What is bothering me
Cogley, John
11111111 What is bothering me JOHN COGLEY I'll tell you what is bothering me. How does a writer keep himself from getting such a vested interest in certain ideas that he feels called upon...
...But if you want to be a writer you have to write about something, and you begin to take positions on questions of the day...
...Unless ideas, even well-thought-out ideas, are the product of infallibility, there is usually some truth to be found in the attacks made on them...
...One conclusion leads to another...
...In the beginning a writer is like a blank piece of paper...
...All wisdom is found in their camp...
...you think about the issues involved and weigh them...
...No one registers for a school of thought...
...The Truth which is the Party, the Movement, or the Cause makes its claim, and the separate truths which are the description of immediate realities are slightly distorted and even flatly denied...
...In the long run the writer's real obligation is to the reality of things...
...Maybe the tie is called liberal, maybe conservative, maybe middle-of-the-road...
...its position is not the product of earnest study or careful attention to the facts—it is the fruit of blind prejudice at best and callous iniquity at worst...
...I do not hold with the conspiracy thesis...
...The opposition never has a case...
...You study a situation and try to see it whole...
...But even the most independent minds discover one day that, lo, they are wearing an old school tie...
...The writer does not necessarily become a liar, though some do...
...There is a grain of fact in the charge that such establishments exist...
...Nor are factual truths always of immediate service to even the best ideas...
...That is what is bothering me...
...he may even find that a sincere devotion to the truth will turn him temporarily into a traitor to the partisan cause...
...Each establishment, of course, tries to give the impression that its existence is explained by the hold that truth has on good men who can think, while the other evolved from witless men plunging beyond their depth...
...The honest writer, I am afraid, will always be an untrustworthy partisan...
...But buying them would not be necessary in any case...
...Reality simply does not shape itself, nor should it be shaped, to conform to even the most noble cause...
...But if the writer wants to stay honest he has no other choice...
...Only the totalitarians endow deception of this kind with the dignity of doctrine...
...But if he finds himself paring and shaping the truth he deals with, for the good of the "cause"—however nebulous the cause might be—he is the next thing to a liar...
...The truth, they lead you to believe, finds its only servants in their camp—and, mirabile dictu, it just happens that the truth in any given instance serves their partisan interests...
...How many are like campaign orators...
...finally you reach a conclusion...
...But study the work of journalists, especially those who deal in ideas...
...How does a writer keep himself from getting such a vested interest in certain ideas that he feels called upon to come to their rescue when they are attacked, mainly because he feels that an attack on them is an attack on him...
...But such are the appeals and the claims of partisanship that only few writers realize when they have ceased to be honest...
...The writer begins to think of Us one way and of Them another way...
...He begins to feel a tug of loyalty every time he sits down to a typewriter...
...The National Review speaks of the Liberal Establishment, which I take it is not supposed to be a conspiracy but a product of mindless conformity...
...See also Et Cetera, page 4. 46 THE EAST WORD...
...How many liars have lied for Truth...
...Later he served as an editor at the New York Times, as presidential campaign adviser for John F. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy, and as founding editor of The Center Magazine...
...it does not matter much...
...Very few can be bought if only because, for the kind of people who become writers, pride is a much greater temptation than greed...
...So a truly honest writer must root for the opposing team now and then...
...This is not the kind of column in which one should mention names...
...The important thing is that one's thinking is now regarded as part of a group effort...
...This column is reprinted from the issue of November 15, 1957...
...You set down your conclusions on paper...
...He may find from time to time that he has to cross the lines on a specific issue, to the dismay and disapproval of those who had thought of him as one of "ours...
...Or he may deceive himself that he is preserving a respectful silence out of consideration for the transcendent claims of a higher truth...
...Worst of all, of course, he can deceive himself...
...The socalled Right Wing is often described as an Establishment along the same lines...
...I do not believe that writers are bought out by powerful interests...
...It is not necessarily loyalty to the truth but to a partisan interest, for the writer, who never intended to, has become a partisan and can very easily find himself affected with a partisan's view of things...
...but even honest men are bedeviled by the temptation...
...only secondarily can he be a partisan...
...I think they exist, among other reasons, because writers tend to get this vested interest in certain ideas, as do magazine and newspaper editors, and come to feel as protective about them as a doting parent...
...John Cogley (1916-1976) was a Commonweal editor from 1949 to 1955, a columnist until 1964...
...Once you are known for the kind of conclusions you habitually reach, you are assigned to what is called a school of thought...
...He can tell himself that he is justified in withholding this truth and playing up that—for after all should he give aid to the enemy or scandal to the little ones...
...the matriculation is gradual...
...I will not cite examples...
...But suppose we dismiss such partis pris absurdities for the moment and ask why such establishments do exist...
Vol. 121 • January 1994 • No. 1
