MORE ON PERETZ’S THE CONTROVERSIALIST

Further note to Ken:

At the risk of you not minding me breaking my promise, here’s a bit more.

When Peretz moves through the history of what led up to the creation of Israel and what went on there thereafter, agree with him in whole or in part or not, he’s certainly brisk but compellingly informative. I like that he acknowledges some brutal Jewish doings during the 1948 war. That’s sensible of him rather than, as is often done  by Israeli supporters, bending facts to fit a narrative. 

Peretz’s being in the thick of things is never more apparent than when he, Walzer and someone else whose name escapes me successfully lobby Kissinger to convince Nixon to arm Israel during the 6 Day War.

Then things really take off when he writes about the history of TNR, its creation, its ownership history and original sensibility, his purchase of it, whom he hired, their personalities, their ideas, all their great exchanges and some of the editorial positions TNR took. Here he hits what’s to me thus far his memoir’s high note. He’s righteously unabashed in his pride at TNR aggressively confronting the old guard, the Protestant internationalists and idealists, especially the wealthy ones with TNR’s new-feet-on-the-ground Jewish tilt, with its emphasis on “peoples not individuals”. All of this is fabulous reading, totally engrossing. 

But then he shifts back to Harvard, Chapter 11, and he imo regresses to the weakness of the first 55 pages or so, the predominant quasi gossip. A dizzying array of name checking hits us with brief biographical notes but not typically and sufficiently—there are exceptions—counterbalanced by their ideas or other substantive details about them.

And then when he gets to New York, it gets worse. He talks about matters financial, the big monied people he befriended, including crooks like Milliken and Boesky. It gets oddly tiresome and produced in me a feeling a of being let down from the previous exhilarating heights. 

That’s where I ended on last read.

I hope things pick up as I start to round the clubhouse turn.