One Radical's Vigil
Sklar, Robert
One Radical's Vigil Reviewed by Robert Sklar IRVING HOWE'S collection of political and social essays bridges the great hiatus in American radical thought of our time-from the early Fifties,...
...The strengths are inherent in the record of his career and writings...
...For all his sympathy with the recent upsurge in radical activity-per haps because of it-the tone of his recent essays makes clear that he has cast himself as moral tutor to the young, and he intends to be a most exacting master...
...Yet apocalypse need not mean catastrophe or destruction...
...but to oppose the apocalyptic style as categorically as Howe does, is to set one's face against a major source of contemporary intellectual innovation and growth...
...No wonder generations conflict...
...time has vindicated him...
...By temperament and past ties he belongs to a generation of radicals even older than himself, for his political allegiances were formed during the depression years of the Thirties when he was still in his teens...
...This is not so rare a fate in American intellectual life, but who can simply acqUlesce In it...
...Apocalyptic" is a word that appears again and again in Steady Work to denote dangerous tendencies in the new movements...
...As a liberating slogan, "Apocalypse," at present, may have the same value the term "Nature" held for Nineteenth Century romantic radicals...
...For Howe is a writer of considerable importance, and the chronological de velopment of his career has its own sig nificance and moral value...
...And Howe's position as the link between past and future eras of American radi calism can only be an equivocal one...
...Contributions are tax deductible...
...At the heart of Howe's disagreement with the new radicals lies the style or the mode of thought Howe calls apocalyptic...
...If you IIkeBOOKS USA will notify people on your gift I st that you have sent book pack· ages abroad in their names...
...Howe-a professor of English and editor of the quarterly, Dissent-is in his mid-forties, intellectually mature, widely experienced in the worlds of social thought and literature...
...Steady Work is an apt title, for Howe was one of very few who continued through those years to speak and write...
...I t is too early to know if the apoca- GIVE A PACKAGE OF TRUTH This holiday season, share the wealth of the American spirit with book-hungry students in underdeveloped parts of the world...
...Howe's response to this dilemma shapes the form of Steady Work...
...This problem has led him to organize his book so that his essays on the new radicalism come first, though had he arranged his essays in chronological order he would have provided a more coherent picture of his views, and of the importance of his steadfast career...
...In this light, Howe's criticism of the new radicals does not differ from his opposition to Stalinists, Barry Goldwater, or the war in Vietnam...
...but courageously and con sistently he has made clear that the en during values in socialism are freedom and human responsibility...
...l lyptic mode of thought can create an intellectual movement of lasting value...
...Throughout the Fifties he spoke out against absolu tists of the right and left, against apolo gists for totalitarian rule and violent suppression of human rights...
...Send food for thought-give to BOOKS USA, Box 1960-F, Washington, D. C. 20013...
...Intelligent criticism and helpful advice are always necessary...
...Yet to the new radicals, the very young, he appears an old fogy, a relic of the past they are casting aside...
...A standard dictionary defines it rather as revelation or discovery, and it is in this spirit that the apocalyptic mode of thought has been used by the younger generation and its prophets...
...To understand Howe's career in this light is to recognize both the strengths and weaknesses of his present position...
...Yet Howe presents his essays less in a spirit of pride than with a sense of trepidation...
...Your $5 sends in your name-a package of ten paperbacks that tell America's story in the best possible way -through the words of such authors as Thoreau, Steinbeck, Hemingway and John F. Kennedy...
...But it is clear that when Howe opposes his rationalistic and gradualistic views to the style of apocalypse, the issues which divide him from the young go deeper than simply a difference in years...
...For the gap in radical thought between 1953 and 1966 marks not simply a momentary break in a flowing current, but a distinct pause, a long moment of time between the end of an old era and the beginning of a new...
...One Radical's Vigil Reviewed by Robert Sklar IRVING HOWE'S collection of political and social essays bridges the great hiatus in American radical thought of our time-from the early Fifties, when McCarthyism silenced dissent, to the mid-Sixties, when opposition to the war in Vietnam has revived it...
...Though he cannot speak for the young, he knows he must speak to them...
...To Howe it means violence, final solutions, nuclear holocaust-all he has devoted his career to combating...
...He has worked effectively to reinterpret the socialist viewpoint under changing cir cumstances...
...In any normal career development, he would now be moving into the period of his greatest leadership and influence...
...the weaknesses stem not only from the equivocal role he plays between the generations, but more significantly from the attitude he assumes toward the new radicals...
...Steady Work records Howe's vigil...
Vol. 30 • December 1966 • No. 12
