The Waldorf Conference
Dwight Macdonald's report on the 25–27 March 1949 Waldorf Conference (the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace) in politics, quoting Mailer's 26 March floor statement on "the state capitalism of Russia, the monopoly capitalism of the U.S., and the futility of the conference." The first of five 1949 entries on the Waldorf reception.
“The Waldorf Conference.” Article by Dwight Macdonald. politics 6 (winter), 32A–32D.
Macdonald quotes Mailer’s 26 March statement to the 25–27 March Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace concerning the state capitalism of Russia, the monopoly capitalism of the U.S., and the futility of the conference. The issue is the final number of Macdonald’s journal politics, which ceased publication in 1949.
Cross-references: compare with Mailer’s remembrance of the conference in Advertisements for Myself (59.13), 409–10; see also the red-baiting article in Life, 4 April, 39–43. See 13.2 (Lennon’s Norman Mailer: A Double Life), 110–11.
The Waldorf Conference meeting of Mailer with Macdonald, Mary McCarthy, and Robert Lowell was a formative one — all three would remain critical interlocutors across the 1950s and 1960s.
Related pages
- 1949 | Dwight Macdonald | politics
- Panel Discussions of the Cultural Conference Delegates Cover a Wide Range of Subjects | Guardian Reports on the Peace Conference Panels | Weekend at the Waldorf | Speaking of Peace: An Edited Report of the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace
- Advertisements for Myself (59.13) | Norman Mailer: A Double Life (13.2)