An Egghead Magazine

 

My being old and crotchety you might expect that the way "Young People" deal with the poor old twentieth century kind of pisses me off. It seems as if history to the young talking heads goes only as far back as the sixties. Ben Shapiro for instance. He's "a nice kid". He wrote a well received book,  Primetime Propaganda, which I liked, as far as it went. I kind of wish I could have gotten him to read the chapter in my book that includes an interview with Bob Costello, (an early television producer), in which he talks about the early days of TV. He talks about Playhouse 90, and Omnibus, and Goodson and Todman, and Kukla, Fran and Ollie; television pioneers. It was all out of New York City, and there were only a few dozen people involved; they all came out to my home town, East Hampton, for summer vacation. They were all left-wing, some more than others, and they mixed well with the New York Intellectuals and Abstract Expressionists who were also summering in the same township. My point being, that many of the influencers that Ben Shapiro talks about are the children of, or at least the ideological children of, those people who made up that 1950s social grouping. And they laid the groundwork for those Red Diaper Babies who run television today! The most reaction I seem to get when I talk to anyone in Shapiro's age group when I mention the 1950s, is, "Oh, you mean Happy Days," and with that the eyes glaze over. No sense delving into complex issues.  

The answer to the question, "Why do they avoid the 50s?" is simple. The popular culture was too white. It was even too anti-semitic. Oh, the writers of the narrative that made it to the new medium were Jewish, many of them, but they aimed at the Gentile audience. Right now, though, Winter of 2020, the Twentieth Century long over, with our media-controlled culture at a tipping point, and the country ready to split like post-Tito Yugoslavia,  we need to separate ourselves, those of us who want to stay out of the Orwellian Utopia, from the Marxist movement toward Revisionist History. 

 

In the early days of television the medium abounded with Culturati, or as they were known in those days by the man in the street, "Eggheads". Omnibus, with narrator Alistair Cooke, was the premium product. Leonard Bernstein gave lectures on music and conducted excerpts from Handel's Messiah. There were interviews by writers and public figures, including entertainers Jack Benny and Orson Welles, writer William Saroyan, and architect Frank Lloyd Wright. There was live drama, with two early programs, first The Philco Television Playhouse, and later Playhouse 90.  Omnibus, by the way, was created by The Ford Foundation, (No relation to the Ford Motor Company), a CIA front organization. The CIA, since 1945, had been working with singular focus on the creation of something they called The Anti-Stalinist Left.     

Of course, television, like radio, can, and therefore must, unless it is government owned, be aimed at a different audience than print, for the simple reason that with electronic media you buy the machine and turn on the switch. You don't have to go to a news-stand and select what you want to read. And since you only need to look and listen, not read, you don't have to be literate. Television and Radio have a much broader reach.  

But early Television was made up of people who wanted to influence other people. "For their own good."  They weren't interested in the broader reach. In those days, they were living off capital investment, not advertisers profit. And where did that crowd of first generation TV writers, actors and producers get their ideas and opinions?  From the theater, the motion pictures, radio, and magazines. But, the most potent medium, the one with the most clout, many, (including myself), believe, was the little magazine. Said like that, with no caps, it doesn't look like much, but if you look it up in The Encyclopedia Britannica Online, under little magazines, it becomes, well, a thing;  

"Little magazine, any of various small periodicals devoted to serious literary writings, usually avant-garde and noncommercial. They were published from about 1880 through much of the 20th century and flourished in the United States and England, though French writers (especially the Symbolist poets and critics, 1880–c. 1900) often had access to a similar type of publication and German literature of the 1920s was also indebted to them. The name signifies most of all a noncommercial manner of editing, managing, and financing. A little magazine usually begins with the object of publishing literary work of some artistic merit that is unacceptable to commercial magazines for any one or all of three reasons—the writer is unknown and therefore not a good risk; the work itself is unconventional or experimental in form; or it violates one of several popular notions of moral, social, or aesthetic behavior.

Foremost in the ranks of such magazines were two American periodicals, Poetry: a Magazine of Verse (founded 1912), especially in its early years under the vigorous guidance of Harriet Monroe, and the more erratic and often more sensational Little Review (1914–29) of Margaret Anderson; a group of English magazines in the second decade of the 20th century, of which the Egoist (1914–19) and Blast (1914–15) were most conspicuous; and Eugene Jolas’ transition (1927–38). [Small t is correct] In all but the last of these, a major guiding spirit was the U.S. poet and critic Ezra Pound; he served as “foreign correspondent” of both Poetry and the Little Review, maneuvered the Egoist from its earlier beginnings as a feminist magazine (The New Freewoman, 1913) to the status of an avant-garde literary review, and, with Wyndham Lewis, jointly sponsored the two issues of Blast. In this case, the little magazines showed the stamp of a single vigorous personality; similar strong and dedicated figures in little magazine history were the U.S. poet William Carlos Williams (whose name appears in scores of little magazines, in one capacity or another); the British critic and novelist Ford Madox Ford, editor of the Transatlantic Review (1924–25) and contributor to many others; and Gustave Kahn, a minor French poet but a very active editor associated with several French Symbolist periodicals.

There were four principal periods in the general history of little magazines. In the first, from 1890 to about 1915, French magazines served mainly to establish and explain a literary movement; British and U.S. magazines served to disseminate information about and encourage acceptance of continental European literature and culture. In the second stage, 1915–30, when other magazines, especially in the United States, were in the vanguard of almost every variation of modern literature, a conspicuous feature was the expatriate magazine, published usually in France but occasionally elsewhere in Europe by young U.S. and British critics and writers. The major emphasis in this period was upon literary and aesthetic form and theory and the publication of fresh and original work, such as that of Ernest Hemingway (in the Little Review, Poetry, This Quarter, and other publications), T.S. Eliot (in Poetry, the Egoist, Blast) James Joyce (in the Egoist, the Little Review, transition), and many others. The third stage, the 1930s, saw the beginnings of many leftist magazines, started with specific doctrinal commitments that were often subjected to considerable editorial change in the career of the magazine. Partisan Review (1934) was perhaps the best known example of these in the United States, as was the Left Review (1934–38) in England.

The fourth period of little magazine history began about 1940. One of the conspicuous features of this period was the critical review supported and sustained by a group of critics, who were in most cases attached to a university or college. Examples of this kind of periodical were, in the United States, The Kenyon Review, founded by John Crowe Ransom in 1939, and in Great Britain, Scrutiny, edited by F.R. Leavis (1932–53). This and related kinds of support, such as that of publishers maintaining their own reviews or miscellanies, represented a form of institutionalism which was radically different from the more spontaneous and erratic nature of the little magazines of earlier years."

 

 

The Truants is a book about the Partisan Review, a left-wing magazine, a little magazine, published from just before WWll until April of 2003. The author is William Barrett, professor at NYU and one of the magazine's principle editors in the Post-War period. I read The Truants when it first came out in 1982 and just finished re-reading it. I think it's a terrific book.

For many Americans and Europeans before WWll the good guys were; Karl Marx, The Soviet Union, and the Communist Party of the United States. I grew up with parents who were working adults throughout the depression, in an environment where things that were written about in P.R. , (and other little magazines), were also being discussed at home; with my parents to each other, and when they were with friends, certain friends, with them. 

The answer to the question "who invented the Partisan Review?" is; The John Reed Club; under the ideological umbrella of The Communist Party U.S.A.  But don't take my word for that. The following is the first paragraph in a good summation of the P.R., from Wikipedia;   

 

Partisan Review (PR) was a small circulation quarterly, "little magazine" dealing with literature, politics, and cultural commentary published in New York City. The magazine was launched in 1934 by the Communist Party, USA–affiliated John Reed Club of New York and was initially part of the Communist political orbit. Growing disaffection on the part of PR's primary editors began to make itself felt, however, and the magazine abruptly suspended publication in the fall of 1936. When the magazine reemerged late in 1937, it came with additional editors and new writers who advanced a political line deeply critical of Stalin's USSR.

Before re-reading The Truants, I read a review of the book written by the noted art critic Hilton Kramer in 1982. Early in his review Kramer points to an article in P.R. published in the magazine in the summer of 1946, and re-published in the appendix of The Truants. The essay, by William Barrett and titled The Liberal Fifth Column, shows, to quote Mr. Kramer, ...[the article makes us realize] ..."how little has actually changed in the thinking of the American left in the last 36 years."  Then, add another 38 years, if you please.   

 

After saying that this is a great book I won't then go and paraphrase Prof. Barrett, the writing is too good for that. You must read this book, or, failing that, at least read the article in the appendix. The article is shocking, not only because it, that same Fifth Column, is still alive today, but because it is ruling our country.  How that can be, with the Soviet Union gone, and Western Europe having survived, is itself staggering. 

   But now it's Chinese Communists who have the adversarial position, and the Liberal Elites are showering them with soft-ball diplomacy while they go about collapsing our economy. (Mao came to power with the help of Stalin and the American Left*, who convinced Congress to betray Chiang.)  

 

By inserting that article in the appendix, is Barrett implying that the work of P.R. was part of the creation of that Fifth Column? Well, perhaps not in so many words. Perhaps that came to him as he was writing the book?  Or while he was himself working at the magazine. I think that's it. I think his thinking evolved. 

 

 

When Rahv and William Phillips made the retreat from Stalinism to Trotsky they were expelled from Communist Party USA. They folded the John Reed Club version of The Partisan Review.  But they were both still committed to Marxism. The Stalin alternative was Trotsky, who was still alive at that time. (Assassination date, August 2, 1940, Coyoacan, Mexico City, Mexico.)

  The idea of moving from Stalinism to something else, anything else, was dangerous in the extreme though they might not have realized it at that time. For three years, Rahv and Phillips one might say cooled their heels and talked up their ideas, which gravitated toward supporting the ideal of a culture both purer in its Marxism while at the same time being supportive to an inclusive modernist aesthetic incorporating art, literature and the entire cultural world. They needed added brain power for that and they found it in Clem Greenberg, Dwight MacDonald (and his wife Nancy) and Fred Dupee; in today's lingo a trifecta, though they were young and to a large extent, except for MacDonald who had worked at Fortune, un-tried.   

 

The move back and away from Stalin and toward Trotsky and Modernism happened in stages, with the first remove, or perhaps I'd better say stage, being Rahv's and Phillips's move from Stalin to Trotsky. The second stage was, as I go into in some depth in another blog, titled Dancing with Greenberg, the addition of cultural criticism, primarily painting. And then, I may be taking a leap, but I'd like to think of it as a force, or perhaps, the use of force, for which I'll have to offer examples:

1. Piling on...as in adding the MacDonalds and the Trillings!  

2. Using, like any good editor, pressure and manipulation to energize writers; which power takes intellect as well as a check-book.  

3.Putting all the eggs in one basket, or as Stalin might have said, centralizing; contriving to have art and modernism engaged with the Anti-Stalinist Left. Here, there is the question of whether Rahv and and Phillips were on board with the CIA, a probable yes.    

  

Force though, I don't see acknowledged much in the Modernism-joined-to-Marxism world perhaps because it is seen as a fundamental of Capitalism, but of course it is acknowledged in the Freudian world, which world is agreeable and acceptable to most if not all Partisan Review writers, and; to the Left in general...as in Libido, Transference and Counter Transference; as Ego insinuating and Super-ego squelching, but perhaps it, ...[forcefulness] ...is underappreciated in the social organization of Little Magazines and the Art World coterie. For instance, in the cult of personality. You could see it in the Pollock and deKooning worlds but perhaps under-acknowledged in the power extant in influencers*, [Like The New York Times], like Lee Krazner, and Clem Greenberg, Elaine de Kooning, and in other forces pushing these innovators in this or that direction.    

 

Leaving out the lust for power for the moment, let's break that concept of force down into more manageable segments.  Segment; horniness and/or seduction; these too can be broken down.  So many kinds of sexy. Massaging of the painter's or writer's ego; or an editor's ego. The many powers of the muse. The power of money, or as it's known in the painter's world, prices. Prices power myth!  Segment;  political power; the power of the oracle; the power to help selection of candidates and the candidates themselves; the power of spotlighting issues; the power of star-making through prose and poetry. 

 

*The Amerasia Spy Case; Klehr and Radosh, UNC Press, Chapel Hill  

 

**[Below is from an editorial footnote to the Mary McCarthy piece on Rahv in the NYT at the time of his death.]  

"Over the next 30 years Partisan Review became the best literary magazine in America. It would be hard to overestimate the cultural importance of Rahv's and Phillips's decision to break with Stalinism without abandoning the social and political ideals (and analytic techniques) of the Marxist tradition.

But equally important for American culture was their determination to celebrate and define the achievement of the great modernist writers without severing the connections between art and politics, literature and life. Against the art‐for‐art's‐sake “new critics” the editors argued for an understanding of the historical dimension of a literary work; against [sic.] ..the Communists they insisted on the independence of a work of art or literary criticism from any political expedience."