Irving Howe: Socialist, Critic, Jew (review)

Abstract

Irving Howe: Socialist, Critic, Jew, by Edward AlexanderNear end of Edward Alexander's study of Irving Howe, he comments on two works Howe published in second half of 1970s. World of Our Fathers [1976], Howe embraced what he had once rejected; in Leon Trotsky, published in 1978, he repudiated much (if not quite all) of what he had once embraced. While this observation might seem touch off-hand, it hits upon several crucial elements in work of Irving Howe.Not least of these elements is wide array of intellectual areas in which Howe made significant contributions to American intellectual life, beginning in immediate postwar years and continuing until his death in 1993. As Alexander's subtitle suggests, Howe wrote provocatively and importantly as socialist thinker, as literary critic, and as historian and archivist of Eastern European Jews and their literary traditions. He was, in phrase of John Simon, man triumvirate.Yet Alexander's cryptic comment also suggests that careful reading of Howe's work shows not only inconsistencies, but sense in which his arguments often seem pegged to moment. Always intellectually engage, one can still feel heat of Howe's words, years after they appeared. What we may not feel, after reading about it all, is sense of total person.Edward Alexander has set about task of assessing this enormous literary outpouring. He has chosen, or felt obligated, to write a biography of Howe's telling us that he was unable to interview Howe's wives and children and prohibited from quoting from Howe's letters. A professor of English at University of Washington, Alexander moves through Howe's books and articles chronologically, tying them to issues and events of each era. This tends to create an awkward sense in which books and articles come to be equated with decades, crucial events only creating context for works.Alexander's approach does offer reader glimpse of multifaceted interests of this New York intellectual. But it ultimately leaves impression that sum of parts is different from whole. In 1970s, Howe catapulted out of more narrow world of intellectuals and critics and climbed to top of bestseller lists with his evocative portrait of world of his father. He had already taught at Brandeis, Stanford, and City University, had been published in all important intellectual journals of era, and was widely respected socialist and literary critic. Yet today, just five years after his death, Howe seems, if not forgotten, something of tangential personality of era.Perhaps this is because of his wide-ranging interests, perhaps because of his street-fighter's style. We read Alexander's summaries and analysis of Howe's works and come away with sense of brilliant and restless mind, but of no real coherence to his oeuvre. Some modern students may read Howe socialist theorist, once hardboiled Trotskyist who moved away from Marx but never abandoned what he called democratic socialism. Others may encounter literary critic, often attuned to modern temper but ultimately caught between champions of multiculturalism and frequently reactionary traditionalists who guard their notion of the canon like palace gates. Still others may turn to his anthologies of Yiddish writing, as well as his magisterial history. Yet, one does not get sense of an intellectual figure like that of his contemporaries Lionel Trilling, Sidney Hook, Alfred Kazin, or Daniel Bell. While widely different, what these intellectuals seem to possess is an overall intellectual coherence within their works.To explain why this is not case with Howe requires more than Alexander sets out to do. …