On this day in history, June 11, 1920, Irving Howe was born. To celebrate his birth I turned to the American National Biography which led me to an entry by Shirley Laird. The ANB offers portraits of more than 17,400 men and women – from all eras and walks of life – whose lives have shaped the nation. Learn about Irving Howe below.
Howe, Irving (11 June 1920-5 May 1993), literary critic and historian, was born in New York City, the son of David Howe and Nettie Goldman, grocery store operators and later garment workers. Irving Howe was married twice, first to Arien Hausknecht, with whom he had two children, and later to Ilana Wiener.
Howe became a socialist at fourteen, joining a faction led by Leon Trotsky. He graduated from City College of New York in 1940, claiming that he spent more time talking to fellow radicals than he spent in class. He completed a year and a half of graduate study at Brooklyn College before being drafted into the army in 1942; he served in Alaska for two or three years. When he returned to New York after the war, he began to publish articles in the Partisan Review, Commentary, and the Nation. In 1953 he founded Dissent, a political and literary journal that he edited for many years. In that year he became an associate professor of English at Brandeis University and also was appointed a Kenyon Review fellow. Leaving Brandeis in 1961, he spent 1961 to 1963 as a professor of English at Stanford University. From 1963 to 1970 he was professor of English at Hunter College of the City University of New York, where he was named in 1970 Distinguished Professor of English.
Howe wrote or contributed to more than forty books, the most noteworthy of which are works of literary criticism. His first study, Sherwood Anderson (1952), was an analysis of Sherwood Anderson’s work and a rebuttal of Lionel Trilling’s assault on the realist movement in modern literature. Howe reveals himself a capable historian in his portrait of Anderson’s childhood in Ohio, and he is charitable in dealing with Anderson’s indistinctness and sentimentality. Howe’s next book, William Faulkner: A Critical Study (1952), provides a sensible and balanced preface to William Faulkner. Another high point of Howe’s literary career is Thomas Hardy: A Critical Study (1967), particularly his interpretation of Hardy’s Jude the Obscure.
Howe’s political writing includes a wide variety of subjects: Politics and the Novel (1957); The Critical Point: On Literature and Culture (1973); Trotsky (1978); and The American Newness: Culture and Politics in the Age of Emerson (1986). Based on three lectures on Ralph Waldo Emerson that Howe gave at Harvard University in 1985, The American Newness reflects his earlier optimism and pays tribute to some of his heroes such as Marx, Trotsky, and Ben-Gurion. One of Howe’s most enduring pieces is an essay published in Commentary in 1968, “The New York Inte
Posting a Sunday Summary on Tuesday morning is quite appropriate, given that my boyfriend and I interpreted our move-out date of last Friday to mean… also Tuesday morning. I hope to cod that by the time you read this, my move is finally, finally over. On to the summary:
Finished last week:
- Only THE HOT ROCK, the first DORTMUNDER book by Donald Westlake. If you can get past the datedness (let’s just say the female characters are not ones I recognize as human), it’s a really fun caper novel. And I love clever caper novels, especially ones filled with many non-obvious reversals of fortune. THE HOT ROCK fared excellently on that score.
Reading this week:
- I’m hoping to finally get my latest batch of LGBT teen romance novels today (due to the move, I had them sent to me at school; what better use of a departmental mailbox?). This weekend was Madison’s Pride — I had a great time marching in the parade and celebrating the mass wedding ceremony — so it’s particularly fitting.
- In the meantime, I have been working on my inaugural Read or Die! pick: Trotsky’s MY LIFE. Every time I read anything by Trotsky, I am struck by how excellent he is at characterization. It comes out in very enjoyable fashion when he recounts his school days:
The percentage of freaks among people in general is very considerable, but it is especially high among teachers. [... Here he starts describing his headmaster, Kaminsky] He was a physicist by profession, a humanity-hater by temperament. He never looked at the person with whom he talked; he moved about the corridors and the classrooms noiselessly on rubber heels. He spoke in a small, hoarse, falsetto voice which, without being raised, could be terrifying.
…He goes on from there, on Kaminsky and all his other teachers (none of whom come across hugely well). One of the things that makes it a great memoir is that Trotsky applies the same skill to himself; he judges himself, including his limitations and the changes in his ideas, very thoughtfully.
My status as a sociology grad student compels me to quote one more passage:
Casting about for activities, we decided to organize a university on the basis of mutual instruction. There were about twenty students. My department was sociology. That was high-sounding. I prepared for my course with all my powers, but after two lectures, which came off satisfactorily, I suddenly realized that my resources had been exhausted. The second lecturer, whose course was the French Revolution, became confused as soon as he began and promised to deliver his lecture in writing. Of course he failed to fulfill his promise, and that was the end of the enterprise.
The two of them then go on to try their hand at playwriting (”We had, it must be said, no shortage of monologues.”). I recognize myself all over these quotes, and feel immense gratitude that my own early writing and teaching efforts have been largely forgotten.
Cooked last week:
Pattypan squash, light of my casserole, fire of my stew. (Image from Potomac Vegetable Farms.)
- I’ve become obsessed with pattypan squash. I made a squash casserole (layers of squash — and zucchini, but I liked that less — and cheese, topped by bread soaked in milk and baked); when I fried some leftovers with an egg every morning for breakfast, it was like eating French toast with buttery squash. Delicious.
And I put a ton of squash into a shepherd’s pie inspired by my new favorite comment thread. I used blue cornmeal for the polenta topping, which was also quite beautiful: red tomato sauce, yellow and green squash, and purple crust. I kind of wish I hadn’t eaten it all day so I could eat more right now. *
Hope to cook this week:
* I did get the pan drippings for dinner… I simmered eggs in butter and vinegar in the pan to get them up, and then I cooked some grilled cheese sandwiches in the leftover pan sauce to make sure I got all the yummy stuff stuck on the bottom of the pan. If I were doing that “15 things I like” meme on Facebook, I think I would just write “pan drippings” 15 times.
** My feeling was, a small gesture of brownies goes a long way in the goodwill department… and I’m going to need a lot of goodwill from the people I live with. Like how I locked myself out twice last night.
Posted in Sunday Summary
