Volume 33, Number 15 · October 9, 1986
Trop de Zèle
By Conor Cruise O'Brien
The Bloody Crossroads: Where Literature and Politics Meet
by Norman Podhoretz
Simon and Schuster, 221 pp., $16.95
The title and subtitle together make up a quotation from Lionel Trilling. The book is made up of nine essays: on the writers of The God That Failed group; on Camus and his critics; on Orwell; on F.R. Leavis; on Henry Adams; on 'The Adversary Culture and the New Class'; on Kissinger, on Milan Kundera, and on Solzhenitsyn. All of the essays contain—though in varying proportions—both literary criticism and political comment. In his introduction, Mr. Podhoretz reasserts his belief 'that it is possible for a critic to speak openly from a particular political perspective and to make political judgments without permitting such judgments to replace or obscure literary values as such.'
Review, 3860 words
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