Concluding the series on modernism, William Barrett discusses his book The Truants: Adventures Among the Intellectuals, in which he traces the fortunes of a group of noteworthy intellectuals who were active in New York City as social and artistic critics after World War II. He describes their complex connections to liberty, modernism, social revolution, totalitarianism, Stalinism, utopian socialism, Russian Marxism, and what has been called the romance of American communism. This circle included editors of magazines such as Partisan Review, the New Republic, and the Nation, and writers such as Philip Rahv, William Phillips, Delmore Schwartz, and Hannah Arendt.
At the time of this interview, Barrett, a Fellow at the National Humanities Center (1981-82), was professor of philosophy at New York University.
This edition of Soundings was conducted by Wayne J. Pond.
