MINUTES OF THE MEETING
Steinfels, Peter
I T IS WITHOUT question a blot on the multi-stained record of our leading newspapers that they have passed over in silence the remarkable event that transpired on Monday, December 13. Who but a...
...He named the New York Review o/Books...
...He named Gore Vidal...
...Howe said that Mr...
...would the New York intellectuals do about that...
...Kristol in Commentary...
...and that the entire conversation promised to be as fresh as Agatha Christie's "Mousetrap...
...Howe had just said...
...The audience, apprehensive lest there be insufficient room for the largeness of ideas to come, stayed put...
...The pictures include paintings, lithographs, portraits, cartoons, photographs and posters, and the contemporary writings range from novels, letters and newspaper accounts to diaries, memoirs, reminiscences and other historical documents...
...But unlike the Bergamini book, which encompasses more than it can justly handle, America in 1876 examines the Centennial Year from the perspective of only eight subjects...
...PODHORETZ said that if he (Mr...
...Stirrings and noises...
...Nixon would have had a II Vou Love Words, y ou:!l Io~ VERBATIM, The Lanouage Quarterly .oqm~mg...
...The HONORABLE GENTLEMAN, with all respect to the esteemed speaker, found Mr...
...Thomas Hopko The purpose of this book is to enrich our knowledge and awareness of the Holy Spirit by infusing them with the learnings of the great tradition of the Eastern Orthodox Church...
...Phillips) called the meeting to a close...
...His 46 electoral votes reduced the available number from 538 to 491 with 270 needed for election...
...It was his dutymand let his enemies make the most of it--to be stem...
...Allow 6 weeks...
...Mr...
...Let the cynic gag on his own bitterness...
...Elliot Cohen, and Commentary magazine...
...Mr...
...An UNIDENTIFIED GENTLEMAN rose to say that the Jewish cats in the Thirties and Forties hadn't done anything that Mr...
...Vehement outburst...
...The American Republic will in my opinion never celebrate another Centennial," wrote an embittered young freshman at Princeton University...
...Mr...
...Kristol's article had been denatured by Mr...
...The year 1876 opened with a heartfelt cry for "reform" and ended wifh OOOOOOOOO REVIEWERS oEonoE A. LmVeEc~ is professor of theology at Yale University...
...It rather lends itself to repeated perusal to discover hidden nuggets in the cartoons or newspaper commentaries...
...The honorable speaker was endorsing scurrilous attacks and misrepresentations...
...It is a combination picture book, running narrative and extracts from contemporary writings...
...mVlNO MXLm teaches at CCNY...
...A GENTLEMAN rose to protest that Mr...
...The cynic may malignly hint that the topic reveals a certain habitual self-preoccupation...
...MItrE DECTER--Names aren't proof, Irving...
...paperbound) $3.50 Please send check with order, adding 75r postage, to Morehouse-Barlow 78 Danbury Road Wilton, Connecticut 06897 Commonweal: 27...
...SOMEONE observed that the best minds of the New York intellectuals were deceased...
...Kramer was distressed...
...MICHAEL NOVAK rose to order...
...It must be added, however, in all fairness, that in these short vignettes, Bergamini packs a great deal of factual information and not a few historical judgments about the United States and its people during its Centennial Year...
...Nixon received 301 electoral votes to Senator Humphrey's 191...
...His most recent book is The Achievement o/ William Styron (Georgia U. Press...
...What was the honorable gentleman alluding to, demanded Mr...
...its dispersal throughout the nation...
...however, if California had gone to Senator Humphrey--and it could have since Mr...
...Howe had told about Mr...
...its opposition to Stalinism...
...Vladim/r's Seminary, also quotes from each of the Orthodox Church's sacraments, as well as from the Bible...
...He pointed out that the Indians in Maine had a Jewish lawyer...
...PHILLIPS corrected a humorous anecdote that Mr...
...So labor and wealth are represented...
...KRAMER said that was a topic for another meeting...
...What, he asked, did the intellectuals offer in way of fealty to marriage and the family...
...Great excitement...
...Podhoretz) had allowed such an account to be published in Commentary, then he (Mr...
...Howe said that he found the honorable gentleman's question tiresome...
...Howe, and he (Mr...
...Not a dry eye, the reader may be assured, was left in the house...
...Howe insisted that he (Mr...
...The debate having reached so ,highly intelligible and amiable a point, the CHAIEMAN (Mr...
...MARSHALL BERMAN asked Mr...
...UNIDENTIFIED GENTLEMAN asked why all the honorable speakers were white, middle-aged males when ~he state of culture rested with Puerto Ricans, women, youth, and other minorities...
...ROBERT JAY LIFTON asked whether the anti-Stalinism of the New York intellectuals, for which he had the highest regard, might have incapacitated them in facing more recent situations...
...Kramer's presentation was itself McCarthyist, and that the honorable speaker had made it difficult for an innocent bystander like himself even to wear a red sweater without explanation...
...0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 Sgetnfeh (Cont...
...Cries of "No," "Yes," etc...
...He wished to say that he was glad to see so much essential agreement...
...Howe tiresome...
...The New York intellectuals had been absorbed by the media and the universities, and through these channels they were, why even this very minute, pumping the pernicious stuff of modernism, covering the Family with filth and sapping the National Foundations...
...Mr...
...that the preceding weekend had seen a conference on "The Future of the New York Intellectual Community" at New York University...
...NORMAN PODHORETZ rose tO order...
...MORRIS DICKSTEIN'S presentation we need say even less, since it was a brilliant and original repetiMINUTES OF THE MEETING PETER STEINFELS tion of what Mr...
...Phillips's version may have been accurate but his (Mr...
...also the stolen election, along with the Centennial Exhibition, what it calls "The Western Empire" but is mostly Custer's Last Stand, Washington, Barnum and Tom Sawyer...
...WILLIAM PmLLIPS, opened the proceedings by asking the audience to move forward...
...Of the presentation by Mr...
...the raucous snarl of "fraud...
...Kramer what values the honorable gentleman (Mr...
...Who but a select few know that on this night the venerable journal Partisan Review had enticed the cream of Manhattan literati into a basement auditorium of the City University of New York, and that there these learned and penetrating minds were loosed full force on the topic "The New York Intellectuals and the State of the Culture...
...OOOOOOOOO CORRESPONDENCE (Continued/rom page 3) proximately ten million popular votes, Mr...
...What was more important was Governor Wallace's electoral vote total...
...He named Buggery . . . . (Vehement noises...
...Podhoretz) would ,have to repel Mr...
...Send ~:~[~.~.p or...
...its strengths, its weaknesses...
...Howe has published it several times previously--how the Jewish intelligentsia rose and fell in New York...
...its defense of high culture and modernism linked with a street wise, plebeian style...
...Of Mr...
...Dickstein might well be referring to Mr...
...its dissolution in sourness and ill-feeling...
...Though lack of space and the modest limits of our talent allow but a pale approximation of that evening's grave and scintillating debates, we will publish for the world what the world is doubtless anxious to know: The CHAIRMAN, Mr...
...Howe told a joke, and Mr...
...Howe) had said no more than he had previously written in the pages of Commentary, the honorable gentleman's own journal...
...Nixon's plurality was 223,346 votes---then neither he nor Mr...
...Irving Kristol, Mr...
...ANOTHER GENTLEMAN said that reality was getting soft, and what (Continued on page 27) 7 Jan~ry 1977:8 millionaire New York merchant, dying, Jacques Offenbach arriving in America, Brigham Young celebrating a birthday, Wild Bill Hickok being shot dead, the presidential nominating conventions and the election...
...ROBERT V. REMIIql teaches in the history department at the University of Illinois...
...Howe told another joke...
...In some ways the Weymouth and Glaser book is the most fun of all...
...Dean Hopko, who is on the faculty of St...
...Nixon's election was with 43.4 percent of the popular vote---the lowest percentage for a winning candidate since Woodrow Wilson's election in 1912...
...Kramer would not hesitate to name names...
...At least under its present Constitution and laws...
...Howe's interpretation with absolute firmness...
...Novak declared that the evening had been both coherent and intellectually invigorating...
...c o , . . . . , usa THE SPIRIT OF GOD The Very Rev...
...Howe observed that Mr...
...And unlike Vidal's book, which concerns itself with the socially and politically powerful, this illustrated tour of the United States considers the plight of the poor...
...Howe suggested kindness, tolerance, and magnanimity...
...HILTON KRAMER, on the other hand, felt compelled to put aside his ordinarily amiable and gentle demeanor...
...Applause...
...Pod horetz) had been irresponsible...
...Howe cited a 1952 article by Mr...
...When was the last time, he asked, ~hat an American intellectual had anything cogent to say about defense policy...
...Mr...
...wnn ~w _lgL:~'UI .of language...
...Herman Melville hadn't already done by 1850, and that maybe the New York intellectuals weren't as worried about the Indians in Maine today as they were about Israel...
...So much for dire predictions about the Republic...
...It ends in New York, on December 31 with James Gordon Bennett getting drunk...
...Hear, hear...
...Rumblings from the audience...
...It is not something you read in one sitring, or even two...
...The cynic may impudently inquire who but the select few cares...
...MOney back If not ple~led...
...The author provides generous excerpts from the writings of the great fathers and saints of the Eastern tradition-writings not easily accessible to the Western Christian---as well as thoughts from modern Eastern theologians...
...a . I .my .here) for a one-year muoocrlpuon, lUWllrl~ WNI1 the curreflt 18sue...
...That young freshman was Woodrow Wilson...
...IRVINO HOWE we need say little, particularly since Mr...
...THOMAS ].,ASK rose to order...
...DICXSTEIN referred to Cold War McCarthyism among the New York intellectuals...
...Mr...
...PHILLIPS called for discussion from the floor...
...Meyer Shapiro...
...Cries of "Come, come" and "Leave off...
...Kramer) would advise us to hold in regard to marriage and the family...
...KRAMER with all possible respect for the gentleman in the red sweater, replied that ideas with the power to kill were being disseminated through journals --buggery, for example...
...Howe's) version was true...
...KaAMER...
Vol. 104 • January 1977 • No. 1
