Burnham on Podhoretz

A Family Tale

Fortunately this is a good-natured book; it would otherwise be impossible—though no doubt much of the vulgarity is more put on than real. I have gathered that among the classic masks assumed by Jews in dealing with the zig-zags of destiny is The Clown. It is in this guise that we meet Podhoretz at the beginning of his Preface, and often thereafter until the very last page. “Let me introduce myself. I am a man who at the precocious age of thirty-five experienced an astonishing revelation: it is better to be a success than a failure. Having been penetrated by this great truth concerning the nature of things, my mind was now open for the first time to a series of corollary perceptions, each one as dizzying in its impact as the original Revelation itself. Money, I now saw (no one, of course, had ever seen it before), was important; it was better to be rich than to be poor. Power. . . . Fame. . . .” and so on. Ridi, Pagliaccio. . . The reader, hearing the raucous sound from the broadly painted mouth, realizes that the shy heart behind that mask beats only for the lofty values of the spirit, caring not a fig for success, money, power and fame—though these are there for the plucking. No one, surely, would be so ungenerous as to give any but this reverse interpretation to the apotheosis hymned in the final chapter, where the transfigured Podhoretz ascends to, yes, Paradise Island, there to sit, or rather loll, at the right hand of Huntington Hartford while two white-coated cherubim vie “for the privilege of depositing a Bloody Mary into one’s hands.”

JB

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James Burnham

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A Family Tale

Fortunately this is a good-natured book; it would otherwise be impossible—though no doubt much of the vulgarity is more put on than real. I have gathered that among the classic masks assumed by Jews in dealing with the zig-zags of destiny is The Clown. It is in this guise that we meet Podhoretz at the beginning of his Preface, and often thereafter until the very last page. “Let me introduce myself. I am a man who at the precocious age of thirty-five experienced an astonishing revelation: it is better to be a success than a failure. Having been penetrated by this great truth concerning the nature of things, my mind was now open for the first time to a series of corollary perceptions, each one as dizzying in its impact as the original Revelation itself. Money, I now saw (no one, of course, had ever seen it before), was important; it was better to be rich than to be poor. Power. . . . Fame. . . .” and so on. Ridi, Pagliaccio. . . The reader, hearing the raucous sound from the broadly painted mouth, realizes that the shy heart behind that mask beats only for the lofty values of the spirit, caring not a fig for success, money, power and fame—though these are there for the plucking. No one, surely, would be so ungenerous as to give any but this reverse interpretation to the apotheosis hymned in the final chapter, where the transfigured Podhoretz ascends to, yes, Paradise Island, there to sit, or rather loll, at the right hand of Huntington Hartford while two white-coated cherubim vie “for the privilege of depositing a Bloody Mary into one’s hands.”