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Tape Number: VIII, Side Two
(July 18, 1978)
Gardner
Okay, what about Nixon?
McWilliams
Well, I had always been, in a manner of speaking, a student of Richard Nixon, from the time he ran against Jerry Voorhis and
from then on. For example, I knew quite a bit--from my former legal practice, and so forth--about the background of the Chotiners,
Murray Chotiner and his brother and their activities in the bail-bond business in Los Angeles and the clients that they represented.
This was also a factor in my attitude about Nixon. So I watched his career with microscopic care and interest because of his
California background. I knew the kind of milieu that he'd come from, and I knew also that--I wasn't surprised that he defeated
Jerry Voorhis because Jerry Voorhis was living on borrowed time in that district; that was basically a conservative district.
But Voorhis had such a fine reputation as a Christian family, respected for their good deeds and their good work, and so forth,
that they were content for a time to make an exception in the case of Jerry Voorhis. But sooner or later he would have been
defeated in that district. And at this time, the time had come because it was basically . . .
Gardner
It was the postwar era.
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McWilliams
Yes, postwar era and basically a conservative district. After all, Jerry had been in the EPIC campaign, and so forth. So I
think his time had come politically. And then of course I had followed Nixon's campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas, who
was an old friend. I thought I understood Nixon from the very beginning.
Gardner
What? [laughter]
McWilliams
I think I understood there was really nothing there. Somebody tried to convince me once that those Watergate trials were political
prosecutions; and I said they were not political prosecutions, because the fact is that Nixon wouldn't know a political value
if it came up and bit him. [laughter] He's not interested in political values; he's interested in power. And there was a most
remarkable book [Man in the Modern Age] written by Karl Jaspers, the German philosopher, and published first in Germany in 1931 and then not published here until
somewhat later in translation. But it's a book about modern man and society. Jaspers makes the point that with the development
of these big bureaucractic organizations-- governmental and private--and the spread of technology, that man becomes lost in
the function. If there was anything human about him, it tends to be shorn away or ground up in this meat-grinder process.
And I always thought that Nixon was a classic example of it. There was nothing
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left there except the politician. And I don't think he had any values one way or the other. I don't think it made a hoot of
difference to him.
Gardner
Did you ever meet him?
McWilliams
Actually, and ironically, I never met him. I say "ironically" because we were juxtaposed on a number of occasions, but it
just never happened. So I never met him. And Pat Buchanan, who was one of his aides, I had known as a journalist in St. Louis.
As a matter of fact, he once did quite a good piece for us about a prison scandal in Missouri. In the '68 campaign I got in
touch with Pat and said, "I wish you could set up an interview for me with Nixon. I know he would not be inclined to grant
it, but tell him I just want to interview him to get his ideas about California politics, the extent to which it is or isn't
different, and so forth." And Pat called me back and said, "Well, he's too busy with the campaign. He thinks it's an interesting
idea. Sometime later," and, you know, so forth and so forth. But we never had the interview. It would have been interesting
to see what you could get him to say on the subject, because I knew he had some ideas about it.
Gardner
Did you have anybody do firsthand pieces on him throughout this--I know there was a lot of opinion.
McWilliams
We did, well, one by Gene Marine that was,
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I thought, quite good called "The Cardboard Hero." We did a very thoughtful piece by a psychoanalyst whose name escapes me
at the moment, but it was a very thoughtful, good piece in which he said that there wasn't any character there; it was just
a career. There really wasn't any persona there, the same thing I'd been talking about. That was a very good Nixon piece.
And we did a very good piece by Mark Harris, an excellent piece ["Nixon: A Type to Remember"]. And Mark Harris had covered
the campaign with Nixon versus Pat Brown.
Gardner
In '62?
McWilliams
Yes, for Life, I think, as a matter of fact. And he'd interviewed Nixon a couple of times, went up to his home in Bel Air, and so forth.
That was a very good piece. And down the years we ran some very good pieces about Nixon; you can make an anthology of things
that we've said about Nixon. When the Watergate thing started, I felt it was such an ongoing affair and so difficult to project
pieces, because you never knew what the next week's headline would be, that I began to do rather long, signed editorials,
which continued all during that period in an effort to keep our readers abreast of what was really going on in those hearings.
I agree with William Buckley about this: that Nixon was the most important American politician of the thirty years from 1945
to 1975, from the inception
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of the Cold War to the debacle in Vietnam, the most important American politician. And I have an interesting notion about
Nixon. I've always felt that Nixon was so transparent he didn't really fool anyone. A friend of mine, Noel Parmentel--we don't
agree politically at all but he was an occasional
Nation contributor, very interesting fellow--and Noel is credited with that slogan beneath the photograph of Nixon: "Would You Buy
A Used Car From This Man?" I always thought that he was so transparent that it couldn't be that he was fooling people. And
to a degree I think that is true. I think those that voted for him tended to vote for him because they knew he was a kind
of confidence man politically, but that this was necessary; this is what you had to have. And also for another reason: that
in their innermost natures they recognized that there was quite a bit of Richard Nixon in them, that they had this same kind
of sleazy sense of values that he had, and so they could identify with him. I don't think they were really fooled by the man,
because I don't see how he could fool anyone. His manner of speaking, the tone of voice, and all the rest of it didn't ring
true, didn't ring true at all. And he couldn't create that atmosphere, because he didn't believe in anything, fundamentally--very
strange man.
I once asked Leone Baxter of Whittaker and Baxter, the firm--they were very canny people--and I said,
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"What's Nixon really like?" And she said, "Well, I don't know. I really don't know. Furthermore, I could think of only a couple
of people that might have an answer to that question." She said, "Pat Nixon would not be one of them. I think he mystifies
her as much as he mystifies me." She said, "I think one person who would know as much about him as anyone would be Robert
Finch, Bob Finch." And she mentioned someone else that I've forgotten offhand, but she said, "Haldeman. I've discussed it
with Haldeman. Haldeman didn't really feel that he knew him."
So he is a very strange man.
Gardner
He certainly is. Do you think that it's that emptiness you speak of that enables him to be so resilient?
McWilliams
Yes. And also he has a canny mind about American politics and certain standard ploys and moves--like a quarterback, a professional
football . . .
Gardner
His favorite sport.
McWilliams
His favorite sport--things that you do. For example, he has always known that if you come from the right or the conservative
section of politics and you are elected to office, the standard ploy is for you to move a little bit to the left of center
because you've got your constituency; you've got them in a captive role, and you then can do some of the things that maybe
a liberal couldn't do in the same circumstances. He knew this; this
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is why he went to China and for the summit meeting with Moscow. You will find that as early as 1960 he let out a few hints
that he was thinking in terms of some kind of detente with China as being not only necessary but also very good politics for
a Republican, which he was surely right about, surely right about. He, I think, would have raised the issue in '60, but Goldwater
promptly clobbered him. And he shut up about it; he didn't mention it anymore in 1960. But as early as 1960 he was thinking
that this was a classic ploy, a move for him to make, to reverse the field and go to--he understood this reversal-of-fields
gambit as well as any American politician. He understood that perfectly. And he understood how to keep that right wing in
some kind of--get their support and hold their loyalty without at the same time letting them completely call the turn. When
Goldwater was nominated in '64, Goldwater should have done what Nixon would have done under the circumstances.
He should have reversed his field.
Gardner
Right.
McWilliams
And begun to make gestures towards the liberal Republicans.
Gardner
Because he had with the Right.
McWilliams
And instead of doing that he cheered the right wing on! He became more vocal and rhetorically more extreme than he had been
before the convention. He didn't understand
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this kind of politics at all. Nixon did.
Gardner
Fascinating. Well, there were six presidents during the time that you were editor or affiliated with the Nation. Did you ever meet any of them personally, interview them?
McWilliams
No. Well, I met Kennedy; I met Truman. I never interviewed them, really, just met them. Well, six presidents--it's interesting
to me that six presidents, three Republicans and three Democrats, all felt locked into this war in Vietnam. This is an astonishing
commentary on the Cold War pressures, and so forth; that not one of them. . . . And when asked, you know, that one question
they would always refer to them as commitments. Well, who had made the commitment? They hadn't made it. Their predecessor.
Well, had their predecessor made the commitment? No, he hadn't really made the commitment. See? Here we were in a terrible
war for reasons that no one could really spell out. Incredible.
Gardner
Get back to the '68 very briefly. That was sort of the culmination of a lot of different things. We talked about the way it
was the culmination of the '65 boundary that you put up. Who covered Chicago for you? Do you remember that?
McWilliams
I covered the Chicago.
Gardner
Did you?
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McWilliams
Yes, I was out there. I covered most of the conventions in that period, Democratic conventions. I think I covered all of them.
I covered the `64 Republican in San Francisco, which was extremely interesting. And I think I did some pretty good reporting
of the `64 convention, the Republican convention in San Francisco, because I said this is a case of a new class, a new kind
of class that's emerging in the sun-belt areas that is taking over. They've got the drive and the energy, and they have really
targeted this New York, eastern-seaboard Republican elite. If they could push them into the ocean, get rid of them entirely
and have control over the Republican party, that would really satisfy them perhaps as much as electing a Republican president.
Their primary aim was to get control of that party. And I learned early on that when you cover a national presidential convention,
there's not much point in listening to what goes on in the floor of the convention; you have to lock yourself in with certain
delegations and see it from the delegates' point of view, to see what's really going on.
And in the Cow Palace convention, I spent a great deal of time with the delegations from South Carolina, Louisiana, Texas,
Florida, and particularly South Carolina. And it was very illuminating to me because I did not meet many old-boy southern
types. These were hustlers. New kinds
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of people had come along in the South, very ambitious and socially very well mannered and easy enough to get along with as
a reporter--but a new breed, a new breed. And I was very much impressed with this. I did a couple of lengthy pieces for the
Nation, one called "The Goldwater Ideology," and I've forgotten the title of the other--but these were kind of sociological pieces
because the character of these delegates impressed me. And I didn't think that Goldwater was a transient kind of thing. I
thought this was a critical election, and I doubted that the Republican party would ever come back soon to reestablish itself
in terms of its old traditional conservatism or of liberal Republicanism. It was now in the hands of these new people.
Gardner
What do you think now?
McWilliams
And I think very much the same thing now, because they changed the rule of delegate selection at the Cow Palace convention
so that the states that would go Republican in the election would have more delegates the next time. So they had perpetuated
this control. And they're going to be very difficult to dislodge. They're going to be very difficult given the fact that the
liberal Republicans have a death wish. They don't seem to know how they should move. And they have some very fine talent:
Senator [Charles] Mathias, I respect
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greatly. He's done three or four pieces at my instigation for the
Nation, and he's a very interesting man to talk to, very thoughtful. And there are others, you know-- Charles Percy, some very able
people. But they don't seem to be able to get their act together. And you had in the New Jersey primary this year--Clifford
Case, fourterm incumbent Republican, knocked off by a man that used direct mail techniques almost entirely, addressed to special
constituencies where you have these buzzword kind of situations, and getting money; 85 percent of his money came from outside
the state. See, Case didn't seem to understand that this could happen to him or what was being done to him. And I think there
will be some other liberal Republican casualties, because they've had chance after chance after chance to group themselves,
to position themselves within the Republican party, and they haven't done it. They failed to do it.
Gardner
That's very interesting. The radical Right is something that you covered very intensely throughout.
McWilliams
Yes.
Gardner
Does this tie in? Do you think that the radical Right is really the group that's there? Or do you think it's a slightly softened
version?
McWilliams
I think our politics has been thrown completely out of balance. The two-party system in the
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historic sense, I think, was a casualty of the Cold War, because the liberal Democrats were clobbered very quickly; they were
told to get in line, and they got in line so far as the Cold War was concerned. The only exceptions were [Wayne] Morse, and
[Ernest] Gruening, and one or two others, but they really went along with the whole business. It had disastrous effects on
the political spectrum and on the Democratic party in particular because it was really-- we had one really big party--with
different tendencies, but essentially that has been the situation.
Now, in this kind of atmosphere the radical Right comes along, and it's interesting to note that it came along almost simultaneously
with the demise of McCarthy. McCarthy was censured in `54; he died in `57. But in `54 Bill Buckley started, I think, the National Review; this so-called new radical Right developed right in connection with McCarthy's death, so there was a real continuity. There
wasn't any break in McCarthyism.
Gardner
Right.
McWilliams
There wasn't any break. And the radical Right, so-called, was very much a different kind of movement than McCarthyism, although
[it was] an outgrowth of McCarthyism because McCarthyism--no one ever accused Joe of being an intellectual. And it didn't
attract intellectuals to any great extent. The radical Right is a very
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different story. They were smart enough to pick up these disaffected individuals, like Max Eastman and the others, and get
them involved in this sort of thing, and to form a kind of ideological structure, and then go out and solicit money in support
on the basis of this. So as a result, they began to be very vocal after Kennedy's election in particular; [that] is when they
began to really show signs of strength. They have organized very tightly and compactly; they know how to raise money. And
as a result of this, they've been able to exert enormous pressure on the Republican party, and they force the Republican party
in their direction. In doing so, they've kind of changed the whole center of gravity of American politics, because there's
no countervailing Left. There should be a force out there to the left of the liberals in the Democratic party, but there isn't
any, the kind of force that McGovern put together in the primaries in `72; it's not there anymore.
Gardner
Well, there were some congressmen and so on elected that are almost there.
McWilliams
Yes, they're almost there and . . .
Gardner
People like Gary Hart.
McWilliams
And the potential is there. I've seen figures: an estimated 2 million people took part in the Vietnam protests, and so forth,
mostly young people.
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Well, they're out there somewhere. I don't think they've changed all that much.
Gardner
Well, that's something I might debate with you, but that's
McWilliams
I think there's a residual something there, you see.
Gardner
I suspect so.
McWilliams
And there's a potential in the labor movement, if you could ever get--as will happen in due course-- get Meany out of there,
because Meany was one of the figures that came in with the Cold War.
Gardner
Right.
McWilliams
He has played a role of great strategic importance in connection with the Cold War by keeping labor in line and making it
an active partner, if you please, in the Cold War.
Gardner
And his coherent opposition--Reuther, for example--died off.
McWilliams
They died off, and so forth. But there are potentials in the labor movement today. There is some quite good leadership. Sooner
or later I think it will come to the surface and invest the labor movement with what it lacks so much today. They should realize
this now, particularly with Proposition 13 and measures of this kind. They at one time were the beneficiaries of
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a certain amount of social idealism that was associated with the labor movement, and during the Cold War years it dissipated.
So how can you blame people for taking a cynical attitude about labor? When have they ever stuck their neck out for some other
group? Note one exception, and it's an interesting exception: Cesar Chavez. Meany did tolerate and support this.
Gardner
But why did he do it?
McWilliams
For several reasons. First, because there was a Catholic tie, I think. Secondly, because he thought it was kind of good for
the labor movement to have one movement of this kind that it was supporting: better this than anything else that seemed to
be on the horizon. And for these, and maybe reasons that I don't understand, he has tolerated it and to some extent supported
it. But with the exception of this, [there has been] very little in the way of any kind of civic-action movement, where the
labor movement could have been so helpful just by lifting its little finger.
Gardner
Of course, labor's opposition to the antiwar movement was one of the great negative forces, great frustrating forces, for
the youth.
McWilliams
That is right.
Gardner
The hard-hat attacks in New York, and so forth.
McWilliams
You see, the residue from Vietnam, the
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potential in the labor movement, the ecological emphasis in American politics, the special issue constituencies . . .
Gardner
. . . and the minorities.
McWilliams
. . . and the minorities--if you could ever pull them together you might have a force there.
Gardner
Think you could?
McWilliams
And I think maybe it could happen.
Gardner
The last time that any sort of coalition like that came together was in the 1930s, and it was mostly because there was such
an overwhelming economic problem.
McWilliams
That's right.
Gardner
Do you think it would take something like that again to bring them together?
McWilliams
Well, I think there's a great sense on the part of a great many people that we are at a big crossroads, so to speak, in industrial
societies all over the world, and that there is a need for new thinking, fresh thinking, new models of what the economy is
really like, and so forth. I think there's a receptivity there that could be appealed to. And some of these social action
groups that have come along, not Nader so much as some of the others that have been trying to do some new thinking like the
one that is headed by Gar Alperovitz, who's an old Nation contributor; we were the first to publish him--movements of that kind that feed ideas, new ideas.
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There's a great need to pull this together, make a movement of it of some kind. But I don't see any politics in the United
States today. I mean, I really literally feel--I'm not speaking about the city or county or state; that's a different story.
Gardner
Nationally.
McWilliams
Nationally, I just do not see any politics.
Gardner
I wish I could disagree with you, but it's awfully difficult. [laughter]
McWilliams
Yes, I don't see any politics. It's lobbying and public relations and television, and you apparently influence a candidate
by leaking stories to the newspaper, and then the other side leaks other stories, and all this is what passes for politics,
but this is not politics.
Gardner
Do you see a brightening on the horizon?
McWilliams
I think there will have to be sooner or later. It has to be.
Gardner
I hope so. I think that covers domestic issues, and I think that's a wonderful place to stop discussing that. So I'll move
on to the staff that I have listed here.
McWilliams
Sure.
Gardner
We've talked about Del Vayo.
McWilliams
Yes.
Gardner
Did we talk about Victor Bernstein?
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McWilliams
No. Vic Bernstein was a marvelous managing editor, very good. He'd had a lot of journalistic experience, and [he was an] ideal
working colleague. He retired, and then we got him to come back and help finish the editing of the special issue that we did
for the centennial [September 20, 1965].
Gardner
Ah, that's something else we have to talk about.
McWilliams
And Victor is a dear, dear friend of mine. We couldn't have asked for a finer working colleague than Vic. Marvelous.
Gardner
Where was he from?
McWilliams
New York.
Gardner
A local journalist?
McWilliams
Yes, he worked on a lot of papers around the country. He worked in California at one time. Then he covered the Nuremburg trials,
had a lot of experience in connection with Europe, lived in Paris and Berlin for quite a time, knew Europe very well, European
politics--very good, very useful.
Gardner
The rest I think are--well, I'll mention names and see how much you want to say about each one. Marion Hess was an assistant
editor and then a copy editor?
McWilliams
Yes. She's been there a long time. She's a jewel, a jewel beyond price, a marvelous copy editor, faithful, loyal, devoted
worker, dear friend of Freda
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Kirchwey's. She was there when I came there. She's a superb copy editor and a wonderful person, wonderful person.
Bob Hatch, Robert Hatch, I recruited; I think that's one of the better things I did for the Nation because he's awfully good.
Gardner
Ned Polsky was a managing editor.
McWilliams
Yes. That didn't work out at all. That was quite unsatisfactory. And we had a rotation of back-of-the-book editors, some better
than others. We had problems with getting a good back-of-the-book editor.
Gardner
Is that what the managing editor's job really was?
McWilliams
Well, Bob Hatch had charge of the back-of-the-book section, including the columns. But also having the books is such a business
in itself; we always tried to have a book editor. We had Warren Miller at one time until his death, and we had Helen Yglesias.
Gardner
Right.
McWilliams
And we had Beverly Gross, who was, I thought, quite good, and Elizabeth Sutherland, who was quite good. But they left. Because
in the case of Beverly Gross: she was teaching at Queens College, and I read a piece that she had written for the Antioch Review about the small magazines, so-called, and the handling of books.
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I thought it was an excellent piece, showed real insight. I wrote her and had her come in, interviewed her, and asked her
if she would like the job. She was stunned to be offered the job under these circumstances, and she said she would. She came
in and she was very good. And then what happened: her departmental people at Queens were so impressed by the fact that she
had become the literary editor of the
Nation that they offered her a job at $24,000 a year at Queens. [laughter] And she went back to Queens.
Gardner
Pulled her away.
McWilliams
They pulled her away. And we've had that kind of experience. You mentioned poetry. I always strongly favored the policy which
we established (I helped establish it) of rotating the poetry editorship. But of recent years--and I think it's unfortunate;
Grace Schulman is an excellent poetry editor (this is no reflection on her; she, too, is a personal friend)--but they haven't
rotated. They've sort of abandoned this rotation idea, and I think it's unfortunate because you get far more unsolicited poems
than any other type of manuscript, far more. And if you are not careful, any poet is going to have certain preferences. Then
all the other poets think that they're excluded by categories. You can, I think, get a better effect and get better poetry
by rotating it. We've had some excellent poetry editors.
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Gardner
Yes, you have.
McWilliams
Denise Levertov and many others, first-rate.
Gardner
Right. Well, one thing that's interesting to me is that you brought a special sensitivity to the back-of-the-book [section]
that an ordinary editor might not have had because you had started out in literary criticism. Did you pay a lot of attention
to the back-of-the-book? Did you keep up with what was going on there?
McWilliams
Well, the genesis of the problem about the back-of-the-book was Margaret Marshal's leaving in 1953. Now, she had for years--twenty
years or more--been the back-of-the-book editor, and she and Freda had been intimate friends, and all that sort of thing.
Then the Cold War came along, and Margaret Marshal tended to identify with the Cold War intellectuals.
Gardner
Really?
McWilliams
Yes, she did. And people accused--this is a completely phony charge--they accused Freda of easing Margaret Marshal out because
of her views. And nothing could be further from the truth; nothing could be further. Freda was so imbued with this Nation tradition that the back-of-the-book should have almost autonomy. And I don't agree with this: I think it has to be supervised
like any other section of the magazine. But she was so impressed with this that she would never have dreamed of suggesting
― 431 ―
anything to Margaret about her handling of that section; that was her responsibility. But there was a lot of scuttlebutt talk
in literary circles about how Margaret Marshal had been mistreated and how she had been eased out. Not a word of truth to
it.
Gardner
Very interesting.
McWilliams
Not a word. And then after that there was a period when we didn't have a book editor, and I think some of the best work we've
done with books was done during that period because we relied on people in certain categories. For example, history, William
Appleman Williams: sent him all the books on history, had him sort them out, tell us which ones should be reviewed, deserved
to be reviewed, which ones didn't, suggest possible reviewers, do some himself and do listings of the ones that he thought
deserved the least mention. Same way with sociology, and so forth and so forth. Now, for two years, I think it was, this worked
very well. I think it's not a bad way to handle the back-of-the-book section. But I do think the back-of-the-book section
of a magazine like the Nation has to be supervised, because no one person, particularly a person with strong literary feelings, is going to be able to pick
out all of the books that should be reviewed in a magazine like the Nation. There is that important economic book of the year that comes along, and how is
― 432 ―
she going to be a judge of this--or he--you know? And that kind of book has got to be brought to their attention, and they've
got to be told, "Listen, this is a very important book, and here are some possible reviewers"--don't need to dictate the reviewer
to them but--"these are some people who might do a good review." But you have to feed ideas.
Gardner
Right. Oh, we talked about Robert Hatch yesterday, didn't we?
McWilliams
Yes.
Gardner
He came originally as a film reviewer.
McWilliams
That's right.
Gardner
Which I thought was very interesting.
McWilliams
He's always been very much interested in films. He still does the film column. As I said, he was originally with the New Republic, and when New Republic moved to Washington, he didn't go with them. He couldn't leave New York.
Gardner
He found another home.
McWilliams
Yes.
Gardner
The drama critic when you arrived was Joseph Wood Krutch.
McWilliams
That's right. And he had left on his own steam, so to speak, because he had retired from--he was in the process of retiring
from Columbia, and also ill health in part. [He] moved to Arizona. He was the first
― 433 ―
person on the staff of the
Nation that I got to know personally, strangely enough, years back. So he moved to Arizona. I've forgotten when--they've had a couple
of people in there.
Gardner
Harold Clurman came in there.
McWilliams
Well, anyway, I got Clurman to come in--an excellent choice. You couldn't improve on Clurman.
Gardner
How did you get him to do it?
McWilliams
Well, he just happened not to have an outlet at the time. He'd been producing plays . . .
Gardner
Right.
McWilliams
. . . and so forth, but we just happened to catch him at the right time.
Gardner
You only had a few music critics. I think that's true, music and art.
McWilliams
That's right.
Gardner
The first one was B. H. Haggin.
McWilliams
That's right. And the Haggin story would be a small novel because Haggin is quite good in a way. But he is idolatrous. Toscanini
is one thing, and the second thing is that--this tends to be true of music critics--they're interested in records. And we
began to be sort of irritated by Haggin because if they show an interest in records and review records, then the people that
make records will send them what they want,
― 434 ―
and they begin to develop vast libraries. [laughter] It's all right except that we felt that he should review live music more.
So this led to some tensions, and one thing led to another; we had a big row and blowup with Haggin, and he left in a state
of great indignation. He was very sore at me personally. He thought I was a vulgarian who had eased him out unfairly, and
so forth. But everyone who's ever had any dealings with him would tell you much the same kind of story that I'm telling you.
Gardner
What happened to him afterwards?
McWilliams
Well, he did music reviews for a number of publications. I think he still does.
Gardner
And still continues to collect records.
McWilliams
And still continues to collect records. So I didn't think that that was a very good choice. I didn't know anything about music,
but just from a--well, for example, this is a B. H. Haggin story: he brought in two long pieces about Olin Downes, the music
critic for the New York Times. [It was a] venomous, personal attack on Olin Downes. I showed them to Bob Hatch, who was not yet a member of the staff, whose
judgment I respected. I went over the whole situation with Kirstein, and I said, "These I'm going to have to reject. I think
there's trouble in it, probably libelous. In any case this kind of personal attack is inappropriate for a magazine; there's
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no excuse for it." So I told him we would not run them. He was--oh, he was furious. He put on a tremendous scene and, oh,
he told all kinds of people about censorship, and so forth. Now, as it turned out, if we had run article one--Downes died
before article two would have been scheduled--we would have been in the position of announcing a two-part feature about Olin
Downes, and then Downes died a day or two after the first issue [would have] appeared. We would have been in a very embarrassing
position not to have run that second piece; or if we had run it, we would have looked like dogs!
Gardner
Right.
McWilliams
We had a problem with art and architecture, and I think we've had some very good people. Maurice Grosser, I think, was one
of the best we ever had as an art critic, simply because Grosser is a fine artist himself, and he has a remarkable talent
for explaining to a person that doesn't understand painting why this is a good painting. He just doesn't say that it's a good
painting, but it's a good painting for these reasons. So if you read Grosser and then went to a show you could see more than.
. . .
Gardner
Understand.
McWilliams
You could understand more, and you could see more. I thought he was excellent.
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Gardner
Let me finish up the music people first . . .
McWilliams
Yes.
Gardner
. . . since there are only four, and then move to art. Lester Trimble succeeded Haggin.
McWilliams
Lester Trimble was very, very nice, very good. I would think not the greatest music critic of the world, but very good, knowledgeable,
good.
Gardner
His successor, Benjamin Boretz, was a professor of my sister's at NYU.
McWilliams
Yes, Ben Boretz was a much better critic.
Gardner
And he lasted a long time, too. He was there from `62 to `70.
McWilliams
That's right. He was much better.
Gardner
Had you solicited him?
McWilliams
No, I think Hatch was responsible for that.
Gardner
Oh. How come he left?
McWilliams
At this date, I just don't remember.
Gardner
Then David Hamilton is the most recent.
McWilliams
Yes, David Hamilton is the most recent.
Gardner
Okay, under art, Max Kosloff was . . .
McWilliams
Max Kosloff was there, and Max Kosloff was, I thought, very good. Some of the things he first did for us resulted in his getting
a contract for his first book of art criticism; it's a good book. And Max is a very nice guy. I like him. I like him very
much. I
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don't know why he left. I think it was to go someplace, come to the West Coast maybe.
Gardner
Hilton Kramer also did art criticism for you.
McWilliams
Yes. I'm not too pleased with that. I think Hilton Kramer--I don't know how that ever happened, really, probably through Hatch,
because by then Hatch was in charge of the columns. But Hilton Kramer has a strong political bias. He is a "Cold Warrior,"
vehement, "anti-Communist"--put it in quotes--and he can't resist getting into these feuds. I think it's unfortunate. Apart
from his being an art critic--as I was leaving for a trip to Europe, he phoned up and he wanted to review Ella Winter's book.
It sounded like a reasonably good idea, and I hadn't quite learned all the things you need to know as an editor, so I said
all right. I told people in the office to send him Ella's book. The only reason he wanted to review that book was to zero
in on some of her ideas about art in her personal collections, and he made it a kind of a personal hatchet job. And Ella's
an old friend of mine, so it was kind of embarrassing. But I was away at the time the review appeared, so I couldn't do anything
about it. But I learned then to regard with great hesitation any request from anyone to review a book: either they want to
do a hatchet job on it, or the author
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is their brother-in-law. [laughter] Much better to regard with great coolness any request to--unless you have great confidence
in the person making the request. Make your own independent judgment about who should review it.
Gardner
The last art critic that I have listed is Laurence Alloway.
McWilliams
Yes. Alloway has been there for quite some time.
Gardner
Since 1970.
McWilliams
Yes. I think he's quite good. Art is not my field; I'm not in a real position to say, but I think he's quite good.
I think Hatch is very good on movies, although I have a quarrel with him--not a quarrel but an argument I've never been able
to resolve. Hatch only wants to review the film that interests him. And I've said to him again and again, "Bob, it doesn't
make any difference. This film has got great social and political overtones; it's a cultural phenomenon. It's a dog of a movie,
but we should pay attention to it." But he has very little interest--for all of his great merits--very little interest in
any movie that doesn't interest him. So he tends to review the artistic, very good movies. Well, that's all right, but it
isn't broad enough perspective, in my judgment, for a motion-picture critic.
