Customer Reviews

Ex-Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt and Norman Mailer

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I've been waiting for this book for years. I am in my early thirties, and have lived enough life to know that people like Ginsberg did perhaps irreparable damage to this country. I know for a fact that his literary ilk made an impression on me, as a young man. I had the miserable experience, in fact, of trying to be a liberal for far too many years. The "antinomianism" that Podhoretz talks about in his chapter on Ginsberg is appealing, dangerously so, in the very fact that it allows for a complete break-down of discipline, whether that be discipline in art or in the way one lives one's life. President Clinton is a perfect example of this. Most of the people in my generation take antinomianism one step further--integrating the undisciplined elements with elements of what appear to be a "normalcy" (tattoos, piercings, promiscuous sexual encounters and profanity are de rigueur at most places of work inhabited by my generation. But contrary to popular imagination, my generation works quite hard, as I suppose, does Clinton). We have reached an age when MTV shows middle-teens in the midst of soft-porn "undressing."

The attendent nihilism that goes along with this break-down of mores and loss of virtue is far, far worse than someone like Podhoretz could imagine, I think, as he did not inherit these things. Nonetheless, his job at hand was to speak of his ex-friends, and he does so without pulling any punches. Allen Ginsburg is hit hardest, and deservedly so. Surely, it was the fame of men like Ginsburg who helped set the trend toward perversity in literature and in the media in general. Once nasty stuff like this makes its way into the vernacular, Pandora's Box is opened. As far as base human instincts are concerned, what is more appealing, anyway: instant gratification, sexual deviance and anarchy, or discipline, gentlemanly behavior, and patriotism? Yes, he "got" Podhoretz's generation through their children. Ginsburg's ilk also did a pretty good job of damaging my generation, too. Evil stuff. And, even scarier, institutionalized stuff.

I remember viewing a documentary about Berkeley, in the final throes of my sorry liberalism, watching Ronald Reagan excoriate the faculty about the way in which students had taken over the University. The next frame shows Ginsburg banging cymbals together. And then we see student radicals trying to block entrance into the draft board offices in Oakland. Unfortunately, most people in my generation would scoff at Reagan, cheer for Ginsburg, and look with dumbfounded amazement at the draft-board fracas. Likewise, I believe most would scoff at Podhoretz, if not for his perceived prudishness, as much as for the fact that most of the people he was writing about are dead and gone. There is no such thing as the "Family" anymore. The issues they were fighting over have been replaced with arguably more complicated issues, at least on the geo-political scene. Nonetheless, what many of us can and should see is that we have fallen into a moral abyss that will be very difficult to climb out of. Gertrude Himmelfarb speaks of "two cultures." I have seen both, and, thank-you Norman, I now understand why I arrived on your side for once and for all.

This book reads like one of those "steamy novels." There is everything here. Sex, drugs, poetry, homosexuality. You name it, you got it. The book basically is Norman Podhoretz and he basically devotes each chapter to a person or people in a group known as "The Family." The list of characters includes Hannah Arendt, Allen Ginsberg, Lionel Trilling and Diane Trilling, Lillian Hellman, and some other ones. Podhoretz basically tells us their personalities and how come he finally realized that liberalism is "wrong." The book is his personal "memoir" on how to became disenchanted with the left. One of the good parts of the book is the fact that it shows such admired figures such as Lillian Hellman and Norman Mailer in a light that hasn't been bestowed on them. The majority of the works on these people almost always paint them as geniuses. But Podhoretz shows us much more in the process. This book will be good 100 years from now to establish fact from fiction on characters. People such as Norman Mailer and Allen Ginsberg who are considered geniuses who fight for what they believe in are portrayed in a different light. The book shows more of their "dark sides" than other books. Podhoretz writes in a very good way. His voice seems to come of the book and you can actually hear him talking to you. I do wish it could have been longer and in some parts he could have been more sensitive but all in all it was good. This book tells a lot about the generation that made up the intellectual sixties and fifties.

Norman Podhoretz's Ex-Friends is a fascinating look into the Culture Wars that have rumbled across our intellectual landscape for the past 50 or 60 years. Podhoretz has been in the trenches throughout, though his alliances changed radically as he came to see, with more and more acuity, the destructiveness of leftist thought. He reveals a great deal about the characters he called friends--and then ex-friends--as he made his own journey from the left to the right. "Rigid ideologue" he may be, but only someone reading this book with the "left side" of his brain would claim that the subjects of his study are enlightened and tolerant. How else to explain the vitriolic attacks on Podhoretz for having honest questions about the motives and tactics of the liberal establishment? Is Norman Podhoretz a "paranoid little bigot" as one (no doubt open minded) reviewer claims? Only if love of country and the desire to see true democracy flourish are malignant ideas. As it stands, Ex-Friends is a brilliant expose of the lunacy of the left, an often thinly veiled totalitarianism passing itself off as progressivism. (The chapters on Ginsberg and Mailer are sufficient to illustrate this point.) Podhoretz's contribution to this discussion is invaluable, and only a recalcitrant liberal would call it "amusing garbage." I only hope, Mr. Podhoretz, that there is more where this came from.

Norman Podhoretz is one of the most important American intellectuals of the Post- War period. His shift away from the Left toward a Conservative position helped mark a new period in American intellectual life. In this memoir he writes about the ' friends' of a former time, each of whom is a distinguished 'name' by themselves. Allen Ginsberg, Hannah Arendt, the Trillings, Lionel and Diana, Lillian Hellman and Norman Mailer. Podhoretz blends the personal anecodote with the ideological quarrel in explaining his estrangement from these friends. At one point he talks about how their radical indulgence in their own appetites led to a kind of moral chaos which he understood as destructive and damaging.
There is a question raised by many readers of the morality of turning on old friends in this way, and writing as if one were the only righteous man among a bunch of misguided moral morons. Other readers point out the possible envy motive given the fact that all the people he writes about are probably considered by most to be more important ' creative figures ' than him. Certainly Arendt, and Mailer fit this category.
Podhoretz however should not be underestimated and he as a critic , and as a moral and literary guide is a person of considerable weight and stature. I would not say that everything here suits my taste, but there is a great deal of interesting writing about the intellectual life of the American fifties, and of some of its major characters.

I recently have become familiar with Norman Podhoretz through his essays in Commentary Magazine and was thrilled to find out that this new book was on the stands. Having just finished it, I am happy to say that the fulfillment is as great as the anticipation.

Mr. Podhoretz views on the recent intellectual and political history of the US (and broader) is brought forth through enlightening essays on these "Liberal Minds." His ability to enlighten me about the lives and the views of his subjects, as well as his own views, through his wonderfully clear and readable prose, is a blessing.

His views have made me think and rethink my own views and I look forward to hours of conversation with my own friends about the book itself.

Only one thing, while I understand Mr. Podhoretz' view that strong belief in contrary systems can lead to the breakup of friendships, I sincerely hope his book provides fertile ground for the cementing of new ones, rather than the breakup of old.

This highly readable book is going to be despised on the far left for exposing some of the key intellectual icons/godparents of the movement as insidious buffoons. A useful and brief companion book written years ago for some context would be Tom Wolfe's Radical Chic/Mau Mauing the Flakcatchers.

Norman Podhoretz was a New York intellectual in the 1950's-60's, once editor of Commentary magazine. A left-leaning writer then, in the early 70's he began leaning right and became one of the "founding fathers" of neoconservatism. He was an anti-Communist who rebelled against the anti-American bent of the 60's radicals. (The thought of Jane Fonda all decked out in her love beads sitting down with the North Vietnamese leadership to trash all things American still gives neocons the heebie-jeebies.)

This was when he began breaking with old friends, such as the ones named in the book's title. Most of these people (taken from Podhoretz's viewpoint) are not very pleasant. (Is there anything more vicious than an intellectual scorned?) But Podhoretz is very much on the defensive, and like the "lady who protests too much," makes the reader wary. Whether you go along with his politics or not, I thought it was a pretty interesting book anyway.

One by one, like addicts knocking at the door of rehab clinics, leftist intellectuals, beaten and bruised by the intrinsic destruction of their ideology are seeing the light and calling it quits.

To a doper, a reformed buddy is a non-person, no longer of benefit or value, and ceases to exist.

David Horowitz amply illustrates this result in his beautiful book, Radical Son.

Little guys all over this great nation are enjoying the new life they too have discovered, and have little remorse for their ex-friends as well.

Norman Podhoretz is a wonderful writer along with being one of the foremost intellectuals of our time. Here he describes his relationships with intellectuals equally famous (or more famous) as he such as Allen Ginsberg, Lionel Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer. There's enough on each one of them to give those of us largely unfamiliar with them insight on the personage's life and times. Podhoretz walked among them and was considered a peer. Together the group was known as "the family" in New York circles. Unfortunately for his friendships, Podhoretz changed with the times and became more conservative. Needless to say this change was resented and led to his being abandoned after the fact by many of his former friends. Of course, some of the problems he had with these individuals was a product of ego clash. This was particularly true with Mailer who appears to have been a most treacherous man to deal with. Overall, Podhoretz speaks of his ex-friends with clear cut affection and shares with readers a glimpse of an era long forgotten. A sterling read.

Loaned this out from the library and have completed the introduction, the chapter on Ginsberg and am now in the middle of the Mailer chapter.
Love N.P.'s logical conclusions to what has happened to our society.
It is fairly easy to read for a non-intellectual as myself and I would like to quote a sterling example of just one of the passages that validated my views:
pg. 8 "What happened in the 1960's was, to put it simply but not inacurately, a mass conversion to leftist radicalism by the formerly liberal intellectual establishment and a commensurate seizure of the enormous power by radical ideas and attitudes over the institutions controlled by intellectuals. These institutions, as everyone now knows, include the universities, the major media of information and entertainment (New York and Hollywood, the big newspapers and magazines, the movies and television), and increasingly even the mainstream churches."

There is nothing BUT such perfect and precise wording on every page of this book and I am SO glad I selected it and look forward to anything else I come across, which I will be seeking out, by Mr. Podhoretz.