously reached me...
...It's unquestionably an extraordinary piece of work and the only review of the book which I have seen—and I think I've seen most of them both here and (so far) in England—which really comprehends and deals with the principle of its composition...
...Trilling knew an excellent lawyer, and she'd gladly give me his name and number...
...Not to worry, though...
...Oh, that's just too rich," she said, rolling her eyes and leaving me with the distinct impression that her "substantial confidence" in the future of American historiography had taken a major hit...
...I was working on my doctorate and, to avoid going totally crazy, also writing the occasional book review...
...The first question she asked me was whether I had read "that marvelous piece in the TLS" about sibling rivalry in the nineteenth-century British novel...
...90 December 1996 • The American Spectator...
...I do indeed remember you and our long ago visit together...
...Trilling and I were not exactly pals, but our paths did cross briefly in the 1976s, and she was extraordinarily generous to me...
...Trilling...
...Let us agree to disagree about politics...
...ALTHOUGH I'M USUALLY PRETTY GOOD at remembering faces, when I close my eyes and try to conjure up Mrs...
...I HALF HOPED THAT HELLMAN would sue me, and make me famous, but of course she had bigger fish to fry (including Mrs...
...And when I see in the identification box how young you are, still a graduate student, I feel the first substantial confidence I have known in a long time that a new generation will produce the historians required for a truthful treatment of these last American decades...
...I asked...
Vol. 29 • December 1996 • No. 12
