cesses. That he now favors a morenmoderate course of action is his own affair,nbut I doubt that party regulars willnbe content to be co-opted by the leftnwing of the Democratic Party.nWilliam Barrett’s story takes upnwhere Isserman’s leaves off—at the endnof World War II, when, as a young mannhome from the European theater, he wasnintroduced into the Partisan Review circlenand soon joined the journal’s editorialnstaff. From the first, he was impressed bynthe chief editors, William Phillips andnPhilip Rahv, and by the imposing list ofncontributors from both sides of thenAtlantic. Moreover, as a Marxist henshared the Review’s radical but decidedlynanti-Soviet sympathies. Both Phillipsnand Rahv were outspoken aitics of officialncommunism, sophisticated intellectualsnfor whom the likes of EarlnBrowder simply did not exist. Yet if thenSoviet Union was anathema and thenAmerican Communist Party beneathncontempt, Phillips and Rahv proclaimedntheir allegiance to a “pure” Marxism innpolitics and to modernism in art, an explosivenmixture that continues to possessna wide appeal, however problematic itnmay be.nAs the years passed, Barrett’s initialnenthusiasm for the journal’s ideologynbegan to wane as his suspicion grew thatnparlor Marxism was self-deceptive andndishonestly detached. Sometime duringnthe early 1950’s, therefore, he resignednand began to fashion a distinguishedncareer as a professor of philosophy and annintelligent interpreter of European existentialism,na tradition of thought that isnuncongenial to the analytic philosophersnwho populate American departments ofnphilosophy. With uncommon insight,nBarrett recognized that Jean-Paul Sartre,nthe most famous of the existentialists,nwas not to be taken seriously as a philosophernand early on he turned his attentionnto Martin Heidegger, the singlenmost influential thinker of the 20th century.nIn splendid works such as Time ofnNeed and The Illusion of Technique,nBarrett explored such famous Hcideg-ngerian themes as the problematic naturenof technology and the quest of Being.nAbove all, however, he has pursuednHeidegger’s—and Nietzsche’s andnDostoevski’s—insight that the greatestnproblem confronting our age is that ofnnihilism, the paralyzing conviction thatnlife is without meaning.nAnyone as familiar with modern literaturenas Barrett is must have peered againnand again into the abyss of Nothingness,nfor at the heart of modernism there liesnthe conviction, or at least the abidingnsuspicion, that ours is an absurd world.nThus, in an otherwise affectionatenchapter, Barrett takes the late LionelnTrilling to task for having preferred E. M.nForster and Jane Austen to Dostoevski,nKafka,Joyce, and Proust. Without denyingnthe merits of the more conventionalnnovelists, he knows that Dostoevskin”reaches into regions of the human spiritnthat are not to be found in Jane Austen.”nThe Possessed and Crime and Punishmentnbelong to our world, one in whichnnaked souls search for each other andnhunger for some meaning beyond thenconventionalities of civilized behavior,nhowever vital to public order they maynbe. In part, of course, it is the breakdownnof manners and morals in the age ofndemocracy that has brought us face tonface with the Void. As Barrett points outnin Tim.e of Need, we are akin to Hemingway’sncharacters, for whom social conventionsnscarcely exist; thus left to ournown devices, we too can be brought tonutter that blasphemous parody of thenLord’s Prayer that Hemingway wrote forn”A Clean, Well-Lighted Place”: “Ournnada who art in nada, nada be thynname.”nIt is against the background of Barrett’snsearching philosophic and humannconcerns that one should read ThenTruants, for the book is in essence a quietnmeditation on the nihilistic mind of ourncentury. Looking back on Rahv and othernmembers of the old Partisan Review circle,nBarrett is now particularly struck bynthe “negative” or nihilistic character ofntheir thinking. Like so many intellectualsnnnof our time, their intelligence was largelyndestmctive and their capacity for infectiousnenthusiasm and joyous affirmationnexceedingly limited. Though never fullynconscious of their spiritual emptiness,nthey were sensitive enough to know thatnthey suffered from a profound and by nonmeans purely personal malaise.nIn his effort to provide a phenomenologicalndescription of this malaise, Barrettnrightly emphasizes the disappearancenof God and the attendant secularizationnof our culture. As Ivan Karamazovnconfided to his brothers, if God is dead,neverything is permitted; with that recognition,naccording to Camus, the moralnand intellectual history of our timenbegins. Barrett has always been fascinatednby the question of faith, and he isnimpatient with Heidegger’s well-knownnreluctance to consider moral andnreligious questions. While the great Germannthinker meditated in majestic solitude,nBarrett saw that “the number whonsuffocate from the sense of meaninglessnessnincreases day by day.” Inaeasingly,ntherefore, Barrett read and pondered thenpeculiarly contemporary work ofnWilliam James, for the American philosophernwas alive to the peril of nihilismnand to the consequent importance ofnreligion. Like James, Barrett is possessednof a genuine will to believe and is persuadednthat the path to personal andnpublic renewal must finally lead back tonthe holy and the saaed. To be sure, his isna dim religious vision colored by, butnquite distinct from, his Christian heritage.nWith Yeats, he believes that somenrough beast “slouches towards Bethlehemnto be born,” that some new revelationnis at hand, but he insists that thenWord cannot be received until wenachieve a preparatory reconciliation withnnature, from which we have becomenalienated by technology and by our profanenand instrumental obsession withnmanipulation and exploitation. In thenfinal analysis, he wrote in The Illusion ofnTechnique, “we shall have to find ourselvesnwithin nature before God is able tonfind us.”nIt is a beginning and by no means anJanuary 1983n