Irving Howe

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Irving Howe – Life, Ideas, and Legacy

Discover the life and work of Irving Howe (1920–1993): American literary critic, social historian, democratic socialist, editor of Dissent, and author of World of Our Fathers.

Introduction

Irving Howe was a towering figure among mid-20th century American intellectuals. Though often labeled a “critic” or “historian,” his horizons extended beyond literary commentary: he was a committed democratic socialist, a translator and preserver of Yiddish culture, a public intellectual, and the founding editor of Dissent magazine. His writings confronted issues of literature, politics, Jewish identity, socialism, and the moral obligations of intellectual life.

His reputation rests especially on World of Our Fathers (1976), a sweeping cultural and social history of Eastern European Jewish immigrants in America, which won the National Book Award. But his influence lies also in how he insisted on moral consistency, independence, and critical engagement across politics and culture.

Early Life and Background

Irving Howe was born Irving Horenstein on June 11, 1920, in New York City, the son of Jewish immigrant parents from Eastern Europe. His father, David Horenstein, had run a small grocery store before its failure during the Depression; later he worked as a peddler and presser. His mother, Nettie (née Goldman), worked in the dress trade.

He grew up in the Bronx, in a milieu shaped by immigrant Jewish culture, Yiddish speech, modest means, and intellectual ferment. Howe attended DeWitt Clinton High School and then City College of New York (CCNY), graduating in 1940. During his college years, he was already deeply engaged in leftist political debates — socialism, Marxism, Stalinism, fascism — and Jewish identity.

During World War II, Howe served in the U.S. Army, stationed in Alaska. After the war, he embarked on a career as a literary critic, editor, teacher, and public intellectual.

Career, Ideas & Works

Literary Criticism, Culture & Intellectual Engagement

Howe first made his mark through contributions to journals like Partisan Review, Commentary, Politics, The Nation, and The New Republic. He was known for blending rigorous literary criticism with insight into social, historical, and political dimensions.

One of his early major critical works was Politics and the Novel (1957), in which Howe examined how writers respond to political and moral realities in fiction. He also wrote critical studies of major authors — such as Sherwood Anderson (1951), William Faulkner (1952), and Thomas Hardy (1967) — always probing how literature interacts with ethos, community, and ideology.

His essays and anthologies often explored modernism, literature and culture, the burdens of history, and the struggles of conscience. Works like Decline of the New (1970) and A World More Attractive (1963) grappled with the meaning of modern art and the left’s dilemmas.

Jewish History & World of Our Fathers

Among Howe’s most celebrated achievements is World of Our Fathers (1976). This sweeping work tracks the immigration of Eastern European Jews to the U.S. from about 1880–1920, and traces how they adapted, built communities, wrestled with assimilation and identity, and contributed to American life — especially in New York’s Lower East Side. World of Our Fathers achieved bestseller status and won the 1977 National Book Award in the History category, the Francis Parkman Prize, and the National Jewish Book Award.

In it, Howe emphasizes how immigrant Jews negotiated Yiddish culture, socialist politics, religious observance, secularism, labor movements, union organizing, Jewish education, and cultural production. The book is often regarded as both history and cultural elegy — an attempt to memorialize a vibrant immigrant Jewish world in flux.

Political Engagement & Dissent Magazine

In 1954, together with Lewis Coser and others, Howe co-founded Dissent, a quarterly journal of democratic socialism that provided an alternative left voice distinct from both McCarthyism and Soviet-style communism. For decades, Howe was its guiding editor. Under its banner, he and contributors probed issues of civil liberties, socialism, culture, labor, foreign policy, and intellectual life.

Politically, Howe began as a participant in Trotskyist and left socialist circles (e.g. the Young People’s Socialist League, the Workers Party under Max Shachtman) during his youth. He grew critical of Stalinism, sectarian leftism, and dogma, seeking a more plural, humane, and democratic socialist vision. Over time, he focused more on bridging moral critique, intellectual independence, and political realism.

Howe also engaged in internal debates on the left: he was critical of what he saw as the New Left’s excessive radicalism or lack of moral grounding.

Later Career & Roles in Academia

Howe’s academic appointments included Brandeis University (1953–1961), Stanford University (1961–63), and the City University of New York (CUNY) thereafter, where he taught English and comparative literature. At CUNY (Hunter College), he became a distinguished professor, retiring officially in 1986.

He received a MacArthur Fellowship in 1987 in recognition of his intellectual contributions. His autobiographical work A Margin of Hope appeared in 1982, reflecting on his life, convictions, and contradictions.

He published numerous books, essays, and anthologies — covering topics from socialism, modern literature, biography (e.g. of Trotsky), intellectual history (The American Newness) and Jewish liberalism.

Personality, Approach & Intellectual Stance

Irving Howe’s intellectual character combined moral seriousness, skepticism, pluralism, and a willingness to dissent. He was not a doctrinaire ideologue, but an engaged critic of both left and right. He demanded consistency: literature should not be reduced to politics, nor politics to ideology.

Howe’s sense of identity was deeply interwoven with his Jewish roots and immigrant heritage. He pursued Yiddish literature, translations, and anthologies, seeing in them a vital repository of memory and culture. He once stated that he “lived in three worlds”: Jewish, political, and literary.

He insisted on intellectual independence: even as a left-wing critic, he resisted groupthink, endlessly questioned orthodoxies from either side, and often found himself in tension with both the left and the right.

In style, he valued clarity, erudition, and generosity toward writers. His essays often combine historical sweep with close textual reading. His criticism exhibits a balance of passion and detachment.

Legacy & Influence

• Cultural and social history: World of Our Fathers remains a foundational work in American Jewish studies and immigrant history.

• Left intellectual tradition: Howe’s democratic socialism, embodied in Dissent, continues to influence left-wing thought distinct from both radicalism and centrism.

• Integration of literature & politics: He modelled how a critic could engage both aesthetic and moral responsibility without collapsing one into the other.

• Yiddish culture champion: Through his anthologies, translations, and critiques, Howe helped preserve memory of Yiddish literature for new generations.

• Public intellectual role model: In an era when such voices have waned, Howe is often cited as one of the last great public intellectuals who combined sustained moral seriousness, political engagement, cultural depth, and literary judgment.

Even after his death, Dissent survives as a platform for democratic socialist ideas and debate. Some later thinkers dedicate works to him — for example, Richard Rorty’s Achieving Our Country is dedicated to his memory.

Selected Quotes

Here are a few representative statements (or paraphrases) from Irving Howe’s writings or memorials:

• “He lived in three worlds — literary, political and Jewish, and he watched all of them change almost beyond recognition.” (Leon Wieseltier, on Howe)

• In Dissent’s founding: “When an intellectual can do nothing else, he begins a magazine.”

• Regarding his critical method, Howe was often praised for keeping political views separate when doing literary criticism — i.e., “he accepted texts on their own terms, rather than reading politics into all of them.”

• On the necessity of utopia: In his political thought, Howe invoked a modest utopian impulse — a yearning for justice and transformation — but always grounded in realism.

Lessons from Irving Howe’s Life

• Maintain intellectual integrity across disciplines. Howe showed that one can engage literature, history, and politics without reducing them to one another.

• Dissent matters. He founded Dissent during the McCarthy era and sustained it as a platform for principled, critical left thought.

• Root critique in experience. His Jewish immigrant background and socialist commitments allowed him to write from a place of personal memory and moral urgency.

• Be wary of ideological rigidity. Howe criticized both Stalinism and radical purism; he believed in the left as a moral project, not a sectarian creed.

• Balance memory and ambition. His work preserved cultural memory (Yiddishism, immigrant worlds) even as he looked forward to social justice.

Conclusion

Irving Howe was more than a historian or critic — he was a moral and intellectual compass for mid-20th century America. Through his writing, editing, political engagement, and cultural stewardship, he shaped how many Americans understand literature, socialism, Jewish identity, and the responsibilities of the intellectual. His insistence on independence, moral seriousness, and pluralism remains a model for those who engage the intersections of art, politics, and memory.