1. I want to add a post-script to @FranklinFoer very fine review of a new Irving Howe anthology:http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/18/books/review/a-voice-still-heard-selected-essays-of-irving-howe.html?_r=0 …
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Replying to @HeerJeet
2. Howe was noted for his quarrels, his polemics, his arguments with the world (to borrow the title of a documentary that featured him).
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3. Foer himself conjures up this Howe by discussion the notorious essay on Philip Roth that seems to have deeply wounded Roth.
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4. Thanks to Howe, Roth wrote an entire novel, The Anatomy Lesson, about the pain of receiving a harsh review. A critic with impact!
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5. Howe did have a gift for finding the fatal flaws in a writers work and the apt insult that encapsulates those flaws.
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6. And it's naturally that a critics harsher judgments should be the one's remembered. The language of invective is rich and entertaining.
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7. So successful was Howe as a destructive critic that it's rarely noted how acute and convincing his appreciations were.
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8. Foer mentions Howe's ability to "make" the reputation of writers, but something (Henry Roth, Malamud) but there was something else.
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9. Howe had a specific passion for championing unfashionable writers: Edwin Arlington Robinson, Leskov, Sarah Orne Jewett
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10. You know how John Williams' "Stoner" (1965) was posthumously re-discovered? Howe had repeatedly championed Williams while he was alive
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11 Howe's instinct for looking for the literary underdog, neglected & forgotten figure, animated his passion for an entire language, Yiddish
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Replying to @HeerJeet
12. The passion for the underdog was also of course had a political dimension and is linked with Howe's socialism.
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13. I sometimes think Howe went after Roth in 1973 because Roth was riding high in post-Portnoy fame. Now if Roth was neglected...
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