Politics and the Intellectual

Presented here is a compilation of Irving Howe's interviews during the last fifteen years of his life that could be viewed as the sequel to his intellectual autobiography, A Margin of Hope. Many of these interviews were never published. 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 United States and, arguably, the leading literary critic in America. During this time, Howe also struggled to redefine the American Left in an environment that discounted and marginalized it. 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.

John Rodden has taught at the University of Virginia and the University of Texas at Austin. He has published seventeen books, including Irving Howe and the Critics, The Worlds of Irving Howe, Lionel Trilling and the Critics, and The Politics of Literary Reputation: The Making and Claiming of St. George Orwell.