The avalanche of praise and the absolute nature of the respect Art received everywhere had another result. He’s still a companionable and amusing man when you’re alone with him, but it began to develop and to be noticed that when he was in his public-behavior, on-view phase, he sounded a bit pompous. I can only guess that like so many other “left of center” heroes, he’d been invited to stand on too many platforms of honor and asked to answer too many reverential questions. Perhaps, like many others, he began to try to live up to what people were saying about him, trying to be the “Arthur Miller” they were writing about, an ideologue to be trusted, a trailblazer, and so on. That kind of reverence and praise is hard to resist, a danger for us all. Art began to relish the joys of being right. A supposed rebel, he lived the life of an establishment god, and he liked it. There is a danger for an artist of becoming a man who sees his role to be teaching others and pronouncing judgment on one and all.