Politics and the Intellectual: Conversations with Irving Howe

ISBN-13: 9781557535511 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 400 str.

John Rodden; Ethan Goffman

Opis

This book presents a compilation of Irving Howe's interviews during the last fifteen years of his life. It represents what could be viewed as the sequel to Howe's intellectual autobiography, "A Margin of Hope", which took the story of his life only up to the late 1970s. Many of these interviews were never published and have existed only as personal tapes in the hands of such scholars and activists as Todd Gitlin and Maurice Isserman. Others were originally published in such venues as "The New York Times", "The Jerusalem Post", and the PBS documentary "Arguing the World". Howe never organized his thoughts about the great renown of the last fifteen years of his life, during which he had resounding success with "World of Our Fathers", received a MacArthur Fellowship, and became widely regarded as the leading left-liberal intellectual in the U.S. and, arguably, the leading literary critic in America following the deaths of Lionel Trilling and Edmund Wilson. During this time, Howe also struggled to redefine the American Left in an environment that discounted and marginalized it. Indeed, these interviews may have particular significance today, a period of new opportunities for the liberal Left, yet one in which it struggles to construct some coherent identity and program. The editors worked with the full cooperation of Howe's family. His daughter, Nina, contributed a foreword and provided a number of illustrations and photos that have never before appeared in print.