Norman Podhoretz Always Stood Out
Interacting with the neoconservative intellectual Norman Podhoretz, you felt desire. But it wasn’t a desire for ideas; it was a desire for being thought of as someone who was adept at ideas.
If feminists taught us that the personal is the political, Norman Podhoretz remained committed, probably to the very end, to the proposition that the political is personal, and only personal. (Jon Naso / NY Daily News Archive via Getty Images)
A personal word about Norman Podhoretz, the neoconservative longtime editor of Commentary, who died two days ago.
As some of you many know, back in 2000 or so, I interviewed a bunch of conservatives for a magazine piece I was doing. Amazingly, I got an interview with Bill Buckley, an interview with Irving Kristol, and an interview with Norman Podhoretz. I spoke with Buckley in his Upper East Side town house on Park Avenue, surrounded by portraits of his wife and little dishes of cigarettes. (It was more town than house; I don’t think I’ve ever been in a personal dwelling that big.) I spoke with Kristol in an ugly office in Washington, DC; I’m guessing, though I can no longer remember, that it belonged to the Public Interest, the journal he was editing at the time or had been editing until recently. And I spoke with Podhoretz at a coffee shop in the Hamptons somewhere, maybe Bridgehampton, where I think he lived.
Amid this trio, Podhoretz stood out in several ways.
This article is for subscribers only. Please login or subscribe to access our full archives and beautiful print and digital magazine starting at just $3 a month.