Authors Debate U.S., USSR Issues at Mt. Holyoke
Unsigned Springfield Union report on the 26 March 1952 debate between Mailer and Dwight Macdonald at Mt. Holyoke College — Macdonald arguing "I Choose the West," Mailer countering with "I Cannot Choose." The Mailer speech has never been reprinted or located; the Springfield Union article is the principal surviving record of its arguments.
“Authors Debate U.S., USSR Issues at Mt. Holyoke.” No author. Springfield Union, 27 March 1952.
Report on a debate, titled “The U.S.A. or the USSR,” between Mailer and Dwight Macdonald at Mt. Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts, on 26 March 1952. Macdonald’s speech, titled “I Choose the West,” was reprinted in his collection Memoirs of a Revolutionist (New York: Farrar, Straus and Cudahy, 1957). Mailer’s speech was titled “I Cannot Choose,” and has never been reprinted, or located.
While both debaters agreed on the general superiority of Western civilization at that moment, Mailer feared the U.S. backsliding into a war economy, and the possibility of Europe either aligning itself with the USSR or being attacked and conquered by it. If that happened, he said, there would be:
- a lowering of the standard of living in the U.S.,
- perhaps Nazi-like concentration camps for dissenters, and
- a general breakdown of moral values.
“The independent spirit of non-conformity that the U.S. has founded is dying out,” he concluded.