Adler, Alger and Fitz
fi . 0 be put in one's place twice
courteously but twice — in a siingle edition of The Spectator (October '2) and that during the middle of a general election is a somewhat exhilar ating experience, and perhaps even Unique. ah,11:1 Mr Larry Adler I must express my c"l0gies, perhaps even more so to 4(14n-self. Twenty or more years ago akeraut Was so much talk, often so shrill, o'n,
f --a Adler's tragic role as a victim
a,„wicCarthyism,' talk in the papers and ung friends of mine who were also Ai-thrills of Mr Adler's, and this combined much other talk about Hollywood unalities who had been 'victimised,' ricv„.,ell abroad, compelled to take the ha'Lvo Amendment and so on, that I must e been confused and, with increasVisse.hility, convinced in my confusion. Checlics a feeble excuse: I should have ed the remote facts. I offer my es to Mr Adler and yourself, and
'I shall never again forget that it was tennis as much as politics that caused Larry-boy to leave America. Since Mr Alger Hiss was befriended by my mother during Mr Hiss's time of adversity in New York, a time when Mr Hiss was making few, new, a-political friends, I am glad that this very tenuous link enables me to see Mr Hiss's courtesy as perhaps some form of counterweight to my ineptitude. Mr Benny Green, on the other hand, completely misunderstands me, though with equal courtesy, even praising my novels in charming terms. He threatens me, though, with apoplexy resulting from a lecture by him on enharmonic change. I can only say that, rising from the floor, I shall reduce him to an equally awful condition with a long exposition of what the word "dialectic" which he uses actually means, both in its original form and as used by Hegel, Marx et al. He is warned.
I have not parsed a sentence since I
was about eleven years ago, or approximately a year before I began collecting the records of Coleman Hawkins (Art Tatum came later). Nor do I "pay lip-service to Beethoven on the piano" since I do not play the piano even with eight fingers and two thumbs. I have enormous admiration for great musicians, actors and dancers, unlimited for the greatest. Which does not mean that I extend this to their political, scientific or metaphysical views. This reservation applies equally to poets and novelists as such. Mr Green in fact turned my meaning inside out. I should infinitely rather hear Mr Adler play Gershwin than read him on Nixon.
In fact I believe that the artist, the
creative perhaps more than the interpretative artist, holds a hope for our future — if he is good and honest — far in excess of the miserable offerings we have had from the politicians, the soldiers, the scientists, the economists, the technologists, most modern philosophers and so on. If Mr Green cares to read my forthcoming novel, The Golden Age, he will see that it's entirely and precisely devoted to this theme. Forgive what sounds like a commercial, but it's odd to have one's whole attitude to the world turned upside down,
Constantine FitzGibbon St Ann's, Killiney Hill Road, Dublin
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