Remembering Irving Howe
Barkan, Joanne
I first encountered Irving during merger negotiations between his political organization, the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, and mine, the New American Movement. It was 1979,...
...His hands chopped the air, he twisted in his chair, he stared at his wristwatch...
...He encouraged, and he prodded: write more often, write something more ambitious, do some serious reading...
...He moved with such agility from principle—democracy, equality, the dignity of the individual—to specific determination...
...Others might feel the same impatience...
...He cultivated newcomers and old-timers one on one...
...It was a pleasure to watch him make political judgments...
...This enterprise took time—even for someone whose efficiency was almost frightening, Irving understood the preciousness of time, and he was generous...
...We shared socialist values, we committed ourselves to a political project, we worked in a movement...
...It could have gone on and on...
...True, I watched with the eye of an admirer, but I believe that only the morally impaired could have failed to recognize Irving's integrity...
...For Irving, this required lifetimes, his and ours...
...But if he liked something, he let you know just as quickly...
...When we arrived at Irving's building, he wanted to talk some more, so he walked us to the next corner...
...The mentor-mentored liaison is defined in part by its limited duration...
...That's one for us...
...He was secure enough to admire freely...
...The relationship between Irving and his coworkers, his comrades, was not meant to end...
...or "first rate...
...It was 1979, and among NAM's ex-New Leftish, Gramsci-loving negotiators, Irving was known as the leader of their social democratic right wing...
...He had high standards, and if he didn't like a piece of work, his criticism was frank...
...But there were also times when he was wonderfully at ease...
...I miss him fiercely—mentor, comrade, friend...
...When I finished reading an essay or novel, Iwondered what he'd say about it...
...We stood there for a while, talking, and still talking, we walked Irving back to his door...
...Over the next decade, he and I became official comrades (the merger did take place), collaborators when I joined Dissent's board, and then, to my delight, friends...
...We strolled, chatting and enjoying the perfect weather...
...Irving made himself available...
...He kept tabs on friends...
...and each article became a one-way contest to see how little he would change or cut...
...On a balmy June evening a couple of years ago, another Dissent editor and I had dinner with Irving and then walked him home...
...There's a paradox here...
...Around someone who spoke too long, too slowly, who made irrelevant remarks or flat-footed jokes, Irving looked ready to jump out of his skin...
...I eventually learned to argue with him, which meant learning to argue more sharply in general...
...I've tried to describe to people who didn't know Irving or Dissent what it was like to work with him and what he meant to me...
...It was supposed to go on and on—and this is why the word "mentor" stills feels insufficient, too cramped, for Irving Howe...
...Irving was generous with his time and aggressively impatient...
...Irving performed it...
...It was a question of conversational survival with Irving: you had to get the idea out clearly and quickly—the window of opportunity stayed open for about two sentences before his edgy mind raced on...
...I wasn't ready to say goodbye...
...But if the term refers to someone who takes up residence in your mind as an unfailing interlocutor, as a touchstone, then Irving was indeed a mentor...
...it did happen), he sounded like a fan at a ball game —"Yes...
...I wrote with his editing pen in mind (around Dissent, who didn't...
...Some people labeled him "difficult to please...
...Irving reveled in good writing wherever he saw it, and if he believed he could get its producer for Dissent, he recruited with zeal, I never heard him undercut his praise for talent with words of rivalry or resentment...
...if you didn't get in touch for a while, he would...
...Sooner or later, the mentored moves on...
...And when he called someone's manuscript for Dissent "terrific...
...They inevitably tag him as a superb mentor...
...In reality, we had no political scores to settle...
...At first this surprised me...
...I'd never thought of Irving as a mentor...
...I had never been a sixties hardliner, and Irving (the socialist) had never been a social democrat...
Vol. 40 • September 1993 • No. 4
