SOURCE: Kaplan, H. J. “Homage to Norman Podhoretz.” Partisan Review 66, no. 3 (summer 1999): 431-38.

In the following review, Kaplan characterizes Ex-Friends: Falling out with Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer as an insightful and thoughtful memoir.

“I have often said that if I wish to name-drop,” says Norman Podhoretz in the opening sentence of his new book, “I have only to list my ex-friends. The remark always gets a laugh, but, in addition to being funny, it has the advantage of being true.” And thus does this well-known curmudgeon go straight to the heart of his matter. Although now in his “reclusive dotage,” he warns us, and no longer as “merry” as he used to be, he produces his Podhoretzian flourish, this time with a dash of melancholy, and we're off and into his latest offering, Ex-Friends.

It is worth noting at...