A Moral Temper: The Letters of Dwight Macdonald

Rating:
Summary: A Profile of Honesty and Courage
Review: As one who is a generation younger than Dwight Macdonald and therefore came of age in the time that he was writing these letters this was of great interest.
I regret that I was generally unaware of his writings at the time but am sincerely grateful to have had this belated opportunity to sample them.
The political and literary culture of the middle 50 years of the 20th century are brilliantly explicated. As one with the courage to take on the Stalinists on the left and the McCarthyites on the right he deserves a more prominent place of honor in the literary annals of this country.
I look forward to reading "A Rebel in Defense of Traddition".
Update: 23 September, 2002--
Having now read the Michael Wreszin's biography "A Rebel in Defense of Tradition" I am ready to reiterate my praise for the life and works of Dwight Macdonald with the reservation that Macdonald was a complex and often difficult personality.
Quoting from the review of Christopher Lehmann-Haupt "Dwight Macdonald emerges as a hugely appealing figure in these pages. Mr. Wreszin lends sense somehow to every step in his subject's sometimes erratic reasoning"
Macdonald was certainly on occasion erratic but in the end he was HONEST, COURAGEOUS and mostly RIGHT.