on ‘Making It’ by Norman Podhoretz

51EqSwRsMAL._SX311_BO1 204 203 200_James Walcott at the London Review of Books:

In Making It, Podhoretz spun his local-boy-makes-good story as a Brooklyn lad who apprenticed under Trilling, F.R. Leavis and the polemical fight club of Partisan Reviewinto a living endorsement of the American Dream, taking a victory lap around his precocious career as a hotshot critic, magazine editor and merchant of ideas (what we would call today, if we hadn’t any shame, a thought leader). Putting extra pep into Podhoretz’s trot is the beaming knowledge that his success transcends that of mere mortal scribblers and red pencillers. To borrow from a popular song of the period, the 1967 edition Podhoretz is ‘in with the in-crowd’ (Jackie Kennedy, Lillian Hellman, George Plimpton); he goes where the in-crowd goes, knows what the in-crowd knows. Podhoretz was even invited to Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball of 1966, the party of the century. There could have been no greater confirmation of his having ‘arrived’.