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Norman Podhoretz
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Ex Friends: Falling Out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer Paperback – July 1, 2000

by Norman Podhoretz (Author)
4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 52 ratings
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Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Hanna Arendt, Norman Mailer, and Lillian Hellman -among the other things these writers and intellectuals all had in common is Norman Podhoretz. With them Podhoretz was part of "The Family," as the core group of New York intellectuals of the 50s and 60s came to be known. And in Ex-Friends, he has written the intellectual equivalent of a family history- a sparkling chronicle of affection and jealousy, generosity and betrayal, breakdowns and reconciliations, and ultimately of dysfunctions impossible to cure. Ex-Friends is filled with brilliant portraits of some of the cultural icons who defined our time. Yet anyone who has followed Norman Podhoretz's career as a writer and editor and above all one of the leading controversialists of our time will expect more than just another fond memoir of literary alliances and quarrels, brilliant talk and bruised egos. Indeed, while Ex-Friends has some of the elements of a personal diary, it is also a journal de combat describing the intellectual and social turbulence of the 60s and 70s and showing how the literary living room was transformed into a political battleground where the meaning of America was fought night by night. Against this backdrop, Podhoretz tells how he left The Family and undertook a trailblazing journey from radical to conservative, a journey that helped redefine America's intellectual landscape in the last quarter of the 20th century and caused his old friends to become ex-friends. If there is a nostalgia in Ex-Friends, it is not only for lost friendships but also for a time of wit, erudition, and passionate argumentation. Norman Podhoretz bodies forth a world when people still believed that what they thought and wrote and said could change the world.
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  1. Print length
    233 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Encounter Books
  4. Publication date
    July 1, 2000
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 1 x 9 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1893554171
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1893554177
  8. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

Review

Bold. Brilliant. Fascinating. -- Jeanne Kirkpatrick

Hits like a tumbler-full of vodka. It is breakth taking, bracing, shocking, perfectly clear, highly intoxicating. -- New York Post

From the Publisher

Norman Podhoretz is also the author of a new Simon and Schuster book, My Love Affair With America.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Encounter Books; Reprint edition (July 1, 2000)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 233 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1893554171
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1893554177
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 14 ounces
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars 52 ratings

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Norman Podhoretz

Norman Podhoretz

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Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5 stars
4.4 out of 5
52 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

Dee Dee
5.0 out of 5 stars More than the Fights
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2022
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This was an unusual book. I started reading it because I was curious about his views on Allen Ginsberg. His take on him was similar to my own. I met Ginsberg briefly at a pre-poetry reading reception for him in 1980. He was, as some have noted, low-key and gracious. But the poems he read later that evening to a large audience of students and faculty were mostly about having sex, with mostly very young men, graphically and enthusiastically described. Just terrible. And weird. And disappointing. So the chapter on Ginsberg was illuminating. I have drifted away from current Leftist orthodoxies, and now find myself, like the author, disagreeing with old friends, and being in no-man's-land, as I view it. Not that it matters much to anyone but me. However I appreciate Mr. Podhoretz's situation and glad he wrote a book about it. I'm not sure how many readers will stick with him through the personal detail in this book, or really understand his differences with Hannah Arendt, for example. But as one man's account of his political and philosophical evolution it was fascinating.
6 people found this helpful
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Irene Welch
5.0 out of 5 stars LEFT OR RIGHT You will be rewarded
Reviewed in the United States on April 19, 2020
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You will be rewarded by learning how the New York School (podhoretz' Family) influenced our culture AND our politics in America pre 60's. Podhoretz knew them intimately but could still keep his head enough to see their important strengths and weaknesses, culturally and politically in relation to those historical imperatives! Not a small feat, considering the heat applied and consequences of that recent time to current events.
A wonderful "dish" about the greats too, which is no small treasure either. Thanks Norman!
Irene from Detroit
4 people found this helpful
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Stan Smith
4.0 out of 5 stars Demolishing Ginsberg
Reviewed in the United States on September 3, 2000
I've been waiting for this book for years. I am in my early thirties, and have lived enough life to know that people like Ginsberg did perhaps irreparable damage to this country. I know for a fact that his literary ilk made an impression on me, as a young man. I had the miserable experience, in fact, of trying to be a liberal for far too many years. The "antinomianism" that Podhoretz talks about in his chapter on Ginsberg is appealing, dangerously so, in the very fact that it allows for a complete break-down of discipline, whether that be discipline in art or in the way one lives one's life. President Clinton is a perfect example of this. Most of the people in my generation take antinomianism one step further--integrating the undisciplined elements with elements of what appear to be a "normalcy" (tattoos, piercings, promiscuous sexual encounters and profanity are de rigueur at most places of work inhabited by my generation. But contrary to popular imagination, my generation works quite hard, as I suppose, does Clinton). We have reached an age when MTV shows middle-teens in the midst of soft-porn "undressing."
The attendent nihilism that goes along with this break-down of mores and loss of virtue is far, far worse than someone like Podhoretz could imagine, I think, as he did not inherit these things. Nonetheless, his job at hand was to speak of his ex-friends, and he does so without pulling any punches. Allen Ginsburg is hit hardest, and deservedly so. Surely, it was the fame of men like Ginsburg who helped set the trend toward perversity in literature and in the media in general. Once nasty stuff like this makes its way into the vernacular, Pandora's Box is opened. As far as base human instincts are concerned, what is more appealing, anyway: instant gratification, sexual deviance and anarchy, or discipline, gentlemanly behavior, and patriotism? Yes, he "got" Podhoretz's generation through their children. Ginsburg's ilk also did a pretty good job of damaging my generation, too. Evil stuff. And, even scarier, institutionalized stuff.
I remember viewing a documentary about Berkeley, in the final throes of my sorry liberalism, watching Ronald Reagan excoriate the faculty about the way in which students had taken over the University. The next frame shows Ginsburg banging cymbals together. And then we see student radicals trying to block entrance into the draft board offices in Oakland. Unfortunately, most people in my generation would scoff at Reagan, cheer for Ginsburg, and look with dumbfounded amazement at the draft-board fracas. Likewise, I believe most would scoff at Podhoretz, if not for his perceived prudishness, as much as for the fact that most of the people he was writing about are dead and gone. There is no such thing as the "Family" anymore. The issues they were fighting over have been replaced with arguably more complicated issues, at least on the geo-political scene. Nonetheless, what many of us can and should see is that we have fallen into a moral abyss that will be very difficult to climb out of. Gertrude Himmelfarb speaks of "two cultures." I have seen both, and, thank-you Norman, I now understand why I arrived on your side for once and for all.
31 people found this helpful
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J. B. Paley
5.0 out of 5 stars A Delightful Read About Important People Living in an Important Time
Reviewed in the United States on April 23, 2019
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As someone about ten years younger than the author, I found it fascinating reading about him and his ex-friends, about whom I had heard so much while growing up. Being immersed in his world (Intellectual, Jewish, New York City) during my time reading this book was an enlightening and personally invaluable experience for me.
4 people found this helpful
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Bill G.
5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommend this seller!
Reviewed in the United States on January 26, 2022
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Book arrived absolutely as described (as new) and was very well packed.
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Amazon Customer
5.0 out of 5 stars AN INTELLECTUAL IN THE REAL WORLD
Reviewed in the United States on January 13, 2003
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Born in 1930, Norman Podhoretz was one of the youngest members of New York's legendary "The Family". This group of intellectuals was extremely influential in literature, art, philosophy, and politics.
Mr. Podhoretz has written several books which cover most of the fascinating occurrences and turns in his life. EX-FRIENDS deals with some of the famous people he broke with as his beliefs evolved while events in the 20th century turned old political labels and beliefs upside down.
Superb writing by the author makes what could have been a dry, self-serving book into a riveting, easy to follow page-turner. Not at all what one would expect from an "intellectual".
17 people found this helpful
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Paul Beauparlant
4.0 out of 5 stars thank goodness for men like Norman
Reviewed in the United States on September 7, 2010
Loaned this out from the library and have completed the introduction, the chapter on Ginsberg and am now in the middle of the Mailer chapter.
Love N.P.'s logical conclusions to what has happened to our society.
It is fairly easy to read for a non-intellectual as myself and I would like to quote a sterling example of just one of the passages that validated my views:
pg. 8 "What happened in the 1960's was, to put it simply but not inacurately, a mass conversion to leftist radicalism by the formerly liberal intellectual establishment and a commensurate seizure of the enormous power by radical ideas and attitudes over the institutions controlled by intellectuals. These institutions, as everyone now knows, include the universities, the major media of information and entertainment (New York and Hollywood, the big newspapers and magazines, the movies and television), and increasingly even the mainstream churches."

There is nothing BUT such perfect and precise wording on every page of this book and I am SO glad I selected it and look forward to anything else I come across, which I will be seeking out, by Mr. Podhoretz.
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Top reviews from other countries

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F.J. C.S.
5.0 out of 5 stars Un verdadero maestro
Reviewed in Spain on April 16, 2015
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Una maravilla. Dice exactamente cómo son los proges, mucho vocabulario barato, pero nada de sustancia. Todo lo contrario que Podhoretz. Él sí que es un verdadero intelectual. Las descripciones de Ginsberg y Mailer son de antología. ¿Qué queda de la obra de todos estos progres? Nada. Su obra estaba vacía, no había contenido ni en los poemas ni en las novelas ni en las obras de teatro. Magnífico cómo desenmarscara el antiamericanismo de todos ellos.
¡Qué pena que en Europa no tengamos gente así!
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