No Rest for the Righteous
We’d say the book’s fascination with these JDs accounts for much of its appeal. By ignoring 90 percent of what went on back then (all those little marching people, and the civil rights movement of Martin Luther King as distinct from the one of Huey Newton), and reducing the Movement to the shenanigans of such nihilist luminaries as George Jackson and Bernardine Dohrn, Destructive Generation recapitulates the era as a sort of hysterical rock concert climaxing in the self-obliteration of its superstars. Which after tucking in the kids and changing the litter box is how we sometimes like to remember it.
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Horowitz, who does most of the talking for the partnership, told us by phone from the Ritz-Carlton, “Our book is not really about Americans who were drawn into these demonstrations for pragmatic reasons [i.e., to stop the war and save their asses]. Our book has a quarrel with people who were spelling America with a K, who wanted to bring the system with a capital S down.” Destructive Generation argues that these people have burrowed into the system and are as dangerous to America as ever.
“Did you ever know an editor who didn’t talk about his or her writers?” asked Rieff in the green room. And Horowitz told him, “No, but I had to get you.” (This is Rieff’s account, but it’s pretty much how Horowitz remembers it too.) Rieff said airily, “You care only about politics and I care about art,” and Horowitz shot back, “If you had decent politics, you wouldn’t be an accomplice of the murderers in Managua. You’d support the contras like me.” Rieff thought to himself, I’ve just been called a murderer!
“Who are the players here?” asked Horowitz in confusion. For Katz did not come alone. No, here was reporter Tom Valeo introducing himself as the actual interviewer and another guy as the photographer. As for Katz, Valeo explained that he’d asked Summit Books to send her a book because he wanted her along to round out the conversation. Today, Marilyn Katz is a media consultant who did a lot of work for the city while Harold Washington was mayor. For a while in the 60s she belonged to Students for a Democratic Society. Bernardine Dohrn was a friend.
“In the halls they began to characterize [Katz and James] as terrorists, that’s a quote, and bomb throwers, unquote,” Johnson told us. “It wasn’t the proudest moment of Lefties for Reagan.”
