The Social Stock Market

There’s a paragraph in Norman Podhoretz’s Making It, his polarizing if riveting account of a life in letters in midcentury America, that’s always stuck with me. “Every morning,” he wrote in the 1967 memoir, “a stock-market report on reputation comes out in New York. It is invisible, but those who have eyes to see can read it. Did so-and-so have dinner at Jacqueline Kennedy’s apartment last night? Up five points. Was so-and-so not invited by the Lowells to meet the latest visiting Russian poet? Down one-eighth. Did so-and-so’s book get nominated for the National Book Award? Up two and five-eighths. Did Partisan Review neglect to ask so-and-so to participate in a symposium? Down two.”