Remembering Irving Howe
West, Cornel
Irving Howe was the towering public intellectual of his generation. He was a grand long-distance runner whose commitment to the life of the mind and social justice was absolute. He reveled in an...
...Long live his legacy...
...He reveled in an intellectual playfulness characteristic of a true lover of ideas...
...and he promoted a political seriousness grounded in a moral indignation at injustice...
...He wedded his incessant critiques of the status quo with a respect for those rebellious "outsiders" in literature...
...What a way with words on the page he has...
...I consider his text Polities and the Novel—the first book of his I read—a minor classic and his numerous literary and political essays canonical marvels...
...We shall not see his like again for generations—if ever, in this moment of epigoni...
...As the most New Yorkish of the New York Intellectuals—and the most wise of them—he harbored a skeptical mind, steadfast will, and oppositional temper...
Vol. 40 • September 1993 • No. 4
