The clincher that gave Peretz final authority in the dispute was a clause saying "the seller will serve the buyer's best interests." The agreement was that Harrison would stay on for a three year grace period while Peretz learned the ropes. This arrangement, Peretz says, caused one of his friends, a "shrewd" businessman, to say, "This kind of two-headed monster will never last."

Peretz says that Harrison wanted to sell the magazine and still have it, that he expected him to be an absentee owner. Peretz says he did not encourage Harrison in that view. While Harrison does not publicly attack Peretz, friends say that he feels betrayed. One source who wishes to remain unknown says Harrison told him that selling The New Republic to Peretz was "the biggest mistake I ever made."

Apparently the only message which got through to Karnow, Pincus, and Grumbach about the new man in the owner's office was that Peretz was serving an apprenticeship and they didn't, Karnow said, expect him to "throw his weight around the way he did."

The man who wasn't expected to throw his weight around the way he did says that right now he is having more fun than he's had in years. Peretz says that he has found an outlet for his "political, intellectual, literary and entrepreneurial tendencies," and that The New Republic "is right for me."

He is proud of the other changes he has brought to the magazine, notably the arts section where Roger Rosenblatt, former Dunster House master and assistant professor of English, has replaced Grumbach as literary editor.

Peretz acknowledges that the editors who left the magazine charge him with unprofessionalism, but he bristles, "What the fuck do they know?" He adds the observation that you don't go to school to become a professional editor. Walzer says that Peretz's particular skill in bringing off a marriage between author and subject. And members of the staff says that Peretz beats the bushes for new writers.

As for those members of the staff who disagreed with Peretz's perception, they didn't have much to do with The New Republic very long. Stanley Karnow is now writing a syndicated column out of Washington and a book on the CIA. And Karnow has not read The New Republic since Peretz cut off his subscription the week after he left.