It was to be expected that the collapse of the intellectual Left in France—the virtual extinction there of Marxism and its ideological variants as a source of fashionable ideas—would sooner or later be reflected in the attitudes of those American intellectuals who habitually take their political cues from Paris. The only question that remained to be answered was: What form would this inevitable shift in political attitudes take on this side of the Atlantic? It remained to be seen, too, how widespread the effect of this shift would be when it came. Would it, for example, make any headway in the American academy, or were we going to have to wait for an entire generation of tenured révoltés to be retired from the scene before some semblance of intellectual enlightenment could be restored to the American professoriat?

At this writing, alas, the prospect of any significant change in the academy, at least as far as the humanities are concerned, looks pretty bleak. But outside the academy, especially among intellectuals who pride themselves on being culturally chic, the signs are not uninteresting. For in the milieu I speak of—let us call it, for short, the Sontag circle—it is no longer considered démodé to be anti-Communist. Indeed, it has become positively smart—sort of the dernier cri—not only to be anti-Communist but to be outspokenly anti-Communist. As abject as ever in its submission to French intellectual fashions, this privileged group has seized upon anti-Communism almost as if it were a