Partisan Review

Partisan Review

April–May 1935 issue
Categories	Literary and political
Frequency	Quarterly
Founded	1934(1934)
Final issue	April 2003(2003-04)
Based in	New York City,U.S.
Language	English
ISSN	0031-2525

Partisan Review(PR) was a left-wing small-circulation quarterly "little magazine" dealing with literature, politics, and cultural commentary published inNew York City.The magazine was launched in 1934 by theCommunist Party USA–affiliatedJohn Reed Clubof New York City and was initially part of the Communist political orbit. Growing disaffection on the part ofPR's primary editors began to make itself felt, and the magazine abruptly suspended publication in the fall of 1936. When the magazine reemerged late in 1937, it came with additional editors and new writers who advanced a political line deeply critical ofJoseph Stalin's Soviet Union.

By the 1950s, the magazine had evolved towards a moderatesocial democraticand staunchlyanti-Stalinistperspective and was generally supportive of American foreign policy.Partisan Reviewreceived covert funding from theCentral Intelligence Agency(CIA) during the 1950s and 1960s as part of the agency's efforts to shape intellectual opinion during theCold War.The journal moved its offices to the campus ofRutgers Universityin 1963, then to the campus ofBoston Universityin 1978. The final issue of the publication appeared in April 2003.

Publication history

Establishment

The literary journalPartisan Review (PR)was launched in New York City in 1934by theJohn Reed Club of New York— amass organizationof theCommunist Party, USA(CPUSA).The publication was published and edited by two members of the New York club,Philip RahvandWilliam Phillips.The launch of the magazine was assisted by the editors ofNew Masses,the Communist Party's national artistic and literary magazine, includingJoseph Freeman.

Early issues of the magazine included a mixture of ostensiblyproletarian literatureand essays of cultural commentary — the latter of which became a hallmark ofPRfor the whole of its nearly seven decades of existence. Rahv and Phillips were strongly committed to the idea that radical new artistic forms and radical politics could be successfully combined and were critical of much of the form and hackneyed content of much of what passed as "proletarian literature". This critical perspective brought the pair into conflict with party stalwarts at theNew Massessuch asMike GoldandGranville Hicksbut was not sufficient to breakPartisan Reviewfrom theCommunist Party USA(CPUSA) orbit.

In 1936 as part of itsPopular Frontstrategy of uniting Communist and non-Communist intellectuals againstfascism,the CPUSA launched a new mass organization called theLeague of American Writers,abandoning the John Reed Clubs as part of the change.PReditors Phillips and Rahv were disaffected by the change, seeing the new organization as a watering down and mainstreaming of the party's commitment to a new, radical, proletarian literature. Intellectual interest turned to events abroad and interest inPRfaltered to the point that effective with its October 1936 issue, publication of the magazine was suspended.

1937 relaunch

WhilePartisan Reviewwas relaunched by Rahv and Phillips in December 1937, it was changed at a fundamental level. News of theGreat Purgein the Soviet Union and of Soviet duplicity in theSpanish Civil Warpushed the pair of editors to a new outspokenly critical perspective. A new cast of editors were brought on board, includingDwight Macdonaldand literary criticF. W. Dupee,and a sympathy forTrotskyismbegan to make itself felt in the magazine's editorial political line. The CPUSA press was hostile, claiming that a party asset had been stolen. A new group of left wing writers deeply critical of the Soviet Union began to write for the publication, includingJames BurnhamandSidney Hook.The new period of independence had begun.

Effective with theNazi-Soviet Pact of 1939,the magazine began to divorce itself from the Communist movement altogether, including its dissident Trotskyist wing. Rahv and Phillips gave qualified support to the campaign for American rearmament and the country's preparation for war, opposed by Macdonald and another editor at the time,Clement Greenberg.A tentative truce between the editors averted a split, with Macdonald finally departing in 1943 to form thepacifistmagazinepolitics.

Anti-Communism began to loom in theraison d'êtreofPartisan Reviewin the post-war years and bolstered by the contributions of such writers as Hook,James Farrell,George Orwell,andArthur Koestler,the political trajectory ofPRmoved rightwards.Increasingly conservative andnationalist,by the early 1950s the magazine had become devoutly supportive of American virtues and values, although critical of the country's biases and excesses.Orwell had been thePartisan Review's London correspondent.

Funding by the CIA

Although vehemently denied by founding editor William Phillips, following thefall of the Soviet Unionit was revealed thatPartisan Reviewwas the recipient of money from theCentral Intelligence Agencyas part of its effort to shape intellectual opinion in the so-called "cultural cold war".In 1953, the magazine found itself in financial difficulties, when one of its primary backstage financial backers, Allan D. Dowling, became embroiled in a costly divorce proceeding. The financial shortfall was made up by a $2,500 grant from theAmerican Committee for Cultural Freedom(ACCF), a CIA front organization on the executive board of which editor Phillips sat throughout the decade of the 1950s.

Additional CIA money came later in the 1950s. When the ACCF terminated its operations, half of the money remaining in the organization's coffers was transferred toPartisan Review.Additional funds came to the magazine to alleviate its financial problems in the 1950s in the form of a $10,000 donation fromTimemagazine publisherHenry Luce.Luce seems to have been instrumental in expediting contacts betweenPRpublisher Phillips and Director of Central IntelligenceWalter Bedell Smith.

A successor organization established by the CIA to funnel money to sympathetic groups and individuals, theCongress for Cultural Freedom,stepped up to assist the magazine in the early 1960s, grantingPR$3,000 a year for a 3-year period in the guise of foreign magazine subscriptions.

Moves to Rutgers and Boston University

In 1963 William Phillips negotiated a move of the editorial offices ofPartisan Reviewto the campus ofRutgers UniversityinNew Brunswick,New Jersey.The university agreed to provide not only free office space and utilities, but also to cover the salary of an editor, an assistant editor, a secretary, and variousgraduate assistantsto help with office tasks. In return, the university would gain prestige from association with the well-regarded literary journal and make uses of the services of the editor and assistant editor as lecturers in the school's English Department.

This arrangement proved satisfactory for both parties until June 1978, when Phillips approached the University's then-mandatory faculty retirement age of 70. Learning that no exception would be made for him, Phillips began shopping for a new home forPartisan Review.The decision was ultimately made to relocate the magazine's editorial offices toBoston University,where publication would be continued under the editorship of Phillips and Steven Marcus, with Edith Kurzweil remaining as the magazine's Executive Editor.Under terms of the new hosting agreement, ownership rights ofPartisan Review'sextensive archive were to be transferred to the new institution.

Having invested more than $1 million inPartisan Reviewover the years and stored the publication's archive since 1963, Rutgers physically blocked the transfer ofPR'sfiles to the new institution.A standoff resulted and attorneys for both parties hastily came to an agreement by which Phillips was allowed to remove back issues, financial files, and current documents necessary for the magazine's publication to Boston University with Rutgers holding the archival originals until the matter could be legally settled.An inventory of the magazine's papers was conducted and photocopies of critical documents made and the matter headed for court.

In the lawsuit which followed, Phillips ultimately prevailing based on his contention that the magazine's records had been housed at Rutgers merely as a revokable "deposit" rather than a permanent gift.Rutgers was allowed to microfilm the magazine's pre-1978 records with the originals were transferred to Boston University.

The magazine's circulation was 8,150 in 1989.

Termination and legacy

Phillips died in September 2002 at age 94. The journal continued under his wife,Edith Kurzweilat Boston University until ceasing publication in April 2003.

Notable contributions

• James Baldwin's "Everybody's Protest Novel" (1949) and also"Sonny's Blues"(1957).
• Saul Bellow's first published work "9 a.m., without Work" in 1941.
• Two ofT. S. Eliot's "Four Quartets"
• Clement Greenberg's "Avant-Garde and Kitsch"
• George Orwell's "Such, Such Were the Joys"
• Delmore Schwartz's "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities"
• Susan Sontag's "Notes on 'Camp'"
• Philip Roth's "His Mistress's Voice" (1986)

See also

• Bibliography of George Orwell
• Congress for Cultural Freedom- CIA program to fund European magazines

References

Sources

• Becker, Ronald (Spring 1993)."On Deposit: A Handshake and a Lawsuit".The American Archivist.Vol. 56.
• Gilbert, James B. (1974). "Partisan Review: New York, 1934—"".InConlin, Joseph R.(ed.).The American Radical Press, 1880-1960.Vol. 2. Westport, CT:Greenwood Press.
• Wilford, Hugh (2008).The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America.Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Further reading

• Ronald Becker,"On Deposit: A Handshake and a Lawsuit."The American Archivist,Vol. 56 (Spring 1993), pp. 320–328.
• Alexander Bloom,Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World.New York:Oxford University Press,1986.
• Cooney, Terry A. (1981). "Cosmopolitan Values and the Identification of Reaction: Partisan Review in the 1930s".The Journal of American History.68(3): 580–598.doi:10.2307/1901940.ISSN0021-8723.JSTOR1901940.
• James Gilbert,"Literature and Revolution in the United States:The Partisan Review,"Journal of Contemporary History,vol. 2, no. 2 (April 1967), pp. 161–176.
• Frances Stonor Saunders,The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters.New York:The New Press,2000.
• Sam Tanenhaus,"Hello to All That: The Irony Behind the Demise of the Partisan Review",Slate,April 16, 2003.
• Mark Greif,"What's Wrong with Public Intellectuals?",Chronicle of Higher Education,Feb. 13, 2015 (reviewing the newly digitizedPRand comparing with modern peers)

External links

• Partisan Reviewonline archive,Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center, Boston University.