Remembering Irving Howe
Mort, Jo-Ann
I cherished Irving as a generous friend and mentor. We shared a passion for literature, democratic socialism, and Jewish identity, making him irreplaceable in my life. (The one thing he didn't...
...His death has pushed me—many of us—out of the nest...
...Rereading these letters from Irving left echoes of Beckett's The Unnameable in my head: "I'll go on, you must say words, as long as there are any, until they find me, until they say me...
...Irving, a profound believer in a CIO-style labor movement, was distressed by labor's present lack of vision...
...So we will keep on...
...The one thing he didn't share, or even comprehend, was my interest in tennis...
...Irving, devoted to a democratic Israel, was an active supporter of Peace Now, believing a just peace between Israel and the Palestinians of such overriding importance that we have to give it our major attention...
...Now more than ever...
...Finally," he would probably mutter...
...He was both curator and interpreter of that vast rich world where the intermingling of socialism and literature was a normal way of life...
...I have saved his acerbic, but attentive, criticisms of my poetry: he called one of my efforts a "characteristic poem of female sadness," adding: "those of male sadness aren't much better as a rule...
...But he was nourished by his yiddishkeit, and I remember, too, telling him at that meeting how envious I was of his generation—the last one—to be bathed in the culture of Yiddish...
...Unsatisfied with religious observance, what will I do to express my Jewishness...
...Perhaps the loss of that Yiddish culture added to his special brand of pessimism (spiced by a trace of optimism...
...I asked Irving, "How will I be Jewish in this country...
...He called me during the recent Greyhound strike to express his amazement that union workers, in a Reagan/Bush America, would still care enough about their union rights to attack scab buses...
...The "socialist vision remains a genuine option—a profound need," he once wrote...
...For Irving, Jewishness was a mode of being, a personality...
...you must go on, I can't go on, I'll go on...
...My Jewishness would be what it had been for Jews for thousands of years—"a sense of homelessness, wandering, a sort of uncomfortable unsettledness in the diaspora," he said, almost convincing me...
...I remember a meeting with Irving in 1981, when I returned from my first trip to Israel, consumed by guilt for not making aliyah and yearning for a Jewish American identity that would embrace something 542 • DISSENT Remembering Irving Howe other than religion...
...Later notes, when he thought the poems got better, closed with words of encouragement: "Keep on," and "So keep on...
...He told me I needn't worry...
...I will treasure the personal anecdotes, even as I am forever thankful for his writings and his example as a public and political figure of profound integrity...
Vol. 40 • September 1993 • No. 4
