Know Your Enemy

What Happened to Norman? (w/ David Klion)

Episode Summary

We're back with our first episode of 2020! To plumb the depths of the neoconservative soul, we read Norman Podhoretz's 1967 memoir "Making It" with our friend David Klion of Jewish Currents (and Twitter.com).

Episode Notes

Making It is Norman Podhoretz's 1967 memoir about his journey from the working-class neighborhood of Brownsville, Brooklyn to his heady ascent in the New York literary scene of 1950s and '60s. It's also a fascinating psychological study of a man on the cusp of converting from Cold War liberalism to what came to be known as neoconservatism—a shift driven, at least in part, by the cool reception of this book. Making It proves a fascinating text through which to understand not just one conservative mind, but multiple generations of New York intellectuals, the neoconservative movement, and the politics of grievance, self-pity, and narcissism that have come to define much of conservatism in the Trump era.

Sources Cited:

• David Klion, "The Making and Unmaking of the Podhoretz Dynasty," Jewish Currents, Dec 19, 2017
• Norman Podhoretz, "My Negro Problem — And Ours," Commentary, Feb 1963
• Janet Malcolm, "‘I Should Have Made Him for a Dentist'" New York Review of Books, Mar 22, 2018
• Louis Menand, "The Book That Scandalized the New York Intellectuals," The New Yorker, Apr 24, 2017
• Benjamin Moser, "My Podhoretz Problem — And Ours," Jewish Quarterly, Dec 5, 2018
• Lee Smith, "Making It," Tablet, Jan 16, 2019