Remembering Irving Howe
Rosenberg, Bernard
Not long ago Irving told me of a pact he and Alfred Kazin had made: whichever one died first would not be eulogized by the other. As it turned out, Kazin breaks the pact in these pages, as...
...Then along came an unclassifiable genius, Irving Howe, the least academic of us all...
...I heard for the first time of Manny Geltman and Stanley Plastrik and, hardly for the first time, of Meyer Schapiro and several other devoted radicals, all ferociously opposed to Stalinism...
...Their presence would help us put out two to four issues of Dissent, as the quarterly was baptized...
...How could it be otherwise after forty years of close association, deep friendship, and constant collegiality with their inconsequential ups and downs...
...While the neocons were riding high, Kazin, probably through some postal quirk, received an invitation to one of their conferences...
...We read it, and after our laughter subsided, I expressed my admiration for the piece...
...In this task, he seems to have succeeded...
...He fought and won a tough battle in favor of teaching a course called Yiddish Literature...
...He accepted, attended, and wrote a rollicking account of the affair...
...Not a shade of sibling rivalry there...
...So bear with me through one more story...
...This formidable scholar took us all by storm...
...I joined him and for one year we made up a strange department of sociology...
...Their similar backgrounds notwithstanding, these two men never did warm much to each other...
...Lewis Coser was first among us at newly formed Brandeis University...
...I tiptoed out...
...I had told him that it was Democratic presidential primary time—and one of the candidates had quipped, "Bush was born on third base and thinks he hit a triple...
...And a good thing, too...
...There lay a mensch...
...As it turned out, Kazin breaks the pact in these pages, as Irving would no doubt have done for him...
...In evidence, I offer an anecdote...
...And now here we are four decades later, without our principal inspiration, but going strong...
...No one else writes "as if born with a pencil in his mouth"—which is how Irving once characterized Dwight Macdonald...
...Irving implored me to write Kazin a note saying how much pleasure this essay, along with so many others, had given me...
...For me, Irving Howe is my many-sided man...
...Just then all the talk was about a new political journal...
...It was a matter of temperament, not character...
...We who knew the man in his infrequent gaiety and usual melancholy realized that it was part of our job to cheer him up...
...Why did he invest so much energy in it...
...For on the thought and substance of democratic socialism he left his indelible mark...
...Well, he had no illusions about his own immortality, and he wanted Dissent to form a community for younger people and their bright and/or compassionate elders...
...I spent an inordinate amount of time doing just that...
...It is the way—apart from a thousand experiences, his articles, and his variegated books—I shall always remember him...
...It was the only "revolutionary war" he was ever to win...
...A year and a half ago, when he was in bed, surrounded by well-wishers, who wisely left one by one, Irving motioned to me to stay a bit...
...Nor with others on the New York literary scene...
...Irving laughed, closed his eyes, and continued to smile...
...But I didn't know these men...
...But with Irving, Dissent became an obsession...
Vol. 40 • September 1993 • No. 4
