and Gloria and drive them to a motel. He then hung up. Irnthought no more about it, until a few days later I got a four-pagernclosely typed letter telling me that our friendship was over andrndone with, because I had failed to offer them hospitality thatrnnight. (Because ofthe distance it had not occurred to me.) Onrnanother occasion he hectored and lectured me savagely becausernI had complimented a young woman on the attractivenessrnof her wig: for reasons unfathomable to me he consideredrnthat an insult. He believed, as I do, that good manners are notrnsuperficialities, that manners have a moral foundation; yet hernchose to be offensive and rude on occasion. Still, unlike therncelebrated Lady Hester Stanhope about whom Kinglake wroternin Eothen that “with all the force and vehemence of her invective,rnshe displayed a sober, pahent, and minute attention to therndetails of vituperation, which contributed to its success a thousandrntimes more than mere violence,” Dwight’s rudeness wasrndefensive, the unexpected outburst of some kind of suppressedrnrage. During the last tragic years of his life that rage burst forthrnmore and more often. We now know that his physical illnessrnhad then affected his mind. This was especially tragic as he wasrnobviously suffering in more than one way; but also because hernwas a man of great kindness, with a mental and mora! range farrnwider—and deeper—than that of most intellectuals. You hadrnto know—and listen to—him to understand that. It was there,rnlatent in some of his writings; but then he wrote no books, andrnhe was no public speaker.rnA tragic side of his character was his diffidence. Few peoplernsaw this. People thought that he was abrasive and arrogantrnbecause he was exaggeratedly self-confident. The opposite wasrntrue. His self-distrust was deeply hidden, at great and profoundrnvariance with his strong, confident, sure-footed opinions —rnwhich, however, were as genuine as his self-distrust (anotherrnexample of the shortcoming of modern psychological theoriesrnof “super-ego” and “sublimation”).rnHowever, self-distrust and diffidence are not the same asrnmodest)’ and humility: the latter may serve all kinds of constructivernpurposes, while the former are often mental obstaclesrnto achievement. To begin with the most obvious example:rnDwight never wrote a book. This was not only the result ofrninsufficient self-discipline. It was the result of insufficientrnself-confidence. He did not think that his writing ability couldrnsustain the effort. He was a brilliant sprinter; a fine middledistancernrunner; not a long-distance runner. During that lastrn15 or 20 years of his life his indiscipline and his dififidence beganrnto feed upon one another. He was — in fits and starts —rnbeginning to work on a book, and on a very important one: hisrnmemoirs. I had something to do with that. I urged andrnimplored him during nearly 20 years to do so, because of myrnbelief of the very great importance of such a book. DwightrnMacdonald was in the center, or at any rate near the center, ofrnAmerican intellectual life for 50 years. He knew the protagonists;rnthe passing scene; but even more important were hisrnunique and honest powers of observation and insight, and hisrnabilit}’ to describe much of this in his inimitable prose. He hadrnalready demonstrated his capacit}’ to do that kind of writing inrnhis short-run pieces put together in Memoirs of a Revolutionist.rnI have many letters from him about this, as I nagged him to getrngoing. Publishers offered him advances; he did begin the book;rnbut he came nowhere near to more than the draft of a chapter,rnor perhaps not even that. This was a tragedy, as much for himrnas for the history of American civilization.rnYet there are more than a half-dozen books that he wrote.rncollections of his essays and articles. Unlike most books of thatrnkind, they are genuine books, uniformly readable and goodrnfrom end to end, because they are extraordinarily coherent.rnThey are living illustrations of the coherence of his principlesrnand also of his mental vision: scattered small monuments to hisrngreatness as a writer. He knew that the choice of every word wasrnnot only an aesthetic but a moral choice: in this sense alone hernwas an American moralist. Most of his contemporaries did notrnrecognize this particular quality: a few, such different people asrnMary McCarthy and Malcolm Muggeridge, did. The fault forrnthe insufiFiciency of his recognition was due to the pettiness andrnnarrowness and ideological obscurantism of his contemporaryrnintellectuals; but then Dwight contributed to this himself. Hisrnoccasionally erratic behavior, his unfashionable idiosyncrasies,rnhis skepticism of anything and anybody declared “serious” orrn”seminal” gave ample evidence to those people who were inclinedrnto think that he was not sufficiently serious, and not sufficientlyrnintellectual.rnOpposites attract. He came from an old upper-middleclassrnScottish-Protestant American family. He rejectedrntheir standards and ideals early, in the 20’s, before he himselfrnwas 20 (though not them: he dedicated one of his books to hisrnfather. He once told me that his father laughed only at goodrnstories, while his mother laughed at none). Knowing and feelingrnthe powers of his mind—and, presumably, of his senseshernwas attracted to the New York bohemian and intellectual atmosphere.rnIn many ways he was a genuine intellectual: hernenjoyed the ceaseless ideological argumentations and politicalrnsquabbles among the intelligentsia, especially during thern1950’s; they were aware of his mental powers; yet he wasrnplagued, too, by the complications of his character. Like thosernof every patrician who wants to be a bohemian, and of everyrnaristocrat who wants to be a populist, his personality was complicated.rnHe was flattered and admired and feared on occasion,rnbut once the New York intellectuals found (in the 1960’s) thatrnthe generating of their own publicity could be very profitable,rnthey no longer took him seriously enough. They thought thatrnhe was not One Of Them; he was not quite An Intellectual.rn(This was true of those on the left as well as of those ofthe newrn”right,” especially ofthe neoconservatives, disliked as he was byrnIrving Howe and hated by Sidney Hook.)rnThe opposite was true. He was more than An Intellectual;rnsurely more than a New York Intellectual, for at least two reasons.rnOne of these was his strong moral and aesthetic sense.rnHe could detect—and, moreover, identify—the slightest tracernof intellectual or stylistic fraudulence from no matter what ideologicalrndirection, with the kind of sureness with which arnchampion tea-taster or wine-taster would pinpoint the most minusculernpresence of adulteration, resting on the sustained experiencernof a lifetime. In addition to the sureness of his moralrninsight, the very extent of his literar)’ knowledge was phenomenal.rnHe was so much better educated than most of the intellectualsrnand artists in whose bohemian circles he lived—duringrnthe last 20 years of his life, more and more out on the edge ofrntheir circles. Few ofthe latter knew (and know) much about literaturernbefore, say, 1880. Their knowledge reaches back tornTolstoy, to Dostoyevsky, perhaps to Matthew Arnold or tornGeorge Eliot. Dwight knew English literature from Chaucerrnand Shakespeare, backward and forward. One of his best sentencesrnis the one with which he ended his review of The NewrnEnglish Bible, in 1962: “Like finding a parking lot where arnNOVEMBER 1998/15rnrnrn