Remembering Irving Howe

I have tried these last weeks at all hours of the day to evoke Irving’s voice, its cadence, its fluency, and a freshness of tone that the years never made stale. There were moments when I would listen so closely to his voice that I would lose track of what he was saying.

A slow, steady accumulation of affection grew in me over the more than thirty years I knew him. I had barely realized, until Liana Howe called with the news of his death, what it all added up to—that I loved hi...