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DWIGHT_MAC

                                             November 19, 2012

Trying to read Dwight MacDonald's
"Masscult and Midcult" is a trying
experience.

This is a real, pipe-stem chewing
nasal New York Intellectual, drawling       I just checked this impression,
an endless barrage of poorly supported      and it turns out that Macdonald
and often dubious assertions: the           was more of a prissy whiner than
resoundlingly snobbish voice of the         a nasal drawler.  And he was into
high-culture looking down and casting       cigarettes, not pipes.
it's judgements on both masses and
"mids".                                           [link]

  Trying to figure out what was supposed
  to be good about this guy, I retreat
  to George Scialabba's essay about him,
  "An Exemplary Amateur".

  Scialabba remarks on how likeable Macdonald
  was: he usually remained friendly with the
  targets of his criticism.  This cuts no ice for
  us now, looking back at his snide, irritating
  pronouncements.
                                                         COMMON_RESPECT

  Scialabba has a lot of respect for Macdonald's
  political writings of the forties, published in
  his journal "Politics" and later collected in
  "Memoirs of a Revolutionist".  It is a point in
  Macdonald's favor that Chomsky was influnced by
  Macdonald's "The Responsibility of Peoples",
  and referenced it in his own "The
  Responsibility of Intellectuals"...

  (Though I don't know that I quite agree
  with Scialabba's exalted opinion of the
  Chomsky essay.)

      The trouble, then, is that the good
      folks at the NYRB have choosen to push
      his somewhat later writings, having
      retreated from politics to Culture:

      "Turgenev went into exile;
      Macdonald went to work for
      _The New Yorker_ ..."



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