Arguing the World

Imagine the pitch on this one: "Well, we plan to trace the evolving ideas of four New York intellectuals--who often differed in their opinions--from their college days in the 1930s up through the conservative Reagan years. Think Reds meets Grumpy Old Men." Fortunately, for us, writer/director Joseph Dorman's entertaining (yes, I meant that word) journey through a half-century of twists and turns in the social and political leanings of sociologists Daniel Bell and Nathan Glazer, public policy guru Irving Kristol and the late literary critic Irving Howe, is not a Hollywood effort but a nevertheless very handsomely produced labor of love. From their early days as students at New York's City College (where the teachers were often terrible, but the talk--which swirled around the great Russian experiment in socialism--was great), to the ideological shifts that followed WWII in the late '40s, the impact of the McCarthy hearings in the '50s, the student rebellions of the '60s and the capitalist-friendly Reaganite '80s, the New York intellectual fearsome foursome profiled here found themselves shifting positions on the Left-Right political continuum as the world became increasingly more complex. Although they jokingly quote the aphorism that "when intellectuals have nothing else to do, they start magazines," Howe would, in fact, found Dissent in his response to what he saw as Cold War conformity in his peers, and Kristol and Glazer would later launch The Public Interest. In addition to the principals, a treasure trove of interviewees, including Diana Trilling, Morris Dickstein, William F. Buckley Jr., Norman Podhoretz, and Alfred Kazin, among others, offer wonderful supporting commentary and anecdotes. In our intellectually-truncated times, where vigorous meaty argument has been reduced to talk show and news hour sound bites, it's refreshing to hear four New York lads who believe(d) that in the real world ideas matter above all. Highly recommended. Aud: C, P. (R. Pitman)