Remembering Irving Howe
Berman, Paul
What was the source of Irving's distinctive prose style? The lyricism that you find in World of Our Fathers, the tender and quizzical humor in that book, the immigrant pathos that manages to...
...Another friend has dug up the transcript of a radio discussion in which Irving himself touched on this question—though Irving's commentary was, as befits a literary critic, mostly about the work of another writer...
...In a way, I'm not far from the Buddhist and Indian way of thinking that the best thing you can do is run away from evil, not fight it, because the moment you begin to fight evil, you become a part of evil yourself...
...Singer: That is exactly how I feel because according to the Bible and even the Talmud, God really resented that He created man...
...It was influenced by Karl Marx and by all the so-called social dogooders...
...But we won't be able to write the way he did...
...I compared them to the people who believed in Sabbatai Zevi, they were just as honest in their own way, just as zealous, and just as disappointed...
...Yiddishism is actually a very young movement...
...English, for most of us, is not just our mother language, it is our only language, and to draw from that other culture, the one that is gone, is not in our power, or in anyone's...
...Singer: I think so because you write your articles in Dissent, you still have hope that by your dissent and by the dissent of some other people like you, you can change things...
...It's only about 70 or 80 years old...
...And Irving, listening to this, asked Singer to explain what he meant by distinguishing between Jewish and Yiddish...
...and the Yiddishism and the socialism were the same...
...His lyricism was a Yiddish inspiration...
...Singer observed that true Yiddishists never regarded his own stories and novels as part of their tradition, and he himself was happy to accept their view...
...And that genius of Irving's was not just a personal trait, and its original home was not in English...
...I am not a sentimental person by nature...
...Yiddishism was very much influenced by socialism...
...Howe: So that, in creating your own tradition, you feel that you went back to sources in Jewish lore and in Jewish thought which precede historically the rise of Yiddish literature...
...Naturally those of us who were Irving's friends and comrades will try to hold his example in mind, and when we sit down to do our own writing, we will sneak a glance at his books or at back issues of Dissent, and glancing at those old writings of his will do us good...
...By sentimental, I mean really sentimental...
...They are always for the underdog, very much so, and they are always sentimental...
...I have seen young people go to Soviet Russia and disappear there...
...The transcript of their conversation was published in the June/July 1973 issue of Midstream...
...These are the two pillars, so to speak, of the Yiddish kind of emotions...
...Howe: I don't always have that hope, I have it sometimes...
...Reading that transcript, you can see why so many people, not just Irving's personal circle, have felt upset by his death...
...Neither is it my nature to fight for social justice although I am for social justice...
...And because of this I had to create my own kind of tradition...
...In the days after Irving died, some of his friends, in a slightly testy mood, fell to arguing with one another, and the origin of his lyrical prose was a main issue of contention...
...Singer: Yes, but sometimes...
...It certainly makes clear, although you write in Yiddish and have a marvelous Yiddish style, why the Yiddishist writers feel that in some ways you are a stranger in their midst...
...He said, "I consider myself a writer in the Jewish tradition but not exactly the Yiddish tradition...
...It was a chat between socialism and Jewishness...
...But a friend replied, a little curtly: no, you fool, his lyricism was of the pure Yiddish variety, and Jewishness was his inspiration...
...The discussion was broadcast over Yale University Radio, and the other writer was Isaac Bashevis Singer, who shared the microphone...
...Who will be able to write a prose like his in the future...
...Singer: It is true...
...The lyricism that you find in World of Our Fathers, the tender and quizzical humor in that book, the immigrant pathos that manages to remain light, and the lightness that manages to be sorrowful—where did those peculiar and appealing qualities come from...
...The conversation went on: Singer: The Yiddish tradition, in my mind, is a tradition of sentimentality and of social justice...
...Howe: That's the most interesting thing that's come out in a long time in regard to your own views...
...Somehow, when I was young, I already saw the bad results of these good deeds...
...Irving had a genius for being gloomy and optimistic at once, downcast and cheerful, cutting and sentimental (though he must FALL • 1993 • 521 have cringed when Singer leaned into the Yale microphone and not only used the word "sentimental" but twisted the nasty knife with his insistence on "schmaltz...
...Howe: So it looks in a paradoxical way, although you write in Yiddish and I write in English, that I am closer to the Yiddishist tradition than you are, even though you were brought up in that world and I was not...
...I found myself insisting that a feeling of solidarity with downtrodden people—socialism, in short—was the inspiration for Irving's style...
...But since I am a pessimist and I believe that no matter what people are going to do it will always be wrong and there will never be any justice in this world, I have in my own way given up...
...All these illusions and all these vain hopes...
...let's call it schmaltz as it should be called...
...I have lost this illusion...
...When I began to write I already felt that this kind of tradition is not in my character...
Vol. 40 • September 1993 • No. 4
