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NAT HENTOFF: 50 YEARS OF PISSING PEOPLE OFF
ALLEN BARRA, VILLAGE VOICE - Sometime in the late '80s, during a
typical internecine squabble at the Voice, I took a cheap shot, in the
form of a letter to the editor, at Nat Hentoff. There were many such
squabbles back then, and an amazing number centered around Hentoff. Nat
had a way of pissing off the writers and editors of two generations of
lefties (by which, not to put too fine a point on it, I mean just about
everyone who came of age from the Vietnam era on) that was unmatched by
anyone I know of.
Suffice it to say that the spat had to do with something Hentoff had
written about abortion, and my letter, which earned me pats on the back
from some of my friends at the Voice, made liberal use of the word
"fascist." (We were young and passionate then and slung such words as
"fascist," "zeitgeist," "subversive," and "existential" the way Giuliani
uses "9/11.") I had also shown our disdain for Hentoff by briskly
passing by his office door and refusing to ask him if he had gotten any
good jazz records in the mail, which hurt me a lot more than it did him.
A few days later, I got my reply. In my mail slot, I found a reissue of
a Pee Wee Russell album with a note taped to it: "Hey, give me a break.
You may need it yourself some day. P.S. Listen to this. It might clear
your head out." What an asshole. Instead of jumping into the argument
with pettiness and personal acrimony, he sought to create a dialogue
with reason, tolerance, and jazz. What can you do with a guy like that?
Well, for one thing, you can read him, and-to borrow Andre Gide's
advice-do him the favor of not understanding him too quickly. It took me
over 25 years to understand Nat Hentoff, and I'm still in the process of
clearing my head. . .
"An intellectual," said Camus, "is someone whose mind watches itself."
Nat Hentoff was and is an intellectual. Moreover, he is a liberal
intellectual, out of a liberal tradition that predated my generation's,
one grounded not in sensitivity but in tolerance, a word I once
snickered at but which-at a time when the right has adopted much of the
prickliness and busybodiness of the left-is starting to look pretty
darned good to me.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0802,barra,78810,6.html
NAT HENTOFF'S GREATEST HITS
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0802,hentoff,78821,2.html
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NAT HENTOFF: 50 YEARS OF PISSING PEOPLE OFF
ALLEN BARRA, VILLAGE VOICE - Sometime in the late '80s, during a
typical internecine squabble at the Voice, I took a cheap shot, in the
form of a letter to the editor, at Nat Hentoff. There were many such
squabbles back then, and an amazing number centered around Hentoff. Nat
had a way of pissing off the writers and editors of two generations of
lefties (by which, not to put too fine a point on it, I mean just about
everyone who came of age from the Vietnam era on) that was unmatched by
anyone I know of.
Suffice it to say that the spat had to do with something Hentoff had
written about abortion, and my letter, which earned me pats on the back
from some of my friends at the Voice, made liberal use of the word
"fascist." (We were young and passionate then and slung such words as
"fascist," "zeitgeist," "subversive," and "existential" the way Giuliani
uses "9/11.") I had also shown our disdain for Hentoff by briskly
passing by his office door and refusing to ask him if he had gotten any
good jazz records in the mail, which hurt me a lot more than it did him.
A few days later, I got my reply. In my mail slot, I found a reissue of
a Pee Wee Russell album with a note taped to it: "Hey, give me a break.
You may need it yourself some day. P.S. Listen to this. It might clear
your head out." What an asshole. Instead of jumping into the argument
with pettiness and personal acrimony, he sought to create a dialogue
with reason, tolerance, and jazz. What can you do with a guy like that?
Well, for one thing, you can read him, and-to borrow Andre Gide's
advice-do him the favor of not understanding him too quickly. It took me
over 25 years to understand Nat Hentoff, and I'm still in the process of
clearing my head. . .
"An intellectual," said Camus, "is someone whose mind watches itself."
Nat Hentoff was and is an intellectual. Moreover, he is a liberal
intellectual, out of a liberal tradition that predated my generation's,
one grounded not in sensitivity but in tolerance, a word I once
snickered at but which-at a time when the right has adopted much of the
prickliness and busybodiness of the left-is starting to look pretty
darned good to me.
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0802,barra,78810,6.html
NAT HENTOFF'S GREATEST HITS
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0802,hentoff,78821,2.html
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