LETTER
Awner, Max & Mack, M.P. & Hara, Momoyo
I thought the following little item might be of interest to you: The Danish Communist party, at its "extraordinary" 19th national congress, just concluded, adopted by a vote of 300-odd...
...A nation's politics as well as its administration must be decided by the people of that nation, and must not be imposed from outside, just as well as changes in the social system of a country must not be hindered by aggression or infiltration from without...
...Stripped of emotional overtones, "moral" is a word describing certain kinds of human relations...
...Envisage the situation...
...Reading DissENT increases my respect for your American intellectual circles which have enabled the publication of so worthy a magazine...
...the specific conceit of style that is germane to writing for Luce publications...
...Copenhagen What was the object of Life's editors in running a series on the Negro...
...All I can do now is to offer my sincere thanks...
...No such magazine has ever been published in this country...
...I was prepared to offend this author but not to insult him so grievously as M. P. Mack does...
...They were preaching to the unconverted and chose to speak in a language that might possibly move them...
...But if he willingly lets himself be taken in by so patent a fraud, is it not because it is flattering and safe to continue to beat a dummy...
...Even on a simpler dictionary level, what is wrong with calling the Southerner's plight "moral...
...Ask a man who has written for any of them...
...but let me say categorically that with children or the mentally-disturbed it is a disastrous technique...
...I thought the following little item might be of interest to you: The Danish Communist party, at its "extraordinary" 19th national congress, just concluded, adopted by a vote of 300-odd to 2 a resolution supporting Soviet action in Hungary...
...Had he done so, he would have seen that their purpose was pragmatic, and that perhaps nothing could have been worse adapted to fill it than his own discussion of Southern racial attitudes as a psychiatric problem...
...Surely in this very delicate operation of trying to change entrenched opinions, respectful indirection is a better approach than headon insult...
...Goodman might well have taken a leaf from his own book of psychiatry: people will cover their worst motives in respectable "moral" terms...
...I would be lacking something if I didn't express my appreciation and admiration for your eager and sincere efforts in issuing a wonderful magazine like DtssENT...
...This, it seems to me, is the first question Paul Goodman should have asked in his review of Warren's book in the Spring 1957 issue of DISSENT...
...So that whatever Warren thought of the mental condition of the Southerners he interviewed, it was shrewd strategy to present their problem as a "moral dilemma...
...Of Robert Penn Warren in contributing "Segregation" to it...
...What then...
...That is what the whole segregation issue is about...
...By sympathetically assuring a Southerner that he is in a genuine moral dilemma, Warren might possibly encourage him to reinspect his fixed attitudes...
...Warren is to "sympathetically assure a Southerner that he is in a genuine moral dilemma," even if he himself believes otherwise...
...Then it turned around and adopted an official policy statement in which point 6 reads as follows: "We support every people's right to freedom, independence and self-government...
...If the convertee gets wise to this, as Mack obligingly tips him off in his letter, then he will be insulted indeed...
...Had he baldly called him a psychiatric case, he would have stiffened his intransigence...
...For they were trying to persuade racial bigots to open up their minds and hearts...
...Must intellectual policy be decided behind closed doors...
...Mental Reservation, the formal doctrine of the jesuits and stalinists, I happen to find so biologically sick-making that I cannot assay it politically with any impartiality-that's my problem...
...membership in this country, which on top of the 20 per cent it has already allegedly lost since the Hungarian outbreak will add up to a 40 per cent loss, leaving the membership at a mere 8000 or so...
...I wouldn't know what are the pragmatic aims of Life magazine, but I am just as pleased that my views are the "worst adapted" to fill them...
...It will also result, according to predictions, in the loss of another 20 per cent of the C.P...
...My point was how his attitude "dovetails neatly" with the Luce machine's...
...The congress resulted in a complete victory for the Stalinist wing of the party...
...I wish that Mack would ponder his sentence, "Whatever Warren thought [about their condition], it was shrewd strategy, etc...
...it is what confused then in the first place and it cannot help but heighten anxiety...
...and it is my impression that Jim's attitude was, in this area, shame...
...and Dwight's a "goodnatured contempt" for all the magazines...
...Time-style is not Life's, and Fortune differs from bath...
...He will testify to their staff's intramural rivalry and good-natured contempt for each other...
...And, so far as I can judge, Robert Penn Warren writes like Robert Penn Warren...
...How can I express my joyful surprise [on receiving notice that his subscription had been renewed by a friend in the U.S...
...The Danish word for hypocrisy is "hykleri...
...Finally, what is...
...As to style, the only Luce writers I knew personally were Agee and Macdonald...
...Predictions are that the party will lose from two to four of the eight seats it presently holds in the Parliament, when national elections are held this spring or fall...
...PAUL GOODMAN replies: I have been discussing Penn Warren not as part of a machine but as a kind of author with original responsibility and that standard of an examined life worth living...
...What he proposes here is the doctrine of Mental Reservation and I can only urge him to study Pascal's Provincial Letters...
...Will he explain how, if he says this, we are to trust his own bona fides...
Vol. 4 • July 1957 • No. 3
