登入選單
返回Google圖書搜尋
A Margin of Hope
Irving Howe
其他書名
An Intellectual Autobiography
出版Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1982
主題Biography & Autobiography / GeneralHistory / Civilization
ISBN01515713849780151571383
URLhttp://books.google.com.hk/books?id=YH8MAAAAYAAJ&hl=&source=gbs_api
註釋"Irving Howe, one of America's leading literary critics and the author of the best-selling World of Our Fathers, looks back on his life and times over the past five decades. This is a candid, perceptive account of his growth to intellectual manhood within the political movements and literary influences that shaped American culture. Born and raised in the East Bronx in the twenties, educated at City College, Howe is singularly representative of that generation of New York Jews who willed new lives and made them. They broke out of the ghetto, searched for ways to become "more American," to slough off accents, outlooks, and styles of their ancestors. Bonds of Jewishness gave way to the magnetism of socialism, in which they saw the fulfillment of Western traditions and where they sought a new identity. it was a painful and guilt-ridden journey, but also exciting, urgent, and energetic. "Never before, and surely never since, have I lived at so high a pitch, or been so absorbed in ideas beyond the smallness of self."But life in New York, that "powerhouse of capitalism and crucible of socialism," had a momentum of its own. Howe became a contributor to Commentary, Partisan Review, Politics, and the Nation. By the 1950's, he was accepted and recognized by that brilliant group of New York intellectuals which included Clement Greenberg, Lionel Trilling, Harold Rosenberg, Philip Rahv, and Meyer Shapiro. He gives an extraordinary portrayal of these formidable and influential men, ranging from the touchingly personal to the bluntly objective. In the sixties, he taught English literature at Brandeis, where the New Criticism didn't go down too well, and at Stanford, where he engaged in passionate battles with New Left groups-- the socialist anti-Stalinist in him rebelling against the illusions of a new generation. And all the while Howe was reviewing, restoring his links with his Jewishness by editing translations of Yiddish literature, writing books and publishing them. His was a prolific career that in the seventies culminates in his famous World of Our Fathers. Howe wryly reflects on that popular fame and on what made Jews "cast an affectionate backward glance at the world of their fathers before turning their backs upon it forever and moving on." Himself moving on, Howe brings us to the undefined present, the beginnings of the Orwell decade. It is a boldly told story of a writer who is his times. A major contribution to the history of our culture." --