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

Hilton Kramer (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 5, 2000

For nearly half a century, Hilton Kramer has been closely involved with the political and cultural world of American intellectuals—in an age when their character was, as Lionel Trilling once wrote, “predominantly of the Left.” In this provocative and engaging collection of his essays and reviews, Mr. Kramer explores, in effect, the intellectual history of the cold war and its divisive impact on our politics and culture. We live now, he notes, in the aftermath of an immense intellectual upheaval. Marxism and modernism, which for the most of the century had defined intellectual life in America, have now lost much of the moral authority they long enjoyed. Communism in the Soviet Union and its satellite states has collapsed; modernism is under assault in Western democratic cultures. In this sense, Mr. Kramer observes, we live in the twilight of an intellectual era. Tracing the critical debate that has governed this upheaval in our thinking, Mr. Kramer surveys the writers who were in the forefront of that debate—Whittaker Chambers, Lillian Hellman, Sidney Hook, Dwight MacDonald, Mary McCarthy, George Orwell, Clement Greenberg, Susan Sontag, Irving Howe, and others—and the issues that animated their criticism and controversies. The Twilight of the Intellectuals is certain to excite comment and argument as passionate as the debate it describes.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

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 Ex-Friends. The two authors share many attitudes, having both evolved from radical leftists in their early years to vociferous critics of what they see as today's totalitarian dominance of American political and cultural thought by the left. But Podhoretz's book was freshly written and observed, while Kramer's is basically a collection of book reviews and essays, most of them written during the past dozen years. While Podhoretz is essentially retired, 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 swipes here, usually employing as his base a biography of the subject under discussion: Lillian Hellman, Mary McCarthy, Dwight Macdonald, Susan Sontag, Jean-Paul Sartre, Kenneth Tynan. He blames Saul Bellow for not being sufficiently vigorous in responding to the PC attacks leveled against him, and has interesting observations on the permutations through which journals like Partisan Review and the New Republic have passed. There are thoughtful and revealing essays on two major art critics, Kramer's mentor Clement Greenberg and Meyer Schapiro, and on the mysterious Whittaker Chambers (whose now largely forgotten Witness Kramer describes as "one of the best books ever written 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 of recent intellectual history.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Kramer, former art critic for the New York Times and founding editor of the New Criterion, here collects essays from the latter as well as from Commentary, the Atlantic Monthly, and others. Many of the essays are updated to include Kramer's current reflections on the events and personalities he discusses. Taking postwar "intellectualism" and its effect on American culture as his theme, Kramer focuses on the "intellectuals" themselves more than on the events surrounding them. Though many of the personalities have faded from the popular imagination (Josephine Herbst, Nora Sayre), others remain alive in popular or academic milieus (Lillian Hellman, Mary McCarthy). Kramer also includes interesting essays on Clement Greenberg, Meyer Shapiro, and Lincoln Kirstein. For a more focused view of Kramer's take on the visual arts, see his Against the Grain: The New Criterion on Art and Intellect at the End of the Twentieth Century (LJ 3/1/95). Though for this reviewer's taste, Kramer finds a few too many Stalinists in the American cultural hierarchy, this is a recommended purchase for most collections.AMartin R. Kalfatovic, Smithsonian Inst. Libs., Washington, DC
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee (September 5, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566633117
• ISBN-13: 978-1566633116
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,923,344 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

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19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars gone to flowers, everyone..., May 10, 2000

By 

Philip Levy "Palski" (Maynarrd MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: The Twilight of the Intellectuals: Culture and Politics in the Era of the Cold War (Hardcover)

At any college in the 1960s, there was no more ominous presence than that of Jean Paul Sartre. He was an expressionless obsidian Buddha high on on a mountaintop, a force of nature, a thinker greater than nature itself. Sooner or later he would tip over and crush you as you dozed off in Contemporary Crusades or the Histrionics of the Lower Classes or in whatever class his cosmic status was accepted a priori. Thank you, Hilton Kramer for your marvelous book. Your chapter called "The Flowers on Sartre's Grave" has put Sartre in perspective for me. I believed in 1965 that intellectuals were supposed to like communism (a distant communism, it turns out), but how did Sartre ever subsume his theoties of individualism to such a hideous cause? Apparently even this Buddha made mistakes. Mr. Kramer makes it clear that Sartre was an apologist for the worst tyrannies in modern history.

It is truly liberating to read Kramer's critique of all the many anti-anti-communists whose writings have littered the second half of the 20th century. If Joseph McCarthy had not existed, the anti-anti-communists would have had to create him. Look at how this continues today with the snubbing of Elian (excuse me---Elia) Kazan at Oscars night.

At any rate, this book clarified a great deal about Sidney Hook, Lionel Trilling, and other critics whose direction and magnitude were always so mysterious to me. It was very revealing to see how these men, just by suggesting that communism had faults, drew the bitter ire of so many American writers.

To me, the place of honor that Hilton Kramer holds in literary history is due largely to the fact that (thanks to Tom Wolfe in "The Intelligent Co-ed's Guide" I know this) he was the only American Intellectual who, in 1976, sang the praises of the great scourge of socialism, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn. Five stars!

15 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent, November 13, 1999

By A Customer

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This review is from: The Twilight of the Intellectuals: Culture and Politics in the Era of the Cold War (Hardcover)

I found this collection of essays to be outstanding, yet depressing - outstanding because of the author's scintilating portraits of the people he writes about and depressing because of most of the people he writes about were clearly as awful as they were arrogant.

Additionally, his essay on biographies of the 'Bloomsbury' group changed the way I look at literary biographies generally - the reason for reading an author's bio is to enhance your understanding of their works, not to read

gossip about someone who may now be ignored as an author, but who has become 'famous for being famous'.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great book!, December 21, 2000

By 

Daniel Matthews (New York City) - See all my reviews

This review is from: The Twilight of the Intellectuals: Culture and Politics in the Era of the Cold War (Paperback)

This book piqued my interest to such a degree that I read it in two sittings. I loved the section on Susan Sontag. I've never been able to understand her which has always annoyed me because it's terrible to feel like your out of your depth with somebody you know is a total weasal. Kramer does a great job articulating her ideas so that I can see them for what they are. He introduces me to many people I've never heard of, namely Whitaker Chambers (what a fascinating character). To read a book written from the perspective of a non-Leftist thinking person is always a treat. A+