Roosevelt and Frankfurter: The Correspondence, 1928-45, annotated by Max Freedman
Levinson, Sanford
ROOSEVELT AND FRANKFURTER: THEIR CORRE SPONDENCE, 1928-45, annotated by Max Freedman. Boston: Atlantic, Little, Brown. 772 pp. $17.50. MAX FREEDMAN, THE EDITOR of this volume, tells of a...
...Formalism's...
...Toback's review, on the other hand, is "slick entertainment," period, if slickness is the measure of how much of "the line" one can cram into the space of two pages devoted to something only peripherally related to politics...
...Whatever opportunism might have been involved in such comments is surely secondary to Frankfurter's native generosity of spirit...
...the other is love of Roosevelt...
...But it's not invariably true that "content" or "morality" are sacrificed on the altar of style...
...His first involvement in Presidential politics was in 1912, when he supported Teddy Roosevelt and his "bully pulpit" conception of the Presidency...
...It "puts the sting back in death" to quote Pauline Kael...
...DISSENT'S...
...I wonder whose it is...
...I was—and am—hot all over regarding Herbert Lehman's letter...
...I have no argument with Toback's thesis that America, and particularly its parvenu "radicals," are preoccupied with style...
...The word carries with it not only its obvious meaning of not being influenced by personal or group advantage, but also the implication that, insofar as possible, "disinterested" advice will reflect one's dispassionate view...
...serve[s] the cultural function of presenting heroes who express the current infatuation with style—style as a value in itself, a replacement of values...
...The content of the education was left largely unexamined, however...
...Toback may think it a "simple-minded" conceit to equate Clyde's sexual impotence with his homicidal behavior . . . but the trouble with platitudes is that most of them are true . . . D. F. ZICKERMAN JAMES TOBACK replies: I was not aware that I was laying out any "line...
...Frankfurter had carefully preserved the impression that both in public and private he had been completely neutral toward the plan...
...ROOSEVELT AND FRANKFURTER: THEIR CORRE SPONDENCE, 1928-45, annotated by Max Freedman...
...Maintaining his fidelity to judicial restraint, he denounced even the Court's treating the issue as justification: "In a democratic society like ours, relief must come through an aroused popular conscience that sears the conscience of the people's representatives...
...Who knows, maybe I've been brainwashed by someone...
...Second, even if one accepts Mr...
...Frankfurter had become "interested" by 1937...
...In the sharp words of political scientist Barney Frank, `By abandoning the helpless to a reliance on self-help, Frankfurter unwittingly pronounced his own reductio ad absurdum...
...Ironically, Frankfurter's already touchy relationship with Walter Lippmann was exacerbated when the columnist devoted a 1936 piece to an examination of "disinterestedness...
...and, if anything, style becomes irrelevant to both the bullet-riddled corpses and the audience—unless, of course, the latter happens to be unwilling to suspend its biases either for or against "style" in the abstract...
...Antiformalism's...
...It seems to me that a certain segment of America's coed population affected the "style" of Brett when The Sun Also Rises was published...
...This close relationship between the two men helped make possible Frankfurter's important contributions to American life, but it also had a more negative consequence...
...Frankfurter reached the heights of the American polity through his involvement with FDR, whom he saw emulating TR as a vigorous leader doing battle with "the interests...
...No doubt, Frankfurter would have opposed it had Roosevelt asked for his advice before the public announcement...
...Their reticence is especially ironic, as was Frankfurter's, in light of their proclaimed faith in democracy...
...A reformer in the tradition of American progressivism, he also shared the simplicity of analysis of that tradition...
...Except for Frankfurter's often cogent remarks on the mistakes of the Supreme Court, what emerges is a paucity of substantial social analysis...
...The image of a Harvard professor dutifully taking the train to Washington appears archaic when compared to what has since become commonplace: fullscale institutes of politics, advisory committees, White House fellowships, and, most important of all, the increasing dependence of universities on the federal government for their finances...
...To take the last hope first, the book cannot really be said to demonstrate Roosevelt's greatness...
...Frankfurter, the admitted "romantic believer in reason," was un BOOBS willing to understand the nature and distribution of power in the United States...
...How such an "implication" was inferred, I can explain only by assuming that Mr...
...Frankfurter's philosophy of "judicial restraint" itself rests on the progressive faith that the United States was a fully open society, with Congress and state legislatures, when aroused, serving to mirror the popular will...
...By refusing to treat the public with the same candor and respect they show the ambitions of (continued on page 281) LETTERS On Bonnie and Clyde Editor: Reviewer James Toback ("Bonnie and Clyde: Style as Morality," DISSENT, Jan.–Feb...
...Nevertheless, Toback insists that Clyde's fatalism expresses "a replacement of values...
...It turns out, however, that he agreed to advise Roosevelt regarding the plan after the President surprised him with it in February, 1937...
...It seemed to me, however, that the movie was profoundly antiviolence...
...As an example of the marvelous personality of Frankfurter's beloved "Frank," this is superb, but there is little in the collection to aid the reader in evaluating the actual political content of the New Deal or Roosevelt's role in it...
...The disingenuousness of Bonnie and Clyde stems from the screenplay, not the direction...
...By implication, Toback has accused director Penn of serving as a factotum for some underground Ministry of Culture...
...Some things just aren't done—they violate the decencies of human relations and offend the good taste and the decorum of friendship...
...Frankfurter was at least partly typical of the intellectuals who, with labor and the ethnic minorities, made up the heart of the "Roosevelt coalition" that came to power in 1933 and that now lies wrecked in the streets of Detroit and Saigon...
...In 1943, as the President was fending off Frankfurter's suggestion that he indicate his identification with the Poles by serving as honorary chairman of the Copernican quadricentennial, Roosevelt remarked, "Strictly between ourselves, I have little sympathy with Copernicus...
...Frankfurter's "childlike" patriotism, to quote Paul Freund, was altogether typical of the optimism and high morale of the New Deal ethos, in which faith in the possibility of jaunty leadership to overcome the problems manifested by the Depression substituted for insight into basic structural defects...
...We know there's no way out for Bonnie and Clyde but we sympathize with Bonnie's yearning for tranquility after what they (and we) have been through, not with Clyde's unalterable collision course with death...
...Was Hemingway guilty of pandering to his bohemia...
...1968) sums up the movie: "More than simply providing slick entertainment, Bonnie and Clyde...
...Writing on the occasion of the 300th anniversary of Harvard, Lippmann stressed the necessity for academic independence from partisan political involvement...
...On the contrary, the inability of Frankfurter to maintain public disinterestedness, in spite of his personal integrity, suggests that more than "caution" might be called for...
...It cannot be mere accident that not since Lincoln has there been a President who possessed in equal measure such a combination of the democratic faith, antiseptic humor, and largeness of view...
...But "style" doesn't triumph here...
...This volume is only partially successful in fulfilling Frankfurter's wishes...
...The sole criticism I made of Penn (whom I regard as one of the two or three best directors in America or anywhere) concerns the obviousness, not the validity, of his use of the pistolphallus metaphor...
...Frankfurter's favorite word was surely "disinterested...
...Zickerman did not read the piece carefully...
...I use the wrong end of the telescope and it makes things much easier to bear...
...Zickerman's facile summation of the film's ending ("Fate simply catches up with them"), that hardly negates —or even affects—the tone of the preceding two hours, a celebration of style as a self-sufficientmode of life...
...refused public comment on the most important issue of 1937...
...More impressive than his views on political issues is the jauntiness of tone he achieved so often...
...Once the battle was joined, however, Frankfurter, by now a loyal lieutenant in the Roosevelt Administration, gave him whatever help was asked for, though his battle station continued to be the Harvard Law School...
...I should like to take issue with two particular areas of Mr...
...Most of the President's letters are short notes rather than full reflections...
...Lippmann's words were vindicated when a man so devoted to political independence capitulated unquestioningly to his friend, the President...
...We are paying the price now of the similar hopes of New Dealish ideologues like Arthur Schlesinger that Harvard-educated leadership, with a becoming mixture of "style" and "pragmatic" policies, could solve the problem only papered over by the World War IIinduced prosperity...
...The most important revelation of the correspondence concerns the response of Frankfurter the Harvard Law School professor to the President's court-packing plan of 1937...
...It is peculiarly appropriate that Frankfurter's last major opinion, his Canute-like dissent in the Tennessee Reapportionment Case in 1962, demonstrates the inadequacy of such optimism in dealing with the problems of America in the 1960's...
...While a savage war rages in Vietnam, and this country finds itself on the brink of a second domestic civil war, one still waits for many of the academics whose careers have become intertwined with the destinies of particular politicians to violate the "decorum of friendship" by engaging in public analysis of fundamental problems...
...Toback takes the view that Clyde is such a successful antihero precisely because he commits every larceny with debonair nonchalance, every atrocity with an engaging finesse...
...Let people see how much I loved Roosevelt, how much I loved my country, and let them see how great a man Roosevelt really was...
...So what if America's hippies dash out to the nearest boutique and array themselves as Bonnies and Clydes...
...MAX FREEDMAN, THE EDITOR of this volume, tells of a visit to Felix Frankfurter on February 20, 1965, just two days before the latter's death: "Tell the whole story...
...Bonnie and Clyde does not celebrate anarchism la mode...
...He spends more time condemning money-grubbing lawyers (not that they did not richly deserve the condemnation) than he does in any comment about much more fundamental defects in the American social and political structure...
...Fate simply catches up with them...
...As Alexander Bickel has noted in the New Republic, this meant that the most important law professor in the U.S...
...Why the apprehensive titter from the audience when Clyde misconstrues Bonnie's hints that they settle down...
...LovE OF COUNTRY is only one theme of the volume...
...Zickerman's misunderstanding, the first of which is his attack on my supposed "accusation" that Arthur Penn is a self-appointed "factotum for some underground Ministry of Culture...
...DURING THE 1930's, it was still somewhat unusual for academics to involve themselves with government...
...In many ways the most significant letter in the entire volume is a short note, written on July 20, 1937, regarding Herbert Lehman's statement of opposition to the court-packing plan...
...Bonnie and Clyde don't go out in style any more than Belmondo did in Breathless...
...He looked through the right end of the telescope, thus greatly magnifying his problems...
...Although praise of Lincoln's "common people" runs through the volume, Frankfurter stressed the importance of an educating leadership to give the people direction...
...Bickel, a former law clerk to Frankfurter, suggests merely that this episode should encourage a "caution" regarding the relationship of knowledge and power...
Vol. 15 • May 1968 • No. 3
