Undiscriminating anti-Communism is less common and less damaging now than when there were Communists around, but in concentrated doses it can still be harmful. The Twilight of the Intellectuals is a very concentrated dose. Hilton Kramer is one of America's leading art critics and editor of The New Criterion , one of our best and most influential literary-intellectual journals. Although Kramer's range is broad, his purpose is narrow. Kramer has set out in this book to right the balance single-handedly.
Twilight is a continuous, controlled discharge of censure and opprobrium.
Though elegantly written, it seethes. But ideological animus has its pitfalls. In other words, he was more skeptical than Kramer about the professed goals of America's military intervention in the Philippines, Cuba, and elsewhere. He changed his mind a lot, so he was, Kramer sniffs, essentially unserious. Oddly, the courageous and isolated New Criterion received more foundation support in its first year than Howe's establishment organ, Dissent , did in its first thirty.