Arendt and McCarthy; Friends in
Adversity, Writers Write on Their Reviews
By DARYL ROYSTER ALEXANDER
The New York Times, February 26, 1995
Friendship often begins inauspiciously. In
1945 Mary McCarthy's flip remark about Hitler incensed Hannah
Arendt, a German-born Jew who had fled a French internment
camp. Yet politics drew them together. "Let's end this
nonsense," Arendt said three years later. "We think
so much alike."
"Between Friends" is a
collation of 25 years of letters between them, edited by Carol
Brightman and published last month. Their relationship thrived
on divergence and agreement -- an American orphaned at 6 and a
European uprooted by Fascism. The letters began in 1949, ending
in 1975 with Arendt's death, and show two intellectuals
translating Latin as well as trading gossip.
In 1963 Arendt, whose first book,
"The Origins of Totalitarianism," appeared in 1951,
ignited controversy with "Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report
on the Banality of Evil," which recounted the war-crimes
trial of Adolf Eichmann. Lionel Abel in The Partisan Review
charged, Ms. Brightman writes, that "Arendt had made
Eichmann esthetically palatable and the Jews esthetically
repugnant." The same year, McCarthy's novel "The
Group" was dismissed by Norman Mailer as a
"lady-book" at the level of "the best novel the
editors of the women's magazines ever conceived in their secret
ambitions."
Their letters show a mutual support
system that says: let false friends beware. Excerpts follow.
Dearest Mary:
. . . . Why did I not write earlier?
Well, the truth of the matter is that I did not "feel
fine." Heinrich [ Blucher, Arendt's husband ] has not been
well, he is much better now, working as usual etc. . . Add to
this the Eichmann-trouble which I try to keep from him as much
as I possibly can -- and you will understand that I am in no
mood of writing. You probably know that PR [ Partisan Review ]
also turned against me in a rather vicious manner (Lionel Abel
who anyhow goes around town spreading slander about myself as
well as Heinrich), and generally, one can say that the mob --
intellectual or otherwise -- has been successfully mobilized. I
just heard that the Anti-Defamation League has sent out a
circular letter to all rabbis to preach against me . . . . What
a risky business to tell the truth on a factual level without
theoretical and scholarly embroidery. . . .
Sept. 16, 1963
Dearest Mary:
Our letters crossed and I am kind of
sorry that I wrote you at a moment of depression. . . . That
the "boys" have tried to turn against you seems to me
only natural and I think it has more to do with "The
Group" being a best-seller than with any political
matters. . . .
My reason for breaking with the PR
people has nothing to do with the content of Abel's review, but
with the choice of the reviewer. What is involved is (a) that
they knew that Abel had written a piece against me before . . .
hence was hostile to begin with and (b) that they showed an
extraordinary lack of the most elementary respect for myself
and my work in choosing somebody like Abel as a reviewer.
. . . There are some points in the
report which indeed are in conflict with the book on
totalitarianism, but God knows Abel didn't spot them. These
points are as follows: First: I speak at length in . . .
"Totalitarianism" about the "holes of
oblivion." On page 212 of the Eichmann book I say,
"The holes of oblivion do not exist. Nothing human is that
perfect, and there are simply too many people in the world to
make oblivion possible. One man will always be left alive to
tell the story." Second: If one reads the book carefully,
one sees that Eichmann was much less influenced by ideology
than I assumed in the book on totalitarianism. The impact of
ideology upon the individual may have been overrated by me.
Even in the totalitarianism book, in the chapter on ideology
and terror, I mention the curious loss of ideological content
that occurs among the elite of the movement. The movement
itself becomes all-important; the content of anti-Semitism, for
instance, gets lost in the extermination policy, for
extermination would not have come to an end when no Jew was
left to be killed. In other words, extermination per se is more
important than anti-Semitism or racism. Third, and perhaps most
importantly, the very phrase "Banality of Evil"
stands in contrast to the phrase I used in the totalitarianism
book, "radical evil." This is too difficult a subject
to be dealt with here, but it is important.
Sept. 20
Dearest Hannah:
. . . . I want to help you in some
way and not simply by being an ear. What can be done about this
Eichmann business, which is assuming the proportions of a
pogrom? Whether you answer or not (and I still feel it would be
best if you answered somewhere, even if not in PR), I am going
to write something to the boys for publication.
. . . Nicola [ Chiaromonte, the
Italian critic ] feels that the issues raised by your book
ought to be discussed. Not the debater's points
"scored" by Lionel [ Abel ] but the implications of
your views about the role played by the Jewish Councils -- that
is, what is implied about organizations in modern society
generally. He would also like to know why you think the Nazis
failed in their anti-Semitic program in Denmark, Bulgaria and
Italy -- this apart from the presence or absence of Jewish
Councils and from the sheer facts as you give them. Can a
common factor be found to explain this? For if there is such a
common factor, it ought to be cultivated and safeguarded by
humanity for future emergencies. Or is there no such thing?
Sept. 24
Dearest Mary:
. . . I am convinced that I should
not answer individual critics. I probably shall finally make
not an answer, but a kind of evaluation . . . . I also intend
to write an essay about "Truth and Politics," which
would be an implicit answer. If you were here, you would
understand that this whole business, with few exceptions, has
absolutely nothing to do with criticism or polemics in the
normal sense of the word. It is a political campaign, led and
guided in all particulars by interest groups and governmental
agencies. It would be foolish for me, but not for others, to
overlook this fact. The criticism is directed at an
"image," and this image has been substituted for the
book I wrote.
Oct. 3
Dearest Hannah:
. . . In Paris I am assaulted by
clippings about "The Group," many of them terribly
hostile, and by requests for interviews and photos. Success
seems to take so much of your time: you are devoured by it. And
I confess I'm depressed by what seems to me the treachery of
the New York [ Review of Books ] people. I suppose you saw the
Mailer piece and the parody that preceded it. I find it strange
that people who are supposed to be my friends should solicit a
review from an announced enemy but even stranger that they
should have kept pestering me to write for them while hiding
from me the fact that the Mailer review was coming. . . . It
parallels, as I foresaw, in a small way the Eichmann furor, but
seems to lack even the hypocritical justification that Jewish
piety there provided. It occurs to me that a desire to make a
sensation has taken precedence in New York over everything
else.
Oct. 24