Making It

The poor self- educated Big City boy gets to Cambridge where he studies English under F.S. Leavis. Podhoretz describes the climb afterwards to 'make it' in American intellectual life. When he gets to 'Commentary' and gets to run the show he is instead of one looking out trying to get in, one on the inside who in pushing the magazine up pushes himself up with it. Raw ambition confessed is at the heart of the book. He does 'make it' but then not quite in the same way that friends he will later quarrel with, Mailer,Ginsberg, Arendt do.