Irving Horenstein (1920-06-11)June 11, 1920 The Bronx, New York, U.S.
Died
May 5, 1993(1993-05-05) (aged 72) Manhattan, New York, U.S.
Occupation
Writer, public intellectual
Nationality
American
Irving Howe (/haʊ/; June 11, 1920 – May 5, 1993) was an American literary and social critic and a prominent figure of the
Democratic Socialists of America.
Early years
Howe was born as Irving Horenstein in
The Bronx,
New York. He was the son of Jewish immigrants from
Bessarabia, Nettie (née Goldman) and David Horenstein, who ran a small grocery store that went out of business during the
Great Depression.[1] His father became a peddler and eventually a presser in a dress factory. His mother was an operator in the dress trade.[2]
Howe attended
City College of New York and graduated in 1940,[2] alongside
Daniel Bell and
Irving Kristol; by the summer of 1940, he had changed his name to Howe for political (as distinct from official) purposes.[3] While at school, he was constantly debating socialism, Stalinism, fascism, and the meaning of Judaism. He served in the US Army during
World War II. Upon his return, he began writing literary and cultural criticism for the CIA-backed Partisan Review and became a frequent essayist for Commentary, politics, The Nation, The New Republic, and The New York Review of Books. In 1954, Howe helped found the intellectual quarterly Dissent, which he edited until his death in 1993.[2] In the 1950s Howe taught English and
Yiddish literature at
Brandeis University in
Waltham, Massachusetts. He used the Howe and Greenberg Treasury of Yiddish Stories as the text for a course on the Yiddish story, when few were spreading knowledge or appreciation of the works in American colleges and universities.
Political career
Since his City College days, Howe was committed to
left-wing politics. He was a committed democratic socialist throughout his life. He was a member of the
Young People's Socialist League, joining it in the 1930s when it was under the influence of the
TrotskyistSocialist Workers Party, remaining with YPSL when it became the youth organization of
Max Shachtman's
Workers Party in 1940, which he served in a leading capacity, for a time as the editor of its paper, Labor Action; he continued his activism with this political trend when it morphed into the
Independent Socialist League 1949, but left this milieu later in the mid 1950s.
He had a few famous run-ins with people. In the 1960s while at
Stanford University, he was verbally attacked by a young radical socialist, who claimed Howe was no longer committed to the revolution and that he had become status quo. Howe turned to the student and said, "You know what you're going to be? You're going to be a dentist."[2]
He was also among the first to re-examine the work of
Edwin Arlington Robinson and lead the way to establishing Robinson's reputation as one of the 20th century's great poets. His writing portrayed his dislike of
capitalist America.
He wrote many influential books throughout his career, such as Decline of the New, World of our Fathers, Politics and the Novel and his autobiography A Margin of Hope. He also wrote a biography of
Leon Trotsky, who was one of his childhood heroes.
Howe's exhaustive multidisciplinary history of Eastern European Jews in America, World of Our Fathers, is considered a classic of
social analysis and general scholarship. Howe explores the socialist Jewish New York from which he came. He examines the dynamic of
Eastern European Jews and the culture they created in America. World of our Fathers won the 1977
National Book Awardin History[4] and the
National Jewish Book Award in the History category.[5]
He had strong political views that he would ferociously defend.
Morris Dickstein, a professor at Queens College referred to Howe 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, who was the literary editor of The 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 Jews and Liberalism. Co-authored with
Michael 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 and Lily Duplaix, with a foreword by Irving Howe, New York, The New American Library of World Literature, 1964.
Selected writings: stories, poems and essays. by Thomas Hardy; edited with an introduction by Irving Howe, Greenwich, Conn.,
Fawcett Publications, 1966.
Selected short stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer edited with an introduction by Irving Howe, New York,
Modern Library, 1966.
The radical imagination; an anthology from Dissent Magazine editor, New York :
New American Library, 1967.
A Dissenter's guide to foreign policy editor, New York :
Praeger, 1968.
Classics of modern fiction; eight short novels editor, New York : Harcourt, Brace & World, 1968.
A treasury of Yiddish poetry, editor with Eliezer Greenberg New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1969.
Essential works of socialism editor, New York, Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1970.
The literature of America; nineteenth century editor, New York,
McGraw-Hill, 1970.
Voices from the Yiddish: essays, memoirs, diaries, editor with Eliezer Greenberg Ann Arbor, University of Michigan Press, 1972.
The seventies: problems and proposals, editor with
Michael Harrington New York, Harper & Row, 1972.
The world of the blue-collar worker editor, New York, Quadrangle Books, 1972.
Yiddish stories, old and new, editor with Eliezer Greenberg New York,
Holiday House 1974
Herzog by
Saul Bellow text and criticism edited by Irving Howe, New York, Viking Press, 1976.
Jewish-American stories, editor, New York : New American Library, 1977.
Ashes out of hope: fiction by Soviet-Yiddish writers, editor with Eliezer Greenberg New York : Schocken Books, 1977.
Literature as experience: an anthology editor with
John Hollander and
David Bromwich, New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979.
Twenty-five years of Dissent: an American tradition compiled and with an introd. 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 with
Kenneth Libo, New York : St. Martin's/Marek, 1984.
The Penguin book of modern Yiddish verse edited by Irving Howe,
Ruth Wisse and
Chone Shmeruk New York, Viking Press, 1987