Intellectual Idols

When I bought The New Republic more than 32 years ago, my first thought was to seek advice. I went to see Walter Lippmann who had been among the first editors in 1914. I also met with Edmund Wilson and then Alfred Kazin who had both edited the "back of the book." Some time I'll write about these encounters. I also went to Paris to meet Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, then the editor of L'Express, easily compared to Time and Newsweek. But how far it was from these--how much more independent it was, how genuinely literate, how deeply French yet open to American ideas--cannot be overemphasized.

My friend Leah Pisar has just written a memoiristic piece about JJSS for The Wall Street Journal today, fascinating and fascinated but not hero-worship. There is someone in France today, like him but of course different, and that's Bernard-Henri Lévy. And that's another story.