Saturday, 12 October 2013
" I am assaulted by clippings about The Group..."
Hotel Lucia
Madrid
Saturday (10/19/63)
Dearest Hannah
...The whole Eichmann business is terrible. Now the English reviews. Jim has sent me here crossman and Trevor-Roper. But he has also told me on the phone that there was a very good one, in every sense, by A Alvarez in the New Statesman...
141 Rue de Rennes
Paris 6
October 24, 1963
...In Paris I am assaulted by clippings about The Group, many of them terribly hostile, and by requests for interviews and photos...And I confess I'm depressed by what seems to me the treachery of the New York Book Review people. I suppose you saw the Mailer piece and the parody that preceded it. I find it strange that people who are supposed to be my friends should solicit a review from an announced enemy...It parallels, as I foresaw, in a small way the Eichmann furore, but seems to lack even the hypocritical justification that Jewish piety there provided...
Mary
Quadrangle Club
1155 West 57th
Chicago 37 Illinois
(Autumn 1963)
Dearest Mary
....I read Mailer's review only a couple of days ago - it is so full of personal and stupid invectives (stupid means vulgar) that I can't understand how or why they printed it. I am afraid that Elizabeth had the brilliant idea to ask him - just as she had the brilliant idea to ask Abel to do the PR piece...But she would probably not have done either if there had not been fertile ground for precisely this stab in the back. And what surprises and shocks me most is the tremendous amount of hatred and hostility lying around and waiting only for a chance to break out...
Much, much love
Yours,
Hannah
Madrid
Saturday (10/19/63)
Dearest Hannah
...The whole Eichmann business is terrible. Now the English reviews. Jim has sent me here crossman and Trevor-Roper. But he has also told me on the phone that there was a very good one, in every sense, by A Alvarez in the New Statesman...
141 Rue de Rennes
Paris 6
October 24, 1963
...In Paris I am assaulted by clippings about The Group, many of them terribly hostile, and by requests for interviews and photos...And I confess I'm depressed by what seems to me the treachery of the New York Book Review people. I suppose you saw the Mailer piece and the parody that preceded it. I find it strange that people who are supposed to be my friends should solicit a review from an announced enemy...It parallels, as I foresaw, in a small way the Eichmann furore, but seems to lack even the hypocritical justification that Jewish piety there provided...
Mary
Quadrangle Club
1155 West 57th
Chicago 37 Illinois
(Autumn 1963)
Dearest Mary
....I read Mailer's review only a couple of days ago - it is so full of personal and stupid invectives (stupid means vulgar) that I can't understand how or why they printed it. I am afraid that Elizabeth had the brilliant idea to ask him - just as she had the brilliant idea to ask Abel to do the PR piece...But she would probably not have done either if there had not been fertile ground for precisely this stab in the back. And what surprises and shocks me most is the tremendous amount of hatred and hostility lying around and waiting only for a chance to break out...
Much, much love
Yours,
Hannah
Wednesday, 9 October 2013
"the ordinariness of Eichmann is... a faithful description of a phenomenon"
 |
Miriam Chiaromonte, Czeslaw Milosz, and Mary McCarthy |
Bocca di Magra
September 24, 1963
Dearest Hannah
....Nicola (Chiaromonte) feels that the issues raised by your book ought to be discussed. Not the debater's points 'scored' by Lionel (Abel) but the implications of your views about the role played by the Jewish Councils - that is, what is implied about organisations in modern society generally. He would also like to know why you think the Nazis failed in their anti-semitic (sic) program in Denmark, Bulgaria and Italy - this apart from the presence or absence of Jewish Councils and from the sheer facts as you give them. Can a common factor be found to explain this? For if there is such a common factor, it ought to be cultivated and safeguarded by humanity for future emergencies. Or is there no such thing? Was it in some way random - here the personal courage of a king, there the natural easygoingness and humane realism of an old people (the Italians) etc? And he would like to see you develop your basic notion of the ordinariness of Eichmann. What does this mean? If not the naive formulation that "there is a little Eichmann in all of us," then what? He thinks he agrees with what you are saying but he is not sure he has understood you. Of course, the idea of sustaining such a discussion in the atmosphere created by Lionel and thousands of preaching rabbis is somewhat farfetched perhaps. But perhaps just such a discussion, pursued in a thoughtful way, would be the necessary and in a way the only answer to what you call the mobilization of the mob...
Mary
The University of Chicago
Chicago 37, Illinois
Committee on Social Thought
October 3. 1963
Dearest Mary
....Let me answer your letter as briefly as possible. I am convinced that I should not answer individual critics. I probably shall finally make, not an answer, but a kind of evaluation of this whole strange business. This, I think, should be done after the furore has run its course...If you were here you would understand that this whole business, with few exceptions, has absolutely nothing to do with criticism or polemics in the normal sense of the word. It is a political campaign, led and guided in all particulars by interest groups and governmental agencies. It would be foolish for me, but not for others, to overlook this fact. The criticism is directed at an 'image' and this image has been substituted for the book I wrote...
...To repeat: the question of Jewish resistance substitutes for the real issue, namely, that individual members of the Jewish councils had the possibility not to participate. Or: 'A Defence of Eichmann,' which I supposedly wrote, is a substitution for the real issue: what kind of man was the accused and to what extent can our legal system take care of these new criminals who are not ordinary criminals?
As to the points Nicola made: my book is a report and therefore leaves all questions of why things happened out of account. I describe the role of the Jewish councils. It was neither my intention nor my task to explain this whole business - either by reference to Jewish history or by reference to modern society in general. I, too, would like to know why countries so unlike each other as Denmark, Italy and Bulgaria saved their Jews. My 'basic notion' of the ordinariness of Eichmann is much less a notion than a faithful description of a phenomenon. I am sure there can be drawn many conclusions from this phenomenon and the most general I drew is indicated 'the banality of evil.' I may sometime want to write about this, and then I would write about the nature of evil. but it would have been entirely wrong of me to do it within the framework of the report...
Yours,
Hannah
 |
Monday, 7 October 2013
" What a risky business to tell the truth on a factual level without theoretical or scholarly embroidery."
New York
September 16, 1963
Dearest Mary
....Why did I not write earlier? Well, the truth of the matter is that I did not "feel fine". Heinrich has not been well, he is much better now, working as usual etc, but I am deeply worried and quite unhappy that I have to go to Chicago. (But please, let that remain entre nous.) We have been together for 28 years and life without him would be unthinkable. Add to this the Eichmann trouble which i try to keep from him as much as I possibly can - and you will understand why I am in no mood for writing. You probably know that PR have turned against me in a rather vicious manner(Lionel Abel who anyhow goes around town spreading slander about myself as well as Heinrich) and generally, one can say that the mob - intellectual or otherwise - has been successfully mobilised. I just heard that the Anti-Defamation League has sent out a circular letter to all rabbis to preach against me on New Year's Day. well, I suppose this would not disturb me unduly if everything else were all right, But, worried as I am, I can no longer trust myself to keep my head and not to explode. What a risky business to tell the truth on a factual level without theoretical or scholarly embroidery. This side of it, I admit, I do enjoy; it taught me a few lessons about truth and politics...
Much love, yours
Hannah
 |
| Lionel Abel (standing) with the PR gang |
Bocca Di Magra
September 24, 1963
Dearest Hannah
...I want to help you in some way and not simply by being an ear. What can be done about this Eichmann business, which is assuming the proportions of a pogrom. Whether you answer or not...I am going to write something to the boys for publication
...the issues raised by your book ought to be discussed...about the role played by the Jewish Councils... Of course the idea of sustaining a discussion in the atmosphere created by Lionel and the thousands of preaching rabbis is somewhat far fetched perhaps. But perhaps such a discussion...(is) the only answer to the mobilization of the mob...
...My deepest love to you and tight embraces,
Mary
"...They hanged Eichmann yesterday..."
8 Rue de la Chaise
Paris
June 1, 1962
Dearest Hannah
....They hanged Eichmann yesterday, my reaction was curious, rather shrugging, "Well, one more life - what difference does it make?" This cannot be the reaction the Israelis desired, yet short of rejoicing in his death, on the one hand, or being angry at it on the other, what else can the ordinary person feel? To execute a man and excite a reaction of indifference is to bring people too close to the way the Nazis felt about human life - "One more gone"....Anyway, how is your piece coming?....
....All my love to you and love to Heinrich and write fairly soon.
Mary
New York
June 7, 1962
Dearest Mary -
.....I am still in Eichmann, have the portrait part almost finished- or so I hope. It is much longer than i thought, about 80 pages now. If I am lucky, it will not be over 160 pages. I am still glad I did it, despite the staggering amount of sheer labor that has to go into it. My room looks like a battlefield with papers and the mimeographed sheets of the trial transcripts strewn all over the place...
Love and yours,
Hannah
Thursday, 3 October 2013
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