'I Have Finally Written on Politics"

The April 1970 issue of the now-defunct New American Review included one of those self-important symposia beloved by editors, this one titled “The Writer’s Situation.” A surprising participant was J.V. Cunningham, who seldom played the conventional literary game. A poet, critic, scholar and academic, he was intensely private and always terse. Cunningham endorses common sense in a year of self-serving madness. When asked, “What are the main creative opportunities and problems that attract and beset you in your work?” he replies: “Forms. An interest in a form is an invitation to realize it.” That was the year of Cambodia, Kent State and Jimi Hendrix. Asked about politics, Cunningham replies:

 

“You can write on politics or not. I do not. But is politics meant here? Or is it, rather, ideology? The latter is religious, not political, though religion has awesome political consequences. Politics is negotiation, accommodation, controlled power. It is achieving consensus without agreement, defeating a zoning change, voting for Harry Truman. It is being chairman. It is irrigation and not a flood. It is effective and corrupt in a settled society, the Old Adam. It gets another generation through to the grave with tolerable illusions and half-beliefs. I have finally written on politics.”

 

Cunningham refers to the old meaning of politics – filling potholes, plowing snow, arresting bad guys. It’s pragmatic, not an endorsement of social engineering. The notion of “consensus without agreement” is a dream that lapsed long ago. I remembered Cunningham when I was rereading Clive James’ chapter on Freud, of all people, in Cultural Amnesia (2007):

 

“The driving force of any ideology stands revealed: it can’t be coherent without being intolerant.”