Irving Howe (néHorenstein;/haʊ/; June 11, 1920 – May 5, 1993) was an American author, literary and social critic, and a key figure in thedemocratic socialist movement in the U.S. He co-founded and served as longtime editor ofDissent magazine. In 1976, he wrote theNational Book Award-winningWorld of Our Fathers, a history of East European Jews who immigrated to America.
Howe was bornIrving Horenstein inThe Bronx,New York in 1920. He was the son ofJewish immigrants fromBessarabia, Nettie (née Goldman) and David Horenstein, who ran a small grocery store that went out of business during theGreat Depression.[1] Irving's father became a peddler and eventually a presser in a dress factory. His mother was an operator in the dress trade.[2][3]
Irving attendedDeWitt Clinton High School in northwest Bronx, where he was already a left-wing activist.[4] He then matriculated toCity College of New York (CCNY) in 1936.[5] He graduated alongsideDaniel Bell andIrving Kristol in 1940.[2] By summer of that year, he had changed his surname from Horenstein to Howe for political (as distinct from official) purposes.[6] While in college, he was constantly debating socialism, Stalinism, fascism, and the meaning of Judaism.
DuringWorld War II, Howe served four years in the U.S. Army, stationed mostly atFort Richardson nearAnchorage, Alaska.[7] Upon his return to New York, he began writing literary and cultural criticism forPartisan Review and was a frequent essayist forCommentary,Politics,The Nation,The New Republic, andThe New York Review of Books.[8] He then worked for several years as one of the resident book reviewers forTime magazine.[9] In 1954, he co-founded the intellectual quarterlyDissent, which he edited until his death.[2] In the 1950s, Howe taught English andYiddish literature atBrandeis University. His anthologyA Treasury of Yiddish Stories (1954), co-edited withEliezer Greenberg, became a standard text in college courses.[10] Howe's research and translations of Yiddish literature occurred at a time when few were appreciating or spreading knowledge about it in American universities.[citation needed]
He was a vociferous opponent of both Soviettotalitarianism andMcCarthyism. He called into questionstandard Marxist doctrine, and came into conflict with theNew Left after he criticized their brand of radicalism.[2] In later years, his socialist politics gravitated towards a more pragmatic approach toforeign policy, a position he espoused in the pages ofDissent magazine.
He had a few famous run-ins with people on political matters. In 1969 while atStanford University, he was verbally attacked by a group of youngSDS radicals, who claimed that Howe was no longer committed to the revolution and had becomestatus quo. Howe turned to the leader of the group and said, "You know what you're going to end up as? You're going to end up as adentist!"[2][15]
Howe authored numerous books includingDecline of the New,World of Our Fathers,Politics and the Novel, and his autobiography,A Margin of Hope. He also wrote a biography ofLeon Trotsky, who was one of his childhood heroes. Howe's writing often expressed his disapproval ofcapitalist America.
After marriages to Anna Bader, Thalia Phillies, and Arien Mack ended in divorce, Howe married Ilana Wiener, who co-edited the anthologyShort Shorts with him. From his marriage to Phillies, a classicist, he had two children, Nina andNicholas (1953-2006).[10][21][22]
Howe had strong political views that he would ferociously defend.Morris Dickstein, a professor at Queens College, referred to him as a "counterpuncher who tended to dissent from the prevailing orthodoxy of the moment, whether left or right, though he himself was certainly a man of the left."[2]
Leon Wieseltier, literary editor ofThe New Republic, said of Howe: "He lived in three worlds, literary, political and Jewish, and he watched all of them change almost beyond recognition."[2]
American philosopherRichard Rorty dedicatedAchieving Our Country (1998)—a book about the development of 20th century American leftist thought—to Irving Howe's memory.
American Jews and Liberalism. Co-authored withMichael Walzer,Leonard Fein &Mitchell Cohen. New York: Foundation for the Study of Independent Social Ideas, 1986.
The Merry-Go-Round of Love and selected stories by Luigi Pirandello, trans.Frances Keene andLily Duplaix, with a foreword by Irving Howe, New York: The New American Library of World Literature, 1964.
Voices from the Yiddish: Essays, Memoirs, Diaries, co-edited with Eliezer Greenberg, Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1972.
The Seventies: Problems and Proposals, co-edited withMichael Harrington, New York: Harper & Row, 1972.
The World of the Blue-Collar Worker, editor, New York: Quadrangle Books, 1972.
Yiddish stories, old and new, co-edited with Eliezer Greenberg, New York:Holiday House, 1974.
Herzog: Text and Criticism bySaul Bellow, editor, New York: Viking Press, 1976.
Jewish-American stories, editor, New York: New American Library, 1977.
Ashes Out of Hope: Fiction by Soviet-Yiddish writers, co-edited with Eliezer Greenberg, New York: Schocken Books, 1977.
Literature as Experience: An Anthology, co-edited withJohn Hollander andDavid Bromwich, New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979.
Twenty-five years of Dissent: An American tradition, compiled and with an introduction by Irving Howe, New York:Methuen, 1979.
1984 revisited: Totalitarianism in Our Century, editor, New York: Harper & Row, 1983.
Alternatives, proposals for America from the democratic left, editor, New York: Pantheon Books, 1984.
We lived there, too: in their own words and pictures—pioneer Jews and the westward movement of America, 1630-1930, editor withKenneth Libo, New York: St. Martin's/Marek, 1984.
The Penguin book of modern Yiddish verse, co-edited withRuth Wisse andChone Shmeruk, New York: Viking Press, 1987.
^Rodden, John; Goffman, Ethan, eds. (2010)."Chronology".Politics and the Intellectual: Conversations with Irving Howe. West Lafayette, IN: Purdue University Press. p. xv.ISBN978-1557535511.
^Howe, Irving (1982).A Margin of Hope: An Intellectual Autobiography. Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. p. 7.ISBN0151571384. Re: the family store's bankruptcy in 1930 when he was ten, Howe later wrote: "We were dropping from the lower middle class to the proletarian—the most painful of all social descents. This unsettled my sense of things: I was driven inward, toward book and dream."
Howe, Irving.Politics and the Intellectual: Conversations with Irving Howe.Purdue University Press, 2010. Interviews during the previous fifteen years.
Libo, Kenneth. "My Work onWorld of Our Fathers".American Jewish History, Vol.88, No.4 (2000): 439-448.Online. Memoir by his research assistant.
Rodden, John (ed.)Irving Howe and the Critics: Celebrations and Attacks.University of Nebraska Press, 2005. Essays and reviews written by his critics.
.png)
