Research Catalog

Title

A margin of hope : an intellectual autobiography / Irving Howe.

Author

Howe, Irving.

Publication

San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, ©1982.

Items in the Library & Off-site

Details

Additional Authors

Dedalus Foundation, donor NN

Description

x, 352 pages; 25cm.

Summary

"Irving Howe, one of America's leading literary critics and the author of the best-selling World of Our Fathers, looks back on his life and times over the past five decades. This is a candid, perceptive account of his growth to intellectual manhood within the political movements and literary influences that shaped American culture. Born and raised in the East Bronx in the twenties, educated at City College, Howe is singularly representative of that generation of New York Jews who willed new lives and made them. They broke out of the ghetto, searched for ways to become "more American," to slough off accents, outlooks, and styles of their ancestors. Bonds of Jewishness gave way to the magnetism of socialism, in which they saw the fulfillment of Western traditions and where they sought a new identity. it was a painful and guilt-ridden journey, but also exciting, urgent, and energetic. "Never before, and surely never since, have I lived at so high a pitch, or been so absorbed in ideas beyond the smallness of self."But life in New York, that "powerhouse of capitalism and crucible of socialism," had a momentum of its own. Howe became a contributor to Commentary, Partisan Review, Politics, and the Nation. By the 1950's, he was accepted and recognized by that brilliant group of New York intellectuals which included Clement Greenberg, Lionel Trilling, Harold Rosenberg, Philip Rahv, and Meyer Shapiro. He gives an extraordinary portrayal of these formidable and influential men, ranging from the touchingly personal to the bluntly objective. In the sixties, he taught English literature at Brandeis, where the New Criticism didn't go down too well, and at Stanford, where he engaged in passionate battles with New Left groups-- the socialist anti-Stalinist in him rebelling against the illusions of a new generation. And all the while Howe was reviewing, restoring his links with his Jewishness by editing translations of Yiddish literature, writing books and publishing them. His was a prolific career that in the seventies culminates in his famous World of Our Fathers. Howe wryly reflects on that popular fame and on what made Jews "cast an affectionate backward glance at the world of their fathers before turning their backs upon it forever and moving on." Himself moving on, Howe brings us to the undefined present, the beginnings of the Orwell decade. It is a boldly told story of a writer who is his times. A major contribution to the history of our culture." --

Subject

• Howe, Irving
• Howe, Irving
• Jews > New York (State) > New York > Biography
• Jewish radicals > New York (State) > New York > Biography
• Jewish critics > New York (State) > New York > Biography
• Jews > New York (State) > New York > Intellectual life
• Jews > Intellectual life
• Jews
• Jewish radicals
• Jewish critics
• Intellectual life
• New York (N.Y.) > Biography
• New York (N.Y.) > Intellectual life
• New York (State) > New York

Genre/Form

• Autobiographies
• Biographies
• Autobiographies.

Source (note)

• of the Dedalus Foundation;

Contents

In the Movement -- Life in a Sect -- City College and Beyond -- In the Army -- Into the World -- Literary Life: New York -- Loose-Fish, Still Flapping -- Ideas in Conflict -- Jewish Quandaries -- The Best and the Worst -- Fragments of a Decade.

Call Number

*PWZ (Howe) 83-714

ISBN

• 0151571384
• 9780151571383

LCCN

82047921

OCLC

8493680

Author

Howe, Irving.

Title

A margin of hope : an intellectual autobiography / Irving Howe.

Imprint

San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, ©1982.

Edition

1st ed.

Type of Content

text

Type of Medium

unmediated

Type of Carrier

volume

Local Note

Copy in ReCAP 24-4909 inscribed.

Source

Gift; of the Dedalus Foundation; 2024. NN

Added Author

Dedalus Foundation, donor NN

Other Form:

Online version: Howe, Irving. Margin of hope. 1st ed. San Diego : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, ©1982 (OCoLC)557953878

Research Call Number

ReCAP 24-4909

*PWZ (Howe) 83-714