Volume 25, Number 18 · November 23, 1978
The Partisan
By Frederick C. Crews
Essays on Literature and Politics 1932-1972
by Philip Rahv, edited by Arabel J. Porter, by Andrew J. Dvosin, with a memoir by Mary McCarthy
Houghton Mifflin, 354 pp., $15.00
'Little magazines' are, for the most part, the mayflies of the literary world. Launched on implausibly idealistic manifestoes, briefly sustained by charity and overwork, and imperiled by an ever-worsening ratio of creditors to subscribers, they soon complete their scarcely noticed flights and sink away, to be replaced by swarms of others. Ephemerality is the little magazine's generic fate; by promptly dying it gives proof that it remained loyal to its first program. Conversely, when such a journal survives for decades and effects a change in the whole temper of cultural debate, we may be sure that a metamorphosis has occurred. In outward respects—format, financing, even the number of paying readers—the magazine may still be technically 'little,' but its editors will have shown a quite untypical gift for retreating from untenable positions, anticipating new currents of opinion, and harmonizing interests that would seem on their face to be incompatible.
Review, 4586 words
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