SOURCE: Stern, Daniel. “Norman Podhoretz, Distinguished Provincial or Fantasy Person?” Commonweal 87, no. 19 (16 February 1968): 594-96.

In the following review, Stern asserts that Podhoretz fails to describe himself accurately in Making It, arguing that the memoir instead presents a caricature of the man Podhoretz visualizes himself to be.

The word was out as long ago as eight months, perhaps longer. Norman Podhoretz, editor of Commentary and key figure in the New York Literary Establishment, had written a book that tore the lid off. The buzz was everywhere. An item in the Sunday Times Book Review told what had been joked about at the cocktail parties and the lunches: that the book had been turned down as “outrageous” by a publisher who had already given Podhoretz a large advance. His agent was also rumored to have dropped the book, whereupon another agent took it to Random House; at which point Bennett...