This was an interesting convo! I used to have a friend who *hated* Janet Malcolm because he thought she had given journalists license to lie and deceive their audiences and feel that they were merely doing what their profession requires. I'm not sure if I totally agree with that but he felt it quite strongly. I'm somehow not surprised Horowitz and Podhoretz responded the way they did-I don't know as much about him but I get the vibe Horowitz's narrative about himself revolves much more around a sense of acknowledged victimization, while Podhoretz is both clearly devastated by what happened to his book, to his scene, in some sense to his people, but also can't quite seem to acknowledge that wound, or at least that's the sense I get. I'm reminded of something the orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart (himself a pretty colorful figure) once said about Hitchens (in the context of praising him vis a vis the other new atheists) to the effect that he had "a sharp mind wasted on conversation, public theater, and too much drink." Definitely agree about not only his writing getting worse but the tendency for great writers to succumb to certain rigidity when they shift politics. It doesn't even have to be to the right either!
This was an interesting convo! I used to have a friend who *hated* Janet Malcolm because he thought she had given journalists license to lie and deceive their audiences and feel that they were merely doing what their profession requires. I'm not sure if I totally agree with that but he felt it quite strongly. I'm somehow not surprised Horowitz and Podhoretz responded the way they did-I don't know as much about him but I get the vibe Horowitz's narrative about himself revolves much more around a sense of acknowledged victimization, while Podhoretz is both clearly devastated by what happened to his book, to his scene, in some sense to his people, but also can't quite seem to acknowledge that wound, or at least that's the sense I get. I'm reminded of something the orthodox theologian David Bentley Hart (himself a pretty colorful figure) once said about Hitchens (in the context of praising him vis a vis the other new atheists) to the effect that he had "a sharp mind wasted on conversation, public theater, and too much drink." Definitely agree about not only his writing getting worse but the tendency for great writers to succumb to certain rigidity when they shift politics. It doesn't even have to be to the right either!