A Moral Temper: The Letters of Dwight Macdonald - Hardcover

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1566633931 ISBN 13: 9781566633932

Publisher: Ivan R. Dee, 2001

Synopsis

Dwight Macdonald's biographer has brought together in one volume a comprehensive selection of letters from the correspondence of one of the most astute observers of American politics, society, and culture in the twentieth century. Macdonald's letters span his lifetime, from his education at Exeter and Yale in the twenties through his career as an editor of Partisan Review, founder of Politics magazine, staff writer for the New Yorker, columnist for Esquire, and cultural critic and essayist for other major publications. The scope of his interests was extraordinary as was the diversity of friends and colleagues who became his correspondents. He had an instinctive grasp of the important fact and important thought, and an uncanny ability to bring an issue before the intellectual community, of which he was a prominent member. Macdonald consistently had his eye on what he felt was a change in the moral temper of the times and a prevailing dehumanization of the individual. Few spoke more eloquently against the mechanized terror of the modern world and of the separation of means from ends. His letters, always spirited and engrossing, trace the life of an upper-middle-class white male, schooled in the elite institutions of the WASP establishment, who managed to jettison the prejudices and provincialism of his class and, through the force of an inquiring mind, become a penetrating critic of mid-century American civilization.

About this title

About the Author

In addition to his biography of Dwight Macdonald, Michael Wreszin has written the lives of two other American intellectual journalists-Oswald Garrison Villard and Albert Jay Nock. Mr. Wreszin is professor emeritus of history at Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.

Reviews

"Flattered you think my political philosophy worth a thesis and hopeful you will be able to define it more clearly than I ever have!" wrote critic and philosopher Dwight Macdonald to a graduate student in the 1950s. He then delivered a cogent pr‚cis of his political philosophy drawing on anarchists such as Kropotkin, rejecting both British and Russian collectivism and decrying war that negates the last part of his statement and stunningly exhibits his intelligence, wit and moral giantism. Born in 1906, Macdonald attended Exeter and Yale, and became by turns a Marxist, a Trotskyist, a pacifist, an anarchist, a prominent anti-Stalinist and a leading opponent of U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War. Along the way he edited the Partisan Review (1937-1943) and founded the influential magazine Politics in 1944, which introduced such writers as Simone Weil, Albert Camus and Mary McCarthy. The early letters to his parents and, from the 1930s through the '70s, the dozens written to many noted American editors, thinkers and writers (from Henry Luce and Stephen Spender to John Leonard and Harrison Salisbury) range from insightful and witty to cranky (he complains about advances and royalties and gripes about friends). Macdonald is an important American thinker whose work has been much overlooked and whose ever-evolving political philosophies have gone misunderstood. This wonderful collection should do much to remedy the situation and will be vital to students and scholars of American political thought and intellectual history.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

An acute observer and critic of American politics, society, and culture from the 1930s to the 1970s, Macdonald corresponded with a vast array of the movers and shakers of his time in the United States and Europe. He is probably best remembered now as a pivotal figure of anti-Stalinist Left politics as well as a seminal analyst of the mass culture of his day. Macdonald made his mark as an editor of the influential left-of-center magazine Partisan Review and later as founder of his own magazine, Politics. All of these activities are illuminated in this generous selection of letters, compiled by Wreszin (emeritus, history, Queens Coll.; A Rebel in Defense of Tradition: The Life and Politics of Dwight Mcdonald). Written with verve and gusto, the letters show him to be a penetrating critic of the American scene of his time. Recommended for academic libraries. Harry Frumerman, formerly with Hunter Coll., New York
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From the Depression through the years after Vietnam, Macdonald was an intellectual force to be reckoned with. In the pages of Fortune, Partisan Review, the New Yorker, and Esquire--not to mention Politics, the short-lived but respected journal he founded in 1944--Macdonald was a partisan in virtually every major political, social, and literary controversy. Macdonald was also a prolific letter writer--and a bit of a packrat! So Wreszin, a biographer of Macdonald, faced an embarrassment of riches in selecting letters for inclusion here. The "New York liberals"--Diana and Lionel Trilling, Mary McCarthy, Hannah Arendt, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Norman Mailer--are included, along with some New York not-so-liberals, such as William F. Buckley and Irving Kristol. But there are also letters from Macdonald's years at prep school and college, correspondence with literary figures such as T. S. Eliot, W. H. Auden, and Ezra Pound, and letters to publications objecting to their editorial stands or grumbling about how little they're paying for his work. A lively collection. Mary Carroll
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

Edition details

• Publisher: Ivan R. Dee
• Publication date: 2001
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1566633931
• ISBN 13: 9781566633932
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 512
• Editor: Wreszin Michael