In the mid-60s, Norman Podhoretz gave up on becoming the next Lionel Trilling. Instead he wrote about ambition, alienating almost everyone he knew... more »
At 15, he was a member of the Hitler Youth. At 24, he attacked Heidegger for sympathizing with Nazism. The complicated moral development of Jürgen Habermas... more »
Voltaire thought Shakespeare "a drunken savage”; Mencken dismissed Gatsby as a "glorified anecdote." Why great critics make terrible judgments... more »