Norman Podhoretz: A Provocateur’s Last Bow

Norman Harold Podhoretz belonged to a time when literary brawls ended with black eyes and a night behind bars. Born in Brooklyn in 1930, Podhoretz died at 95 on December 16 in Manhattan, completing a very New York odyssey. Longtime editor (1960-95) of Commentary magazine, founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945 with Elliot Cohen as editor and now managed by Podhoretz’s son John, Podhoretz Sr’s journey reflected the magazine’s own.

 Commentary began life as a debating ground for the anti-Stalinist left. Then in the 1970s, he moved to the right, joining the father of neocon­servatism, Irving Kristol, as the neocon foreign policy expert. He picked up admir­ers from Ronald Reagan to Henry Kissinger and ditched old friends like Norman Mailer and Irving Howe. The nuclear-armed Soviet geron­tocracy came to preoccupy him, as did Islamism later. Podhoretz was, in the last analysis, a seasoned provoca­teur with a passionate intel­lect. In his son’s words: “He was a man of great wit and a man of deep wisdom and he lived an astonishing and uniquely American life.”