With the publication of Ex-Friends, Norman Podhoretz has performed a near to thrilling intellectual feat. Each of the figures he takes up in memory and judgment -- Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer -- is a prototype of sorts. Together they…

WITH THE PUBLICATION of "Ex-Friends," Norman Podhoretz has performed a near to thrilling intellectual feat. Each of the figures he takes up in memory and judgment--Allen Ginsberg, Lionel and Diana Trilling, Lillian Hellman, Hannah Arendt, and Norman Mailer--is a prototype of sorts. Together they…