At a 1980 symposium at Skidmore College set in motion by
a normally portentous essay by George Steiner about the death of
culture in America, Dwight Macdonald, long established as a
slashing critic of popular culture and politics, sitting on a
panel on “Film and Theatre in America,” seemed to have little of
interest to say.

He was seventy-four years old and a fairly
serious boozer who had written almost nothing of interest for more than a
decade. He seemed the intellectual equivalent of the boxer who
has taken way too many shots to the head. His death by congestive
heart failure was two years away. Reacting against the tendency
in the discussion to take current-day movies and plays seriously,
Macdonald emitted—one almost hears him muttering—a remark
that could stand as the epigraph for his long career in
intellectual journalism: “When I say ‘no’ I’m always right and
when I say ‘yes’ I’m almost always wrong.”

Dwight Macdonald was the intellectual par excellence, which is to
say without any specialized knowledge he was prepared to comment
on everything, boisterously and always with what seemed an
unwavering confidence. He was the pure type of the amateur, and
gloried in the status. And why not? “What’s wrong with being an
amateur,” one easily imagines him saying. “Look where the
professionals have got us.”

Perhaps this is too much in the spirit
of put-down. But then this was also Macdonald’s reigning spirit,
and possibly it is contagious.