The Twilight of the Intellectuals: Culture and Politics in the Era of the Cold War

Chicago, IL: Ivan R. Dee, Publisher, 2000. Trade Paperback. Like New. 8vo or 8° (Medium Octavo): 7¾" x 9¾" tall. Richard Rossiter (Cover Design). 376 pp. Clean, fresh copy with very light shelf wear, crisp pages and clean text. Synopsis: This seems to be a period of stocktaking by neoconservatives, for Kramer's collection of essays and reviews comes on the heels of Norman Podhoretz's E x-Friends. The two authors share many attitudes, having both evolved from r adical leftists in their early years to vociferous critics of what they see as today's totalitarian dominance of American political and cultural thoug ht by the left. But Podhoretz's book was freshly written and observed, whil e Kramer's is basically a collection of book reviews and essays, most of th em written during the past dozen years. While Podhoretz is essentially reti red, Kramer continues to enjoy a journalistic pulpit with his weekly pieces of art criticism in the New York Observer. He takes a lot of expected swip es here, usually employing as his base a biography of the subject under dis cussion: Lillian Hellman, Mary McCarthy, Dwight Macdonald, Susan Sontag, Je an-Paul Sartre, Kenneth Tynan. He blames Saul Bellow for not being sufficie ntly vigorous in responding to the PC attacks leveled against him, and has interesting observations on the permutations through which journals like Pa rtisan Review and the New Republic have passed. There are thoughtful and re vealing essays on two major art critics, Kramer's mentor Clement Greenberg and Meyer Schapiro, and on the mysterious Whittaker Chambers (whose now lar gely forgotten Witness Kramer describes as "one of the best books ever writ ten about the Communist experience in America"). Readers will find this to be a lively collection, whether or not they adhere to Kramer's stern view o f recent intellectual history.