When Norman Podhoretz—then editor of Commentary but not yet the founder of neoconservatism—showed a manuscript of his memoir Making It to the great literary critic Lionel Trilling, his mentor, Trilling begged him never to publish it. When the book was nonetheless published, critics promptly panned it. Now a 50th-anniversary edition has been released—part of a series of “20th-century classics.” In conversation with his son John, the elder Podhoretz discusses the bygone literary world he depicts in the book and his own shock at the book’s hostile reception by the denizens of that world. (Video, 80 minutes.)
More about: Lionel Trilling, New York Intellectuals, Norman Podhoretz