SOURCE: Nordell, Roderick. “He Typed His Way Up.” Christian Science Monitor 60, no. 39 (11 January 1968): 11.

In the following review, Nordell comments on the “self-congratulatory” statements in Podhoretz's memoir Making It and argues that the book's strongest passages are those in which Podhoretz writes about his associates.

The literary version of American success typically has power, fame, and money turning to ashes as soon as they are won. Now a going-on-40 critic and editor, who has been “thought of as spokesman for his literary age group,” tastes the ashes and finds them good.

The depression-child intellectual from Brooklyn grows up to enjoy the state dinner at the White House, the luxurious conference at Huntington Hartford's Paradise Island. Gone are his undergraduate doubts about ambition and its fruits: it had been envy, not concern for his integrity, that had prompted his classmates' head-shakings. He's been poor, and he's been rich, and, believe...