Dinner at Barzun's: The Trillings, Jacques Barzun, Hannah Arendt and Daniel Bell are there.
Dianna Trilling: Edward, we understand the delicate position you're in. Don't worry, we will support you, we will protect you, we will make sure you don't have to answer any awkward questions. We will make sure Palestine doesn't come up for you.
Edward Said: Well thank you so much Diana. I am moved by your solicitude. Let me assure you thus far Palestine has not come up for me, nor do I expect it to come up so often that it requires the protection of anyone.
DT: These are wolves Edward. You haven't seen how brutal they can be yet but at some point you will find them breathtaking in their audacity to humiliate.
Lionel Trilling: Now now, Diana, nobody here is a true Diogenes. Surely there are moments of discomfort, but
Daniel Bell: (interrupting) We're not a pack of boars looking for kosher meat.
(Everyone laughed. I suppose it's relieving: any laugh at a dinner hosted by Jacques Barzun is as unlikely as a mention of The Rolling Stones. The food is inevitably delectable, but Allah forbid any of us use the wrong salad fork or Barzun may remind us of it in eighteen months. Lionel told me that my presence at this dinner would be much appreciated, Arendt would be there and wants to talk to me about my new Conrad book. Of course, this means 'your presence is mandatory.' It seemed fairly innocuous, Arendt wrote about Conrad in Origins of Totalitarianism, but I have a feeling of dread that something more purposeful is afoot.)
ES: I should think you'd be searching for Hallal in my case but nevertheless I suppose some small pang of anxiety stands.
LT: We've invited you to this dinner to alleviate that anxiety. You're one of us now. (raises a glass) To Edward, the future of American letters!
Jacques Barzun: L'chaim I suppose.
(everyone laughed again)
LT: So you understand, Edward, the reason we wanted you here is to let you know that we're pre-empting your tenure track by two years. You will be a tenured professor in all but official title for the next three months, and will officially have tenure before the semester is complete.
DB: MAZEL TOV!
(everyone applauded)
LT: It's true, we have sped the process up so that there is no doubt about our position with regard to Arab colleagues, but I want to impress how important it is that you understand this Edward, I should think this would not even need to be mentioned, but in case there's any doubt at all, even without this war for which everyone in this room feels no little ambivalence, no instructor in my nearly fifty years at Columbia has earned tenure more justly and more decisively: by the impactfulness of your teaching, the profundity of your insight, the nuance of your research, the eloquence of your oratory and the substance of your person. Bravo.
(everyone applauded again)
Hannah Arendt: Nevertheless Edward, it would be edifying to get your sense of the Six Day War.
(Trilling and Barzun exchanged a look)
LT: Hannah, the whole point of this dinner is to ensure he doesn't have to talk about it.
(I'd already had a few to get through the evening.)
HA: He's a man of deep substance like any of us, he deserves to have his views heard and respected. Doesn't he?
LT: Well he certainly deserves our respect. Jacques, would you object?
JB: If this is the way we best pay tribute to Edward, please let him be heard.
(I don't remember exactly what I said, but I did my best to give a cultural explanation that turned the subject back to literature: how Adonis portrays exile and Mahfouz internal exile, how the exciting young poet Darwish dramatizes war, it wasn't a very convincing explanation, and Arendt wasn't having it.)
HA: Dr. Said, if I wanted a lecture on literature, I would sit in your class, which I'm sure would be very compelling. Please answer the question: what do you think of the Six Day War.
"That is an evasion, Doctor Said. You have still not given your opinion."
(I do not remember my answers to her doctoral-like examination, but I remember every question which followed like a rubber bullet to the sternum.)
"You are not answering the question. You are speaking of the Suez Crisis which was eleven years ago. This Six Day War happened three months ago. Please tell me your opinion on that."
"Why do you think Israel should not answer the PLO activity with activity of its own? Please answer the question directly."
"But the reports from the Soviet Union to Nasser were false."
"Why would Nasser trust the Soviet Union's reports when Khrushchev lied to Nasser ten years before?"
"Khrushchev was repeatedly shown to be more trustworthy than Brezhnev. Why would Nasser trust Brezhnev who's already been shown to be unreliable with regard to Vietnam, China, Nigeria and Ghana?"
"Even if he trusted the intelligence, Nasser did not have to close the straits. Israel made clear the consequences years ago."
"But Nasser knew that even if all six allies invaded simultaneously, they would be no match for the Israeli army. If the Israeli army could defeat these countries twenty years before when they were hardly a country, how much more easily could they now?"
"The IDF's training is so much famously better than nearly any country on earth: surely the heads of state realized that even an army of a million could not overwhelm Israeli soldiery."
"Soviet weaponry is notoriously unreliable. Israel's weaponry was French, most of their weapons scientists trained in Germany, whose munitions are famously effective. And they surely realized Israel may drop a nuclear weapon."
"Yes but if it's true that French munitions were unreliable you still have not accounted for the difference in training between Israeli soldier and Arab."
"The pre-emption of the Israeli army can be accounted for by the massive presence on all their borders. There is no justification for not acknowledging the unusualness of the activity."
"Egypt killed their own unarmed soldiers too rather than risk them telling Egyptians of the extent of their defeat."
"There is little means by which the West could assist when the Soviets were patrolling the entrances to Middle Eastern waters."
"So you are accusing Israel of destroying USS Liberty at the same time that you allege American support of Israel?"
"Many of the Palestinians could have gone to Jordan where they knew they would be better received, they chose to go to the refugee camps."
"Even if it's true about Jordanian mistreatment of Palestinians, many Jews were mistreated in Arab countries and had to immigrate to Israel rather than suffer at their hands."
"Why is the burden upon upon Israel when they are surrounded by 22 Arab countries?"
"Israel was the victor and they sued for peace and the Arab countries refused: when else has that happened in human history."
"Dr. Said, you are complaining about the unfairness of your treatment but you agreed to let us hear what you think. You complain of being singled out yet here you are, drinking wine with us and being toasted as America's intellectual future."
"You claim you are singled out and classified for being an Arab, yet this answer displays a profoundly monolithic view of Jews."
"This determination, as you say, to simplify Arabs to a monolithic force is reciprocated by a view of Jews that seems profoundly simplifying as well of Jewish opinions."
"Yes, we may be disproportionately powerful for the moment, but the power and privilege did not assist us when it was time to prevent Hitler's annihilation."
To which I replied, and I remember this very clearly: "Perhaps it is that very power and privilege that invites revolt against Jews."
This was the moment Diana finally stepped in:
Hannah Arendt: You do realize that this might be construed as an an...
Diana Trilling: I don't think anything is served by this discussion. Edward, I'm sorry we let this go on as long as we have without stopping it.
(I had to fight back tears, which I'm sure they saw. The bullet was my panic, but I only remember these questions because I wrote them all down immediately after coming home and spent a week reading periodicals in the Columbia library to answer them)
Lionel Trilling: We should have stepped in earlier.
Hannah Arendt: Not at all, he acquitted himself well. Most Jews would have retreated to victimhood five questions earlier.
Daniel Bell: Jacques, let's pour the boy a stronger drink.
Diana Trilling: That was nothing compared to how personal things can get from some of the others. I'll call off Seymour and Irving, but not even we can call off Edmund. Thank god Mary lives in Paris now...
I repeatedly asked Lionel over the next few years and he vehemently denied that they set up this dinner to make me questioned by Arendt. I don't believe him.
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