1. Irving Howe was an American author, literary and social critic, and a prominent figure in the Democratic Socialists of America.
21 Facts About Irving Howe
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Irving Howe was the son of Jewish immigrants from Bessarabia, Nettie and David Horenstein, who ran a small grocery store that went out of business during the Great Depression.
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Irving Howe's mother was an operator in the dress trade.
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Irving Howe attended DeWitt Clinton High School in northwest Bronx, where he was already active in left-wing politics.
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Irving Howe then matriculated to City College of New York in 1936.
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Irving Howe graduated alongside Daniel Bell and Irving Kristol in 1940.
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Irving Howe remained with YPSL in 1940 when it became the youth organization of Max Shachtman's Workers Party, where Howe served in a leading capacity and for a while edited its paper, Labor Action.
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Irving Howe continued his activist role in the Workers Party when it morphed into the Independent Socialist League in 1949.
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Irving Howe left the organization in 1952, deeming it too sectarian.
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At the request of his friend Michael Harrington, Irving Howe helped form the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee in the early 1970s and served on its national board.
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Irving Howe was a vociferous opponent of both Soviet totalitarianism and McCarthyism.
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Irving Howe called into question standard Marxist doctrine, and came into conflict with the New Left after he criticized their brand of radicalism.
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Irving Howe had a few famous run-ins with people on political matters.
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Irving Howe was among the first to reevaluate the works of Edwin Arlington Robinson and to help establish Robinson's reputation as a great 20th century poet.
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Irving Howe authored numerous books including Decline of the New, World of Our Fathers, Politics and the Novel, and his autobiography, A Margin of Hope.
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Irving Howe wrote a biography of Leon Trotsky, who was one of his childhood heroes.
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Irving Howe edited and translated many Yiddish stories and commissioned the first English translation of Isaac Bashevis Singer for Partisan Review.
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In 1987, Irving Howe was a recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship.
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Irving Howe died from cardiovascular disease at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan on May 5,1993, at the age of 72.
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Irving Howe had strong political views that he would ferociously defend.
21.
Irving Howe appeared as himself in Woody Allen's mockumentary Zelig.