'Moral Agents' dissects the critics who shaped mid-20th-century literature
So here they are, the big cheeses. The nabobs and the he-men and the high-flying aesthetes, all in their haze of testosterone. Eight essays, by an eminent scholar and professor, on eight of the great competing masculinities of mid-century American letters: Saul Bellow, Norman Mailer, Lionel Trilling, Alfred Kazin, Frank O鈥橦ara, William Maxwell, Dwight MacDonald, and W. H. Auden.
A random-looking crew? Perhaps, says Edward Mendelson, but these were writers (and editors) who 鈥渟eized for themselves the power and authority to shape American culture.鈥� They seized it swaggeringly, or broodingly, with high frivolity or quiet distinction; they seized it with varieties of genius and religious feeling and/or politicking; they seized it at a time when it was there to be seized. And once they鈥檇 seized it, what did they do with it? What did it do to them? This is the brief Mendelson gives himself in Moral Agents: to examine 鈥渢he conflicts between [their] inward, intimate private lives ... and the lives they led in public鈥� and the extent to which the latter may have been determined by the former. Very good. Lead on, Edward Mendelson.
But first allow me to cavil briefly and pedantically at something I found in the introduction. Fearing that sensitive readers may recoil from the vulgar word moral, Mendelson hastens to reassure them that morality has nothing to do with 鈥渟upernatural decrees鈥� but is in fact 鈥渁 matter of the inner logic of actions and consequences, not of precepts and rules.鈥� (Surely it鈥檚 both, the precepts and rules 鈥� the laws, if you will 鈥� being simultaneous with the inner logic?)
He goes on to say that 鈥渢he clearest statement of this view of morality is Thucydides鈥� history of the Peloponnesian War.鈥� Which demands rebuttal 鈥� even from someone like me, who鈥檚 never read the history of the Peloponnesian War. Thucydides, really, over all other explicators and transmitters of morality down the ages? Confucius? Jesus? P. G. Wodehouse? It seems a bit arbitrary.
Enough quibbling around in the shallows. Let鈥檚 meet some of our moral agents. Mendelson has helpfully given each of them, in the chapter headings, a Tarantino-style street name: Lionel Trilling is 鈥淪age,鈥� Frank O鈥橦ara is 鈥淐elebrant,鈥� and so on. I went straight to Norman Mailer 鈥� 鈥淢ythmaker鈥� 鈥� always, for me, the most lovable and misunderstood literatus of this era.
Critics tend to make one of two errors when they size up Mailer: either they become preoccupied by his bozo exploits in the realm of head butting and feminist baiting, missing completely his uniquely ironic outer-space humility, or they take him more seriously than he took himself. Mendelson鈥檚 critical compass is steady. 鈥淭he archetypal impulse that blurred and abstracted his fictional characters made his political reportage vivid, focused and convincing.鈥� Spot on. 鈥淢ailer wrote prolifically about gods, devils, and divine forces.... He was not being metaphorical.鈥� Also spot on. And I enjoyed the characterization of Mailer鈥檚 universally insulting (to his fellow authors) essays 鈥淨uick Evaluations on the Talent in the Room鈥� and 鈥淪ome Children of the Goddess鈥� as 鈥渃heerful bumper-car m锚lees.鈥� I didn鈥檛 enjoy the movement of the essay from potted biography to erotic-therapeutic speculation: all psychoanalysis, I suppose, is armchair psychoanalysis, but Mendelson seems particularly detached from his flesh-and-blood subject when he starts to get into the Mythmaker鈥檚 鈥渞eal sexuality鈥� and hypothesizes a Mailerian fetish for 鈥渟tout older women.鈥�
These findings in the realm of the private (and unknowable) are a slight deformity of Mendelson鈥檚 book. Alfred Kazin 鈥� 鈥淥utsider鈥� 鈥� becomes involved with 鈥渁 beautiful young woman with a history of affairs with writers and artists.鈥� Poor Alfred Kazin: how was he to know that 鈥渟he called these lovers her 鈥榚ducators鈥� and imagined she would become more intelligent by going to bed with them, much as young stockbrokers imagine they can become better-looking by going to bed with fashion models鈥�? This is, basically, high-toned tittle-tattle, bristling with giveaway gossipy certitude and scorn.
Later, in his chapter on Saul Bellow 鈥� 鈥淧atriarch鈥� 鈥� Mendelson takes the part of Greg Bellow, Saul鈥檚 son, in a family squabble about Saul not showing up at Greg鈥檚 daughter鈥檚 wedding. He quotes Greg鈥檚 memoir, to the effect that Greg and his daughter 鈥渉ad a heart-wrenching conversation about how Saul could inflict so much pain by making commitments and failing to fulfill them.鈥� Is this any of his, or our, business? Maybe Saul had a clonking depression that day and had to lie on the floor. Maybe he had diarrhea. It occurs to me that the prime moral agent at these moments might be Mendelson himself, lasering confidently through the layers of his subjects and passing his post hoc judgments.
Nonetheless, these eight essays are considerable, and useful, feats of compression and instruction. And of reclamation, in some cases 鈥� where else am I going to get an 18-page primer on William Maxwell (鈥淢agus鈥�), the novelist who, as fiction editor of the "New Yorker," 鈥渜uietly exercised his power to shape a literary culture in which his own plotless narratives and subdued syntax were the dominant fictional mode鈥�?
Mendelson creates some potent images, too. 鈥淎lthough he began many novels and published one,鈥� he writes of Lionel Trilling, 鈥渉e kept retreating into despairing academic dignity.鈥� Awful. Indelible. And Mendelson, like me, adores W. H. Auden. (He has edited several Auden collections and is the literary executor of Auden鈥檚 estate.) His chapter on Auden 鈥� 鈥淣eighbor鈥� 鈥� is as lovely and expert as one would hope, with a particular emphasis on Auden鈥檚 鈥渟ecret life鈥� of generosity and human brotherhood. 鈥淎 few years later I got a phone call from a Canadian burglar who told me he had come across Auden鈥檚 poems in a prison library and had begun a long correspondence in which Auden gave him an informal course in literature. Auden was especially pleased to get him started on Kafka.鈥�
If聽the occasionally insider-ish, intramural tone of "Moral Agents" is the price we pay for the phone call from the Canadian burglar, it鈥檚 worth it.
