Lucidity may have been Irving Howe’s favorite word, as much in prose as in politics. In a preface to the re-publication of Politics and the Novel, written shortly before his death, he remarked that nowadays, “when critical writing is marked …
One interpretation of events in Bosnia-Herzegovina is that over recent weeks we have been receiving direct satellite images from Thomas Hobbes’s “state of nature.” The accompanying commentary has been mainly outrage and lamentation, punctuated by demands that something be done, by …
It wasn’t good, but it was harmless.” “Harmless and popular.” Thus went an exchange after the movie Sleepless in Seattle. But, I wondered, could there be harm in sentimental romantic pabulum? The plot is harmless enough. Architect Sam Baldwin’s wife …
The hymns of praise that followed Irving’s death overlooked one of his most special qualities: his capacity to change and grow, at a time of life—his fifties and sixties—when most people stagnate or shrink. But we can’t appreciate his growth …
I had been looking forward to hearing Irving Howe’s speech all week. At last April’s Socialist Scholar’s Conference he was part of a closing panel; I knew his address would be short and probably without notes—but the chance to hear …
I’ve never considered packing a gun. Not after two young women were recently mugged on a sunny Saturday afternoon two blocks from my home. Not after a drive-by shooting occurred less than a mile from my neighborhood. Not after a …
There is a dog in Snake Park, a settlement on the outskirts of Soweto, called De Klerk. He is a white dog. Well, he would be white if he could shed the fine brown dust of this place. In the …
I had corresponded with Irving Howe over the last fifteen years, concerning articles for Dissent and related matters, but we had never met. Then, in August and September of 1990, Octavio Paz and his friends at Vuelta organized an international …
Once I had met Irving, I never visited New York without calling on him. Unfortunately, I respected him to excess. Foolishly, I never stayed very long, not wanting to tie up his valuable time. I now nurse the futile belief …
This is a time for argument. The world after communism, after the fall of the last of the great empires, doesn’t conform to anyone’s expectations. There are still pretenders, left and right, to ideological correctness. But no one that I …
What shall I, can I, say about a close friendship and collaboration that lasted well over fifty years, even if my fellow editors allow me some extra space? (I hear Irving’s voice in my ears, an injunction he ordered on …
At the beginning of his remarkable quartet Memories of Fire, the Uruguayan novelist Eduardo Galeano gives this vivid description of the invasion of the Americas: He falls on his knees, weeps, kisses the earth. He steps forward, staggering because for …
With the publication of The Sixties, the fifth consecutive compilation of Edmund Wilson’s journals, the author takes his place as one of the most thoroughly self-documented of American literary figures. This last volume, which begins in 1960 and ends with …
Why do some democratic governments fail or work badly, whereas others have at least qualified success? What are the conditions that allow representative institutions to perform well? For Robert Putnam, recent experience in Italy provides useful material for answers to …
There are two Edward Saids. One is a literary scholar and critic, cultivated, knowledgeable, and, notwithstanding his interest in the literature of the third world, a traditionalist in taste. The other is a spokesman for the Palestinian cause and adherent …
