If Norman Podhoretz were alive today:
Garvey, John
Of several minds: John Garvey IF NORMAN PODHORETZ WERE ALIVE TODAY A CONVERSATION WITH GEORGE ORWELL THERE ISN'T MUCH to do in my home town on weekends, so I've taken to visiting alternate...
...In which your grandmother married someone other than your grandfather...
...He was about to make his point...
...Everyone read it when I was in college...
...Thanks...
...But I do think...
...Joseph's School/Farrell Hall, 111 Washington Place...
...Yes...
...You mean . . ." "Yes," said George Orwell...
...Orwell, according to Mr...
...I hastily pushed it under a copy of Commentary...
...In which Ronald Reagan ended his career as an obscure movie stuntman, following that scandal with the Great Dane...
...Commentary is the one that used to be edited by what's his name, a bright, ambitious young fellow...
...You may have heard of them: there are universes in which the Spanish Armada was victorious...
...I nodded agreement...
...JOHN GARVEY...
...April 14.8 p.m...
...I was thinking that it was silly to conjecture about what a man dead for 33 years would think if he were alive today, and both humorless and pretentious to assume that he would think exactly as you do, when I noticed Orwell himself making his way through the smoky air of the pub...
...He soured on the war in Vietnam - maybe even on war in general - the horrible effects of bombing seemed to come as a sort of surprise to him...
...Could even he with all his cunning have ever dreamed that so many would come to preach sterility and even to sterilize their very own selves in the name of a greater piety toward nature, a greater sense of responsibility to the future, and a greater reverence for life?' " "You have a very good memory," I said...
...Where are those drinks...
...No, it's clear religion was never far from his mind...
...I could see a definite direction there...
...Travel between alternate universes isn't easy and mail is spotty, but once you get the hang of it moving from one world to another is quite enjoyable...
...Orwell waved the objection aside...
...Of course Orwell was aware that in several alternative universes he had died, but I thought the cover of Harper's might upset him...
...Writers do that all the time...
...I signaled the publican, who nodded and moved toward the gin...
...The title was "If Orwell Were Alive Today...
...I was surprised...
...awhile, but Vietnam made a difference...
...But aren't those a lot of ellipses I hear you slipping in there...
...Eric...
...When I travel like this, I often take a few months' worth of magazines to a back table in a bar in one pleasant alternate universe...
...Orwell said...
...No," I said, getting a little impatient...
...It doesn't exist in our universe - Orwell's essay was a lament for its absence - but Orwell (who is still alive in about a third of the alternate universes I've been to) was delighted to find it every bit as good as he had imagined it to be, though the publican does take his time getting around to your order...
...One Saturday afternoon as I sat at my table I noticed a Harper's cover story by Norman Podhoretz, editor (in our universe, anyway) of Commentary and a prominent neoconservative...
...I wonder what might have happened with Podhoretz if he had lived...
...Really...
...And maybe there was a latent interest in religion, though I'm not sure about that...
...I still don't quite see the direction," I said...
...He smiled, nodded, sat down, and made no move to order a drink...
...He was heading for my table...
...And then there were a fair number of articles on the relationship between Christianity and Judaism...
...Of several minds: John Garvey IF NORMAN PODHORETZ WERE ALIVE TODAY A CONVERSATION WITH GEORGE ORWELL THERE ISN'T MUCH to do in my home town on weekends, so I've taken to visiting alternate universes...
...Ah, now I remember...
...Doesn't it," he said, "remind you of the thinking of the late Pope Paul VI...
...Through selective quotations and the creative use of ellipses, Podhoretz had transformed Orwell, a dedicated socialist and a man horrified at the use of atomic weapons, into a man who, if he were alive today, would think very much like . . . well, like Norman Podhoretz...
...The Devil . . . does not command us to be fruitful and multiply...
...he asked...
...I always found Podhoretz secular through and through...
...Right...
...We are on first name terms...
...Are you saying Podhoretz is the man who would be pope...
...Manhattan...
...Is that the one you write for...
...will sponsor Bruce Russett, principal consultant to the Bishops Committee on War & Peace, speaking on the pastoral letter...
...I ordered two gin-and-tonics...
...No," I said, "Commonweal . . . WEAL...
...I suspect there was a developing fascination with Catholicism . You know, articles about the relationship between Rome and Judaism, Irishmen appearing in the pages of Commentary - Harrington, of course, with his Catholic Worker background, and someone named O'Gara...
...You know he was quite a standard, middle-of-the-road liberal for The Catholic Forum...
...It soured his earlier qualified support for American policy in Southeast Asia...
...Norman Podhoretz...
...I still don't see what you're driving at...
...It's a little place George Orwell praised in one of his essays, a lovely pub called The Moon Under Water...
...I'm not through yet," Orwell said...
...If Norman Podhoretz were alive today, he would be a Catholic pacifist...
...be pleased with the size and condition of his American flock...
...God," Podhoretz wrote, 'commands us to be fruitful and multiply...
...Well," Orwell continued, "there was that piece called 'Speak of the Devil' in the April, 1971, Commentary...
...Oh...
...No," said Orwell, "despite the evidence of Making It...
...Orwell leaned forward and looked at me intensely...
...Then it struck me...
...But he was editor of Commentary, after all, and he published several articles by Gershom Scholem and other scholars of religion...
...When I turned back to the table, Orwell was looking at the cover of Commentary...
...And then there was his sympathy with religion something I was never able to understand...
...I had come to know what this meant - I had to buy...
...Oh, he usually was in his own writings, all right...
...Would he not...
...Podhoretz, would conclude that democracy could be preserved only by a Reaganite foreign policy and a reliance on nuclear weapons...
...I said, rising...
...He even said he would prefer to see an unambiguous American defeat rather than the continued bombardment of that poor devastated region...
...He exists for the purpose of tempting or seducing as many of God's creatures as he can into a refusal to choose the breeding of life...
...Suddenly the pieces began to fall into place: a reaction against war, a religious direction, an opposition to sterilization and by implication to contraception, the resemblance to Paul VI...
...Anyway, doesn't that quote remind you of someone...
...It was an exciting magazine when he was editor," Orwell said...
Vol. 110 • April 1983 • No. 7
