Making It

Product Description

Norman Podhoretz, the son of Jewish immigrants, grew up in the tough Brownsville section of Brooklyn, and attended Columbia on a scholarship, while also receiving degrees from Jewish Theological Seminary and Cambridge University. Returning to New York, he established himself as a pugnacious critic of literature and politics before becoming editor of Commentary magazine. Podhoretz was a central figure in the literary and political developments and controversies of the fifties and sixties, very much on the left. Then, in the early seventies, he entirely rejected his earlier positions, becoming a fierce neo-conservative, as he remains to this day. Making It came out in 1967, before that change of heart, though the scandal it would provoke helped to bring it about. Making It is Podhoretz's account of fighting his way from the streets of Brooklyn into and out of the Ivory Tower, of his military service, and finally into the ranks of what he calls oThe Family,o the small group of largely Jewish critics and writers whose opinions had come to dominate and increasingly politicize the American literary scene. It is a Balzacian story of raw talent and relentless and ruthless ambition. It is also a closely observed and in many ways still pertinent analysis of the tense and not a little duplicitous relationship that exists in America between intellect and imagination, money, social status, and power. The Family responded to Podhoretz's book with savage outrage, and Podhoretz soon turned no less angrily on them. Fifty years later, this controversial and legendary book remains both a riveting autobiography, a book that can be painfully revealing about the complex convictions and needs of a complicated man as well as a fascinating and essential document of mid-century American cultural life.Norman Podhoretz, the son of Jewish immigrants, grew up in the tough Brownsville section of Brooklyn, and attended Columbia on a scholarship, while also receiving degrees from Jewish Theological Seminary and Cambridge University. Returning to New York, he established himself as a pugnacious critic of literature and politics before becoming editor of Commentary magazine. Podhoretz was a central figure in the literary and political developments and controversies of the fifties and sixties, very much on the left. Then, in the early seventies, he entirely rejected his earlier positions, becoming a fierce neo-conservative, as he remains to this day. Making It came out in 1967, before that change of heart, though the scandal it would provoke helped to bring it about. Making It is Podhoretz's account of fighting his way from the streets of Brooklyn into and out of the Ivory Tower, of his military service, and finally into the ranks of what he calls oThe Family,o the small group of largely Jewish critics and writers whose opinions had come to dominate and increasingly politicize the American literary scene. It is a Balzacian story of raw talent and relentless and ruthless ambition. It is also a closely observed and in many ways still pertinent analysis of the tense and not a little duplicitous relationship that exists in America between intellect and imagination, money, social status, and power. The Family responded to Podhoretz's book with savage outrage, and Podhoretz soon turned no less angrily on them. Fifty years later, this controversial and legendary book remains both a riveting autobiography, a book that can be painfully revealing about the complex convictions and needs of a complicated man as well as a fascinating and essential document of mid-century American cultural life.
Norman Podhoretz is an author, editor, and political and cultural critic. He was the editor of Commentary from 1960 to 1965 and he has written several nonfiction books, including World War IV, The Prophets, Ex-Friends, and most recently Why Are Jews Liberal?. He was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2004. He lives in New York City. Benjamin Moser is the author of Why This World- A Biography of Clarice Lispector, which was a finalist for the NBCC Award, and the editor of a new translation of The Complete Stories of Clarice Lispector. A former books columnist at Harper's Magazine, Moser is now a columnist at The New York Times Book Review, and is currently at work on the authorized biography of Susan Sontag. He lives in the Netherlands.