Norman Podhoretz was one of my intellectual heroes. One of his most famous essays is “My Negro Problem — and Ours,” published in Commentary in 1963. In 2013 he looked back on it “‘My Negro Problem — and Ours’ at 50,” another great Commentary essay. James Baldwin plays his part in both essays.
As we became friendly correspondents, he wrote me frequently to thank me for this or that. I should have thanked him 10,000 times over for serving as the writer I most wanted to emulate.
When I wrote an essay on the wildly best-selling book Between the World and Me, by Ta-Nehesi Coates, I had Mr. Podhoretz in mind. I titled my draft of the essay “My Coates Problem — and Ours.” By this time the formulation had become a cliché and City Journal rightly rejected it in favor of “An updated racial hustle.” As I say, however, I had Mr. Podhoretz in mind while I sought to administer justice to Coates’s vile book, in part by quoting passages from it.
Mr. Podhoretz had written me one of his encouraging messages that I am now unable to retrieve. I alluded to that message when I wrote him:
015-07-31 10:21 GMT-04:00:
Dear Mr Podhoretz: Thanks for your message. I reread your 50-year essay last night and saw that you quoted Coates in it.
I had you in the back of my mind the whole time I was working on my piece on Coates. I think City Journal is going to post it Sunday night. I am kind of proud of how unrelenting it is. Will you forgive me for sending you the draft attached? I wanted you to see it.
I asked them to call it “My Coates Problem—and Ours,” but I am afrid they think your formulation has been beaten into the ground. They’re mulling it over.
Scott
He wrote me back:
From: Norman Podhoretz
Date: July 31, 2015 at 10:27:38 AM CDT
To: Scott Johnson
Subject: Re: “My Coates Problem–and Ours”
I like it very much, not least because it is, as you say, unrelenting. I hadn’t realized from the reviews how badly written the book is. Jimmy Baldwin at his worst (i.e., in the last years of his life) never came close to writing such gibberish, and at his best he was many literary miles beyond the reach of Coates. Evidently Toni Morrison can’t tell the difference, but the Baldwin I knew would have been insulted by the comparison to him.
I have never known anyone else in a position to refer to Baldwin as “Jimmy” and want to share this message in the aftermath of Mr. Podhoretz’s death this week.
