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Irving Howe

Irving Howe Quotes

Literary critic

Irving Howe was a distinguished literary critic and intellectual in the United States. Renowned for his incisive analyses of American literature and his significant role in the Jewish intellectual community, Howe's work often explored the interplay between literature, politics, and culture. He was a pivotal figure in the formation of the New York Intellectuals.

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All Doe Feelings Mind Phrases Reading Reality Sometimes Speak Writing 1984

Famous Irving Howe Quotes

“About some books we feel that our reluctance to return to them is the true measure of our admiration. It is hard to suppose that many people go back, from a spontaneous desire, to reread 1984: there is neither reason nor need to, no one forgets it. The usual distinctions between forgotten details and a vivid general impression mean nothing here, for the book is written out of one passionate breath, each word is bent to a severe discipline of meaning, everything is stripped to the bareness of terror. Kafka's The Trial is also a book of terror, but it is a paradigm and to some extent a puzzle, so that one may lose oneself in the rhythm of the paradigm and play with the parts of the puzzle. Kafka's novel persuades us that life is inescapably hazardous and problematic, but the very 'universality' of this idea helps soften its impact: to apprehend the terrible on the plane of metaphysics is to lend it an almost soothing aura.”

Novel Metaphysics Paradigm Novels Literary Criticism George Orwell Kafka 1984 Orwell Franz Kafka The Trial

Book:Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four: Text, Sources, Criticism

Source: Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four: Text, Sources, Criticism

“Sometimes ... the short short appears to rest on nothing more than a fragile anecdote which the writer has managed to drape with a quantity of suggestion. A single incident, a mere anecdote - these form the spine of the short short.”

Writing Sometimes Form Mere Fragile Quantity Suggestions Incidents Spine Anecdotes Drapes

Author:Irving Howe

“Language rarely lies. It can reveal the insincerity of a writer's claims simply through a grating adjective or an inflated phrase. We come upon a frenzy of words and suspect it hides a paucity of feeling.”

Feelings Lying Language Claims Phrases Suspects Adjectives Frenzy Insincerity

Author:Irving Howe

“The most glorious vision of the intellectual life is still that which is loosely called humanist: the idea of a mind committed yet dispassionate, ready to stand alone, curious, eager, skeptical. The banner of critical independence, ragged and torn though it may be, is still the best we have.”

Mind Vision Intellectual Independence Committed Curious Glorious Humanist Torn Skeptical Banner Stand Alone Dispassionate

Author:Irving Howe

“I was in a garden at the Rodin Museum. For a few minutes I was alone, sitting on a bench between two long hedges of roses. Pink roses. Suddenly I felt the most powerful feeling of peace, and I had the thought that death, if it means an absorption into a reality like the one that was before me, might be all right.”

Ifs Mean Long Two Feelings Reality Might Felt Powerful Minutes Sitting Garden Rose Grieving Most Powerful Museums Benches Absorption Rodin

Author:Irving Howe

“Imagination is not something apart and hermetic, not a way of leaving reality behind; it is a way of engaging reality.”

Way Reality Imagination Behinds Leaving Engaging

Book:A Critic's Notebook

Source: A Critic's Notebook

“One great flaw in the reforming passion is that in its eagerness to remedy social wrongs it tends to neglect, certainly to undervalue, the experience of those whose lives it wishes to improve.”

Passion Wish Social Flaws Neglect Remedy Eagerness

Book:A Critic's Notebook

Source: A Critic's Notebook

“The cruelest thing anyone can do to Portnoy's Complaint is to read it twice.”

Reading Can Do Complaints

Author:Irving Howe

“The knowledge that makes us cherish innocence makes innocence unattainable.”

Innocence Cherish Unattainable

Book:The critical point, on literature and culture

Source: The critical point, on literature and culture

“Good readers make much out of little.”

Littles Book Reading Reader Books And Reading

Book:A Critic's Notebook

Source: A Critic's Notebook

“Comedy speaks for civilization; farce bears an ill-concealed, sometimes unconcealed animus against civilization. Often against civility too.”

Sometimes Speak Comedy Bears Civilization Ill Civility Concealed Farce Animus

Book:A Critic's Notebook

Source: A Critic's Notebook

“The message of guidance that neither politics nor philosophy nor religion now seems able to provide, we look for in modern literature.”

Looks Philosophy Seems Able Literature Modern Messages Guidance Modern Literature

Book:Celebrations and attacks: thirty years of literary and cultural commentary

Source: Celebrations and attacks: thirty years of literary and cultural commentary

“No one has ever seen the self. It has no visible shape, nor does it occupy measurable space. It is an abstraction, like other abstractions equally elusive: the individual, the mind, the society”

Mind Doe Self Individual Space Shapes Visible Abstraction Elusive

Author:Irving Howe

“Taste speaks through a turn of phrase, a curl of the lip, a shrug of the shoulder: it makes an atmosphere.”

Turns Speak Taste Lips Shoulders Atmosphere Phrases Curls

Book:A Critic's Notebook

Source: A Critic's Notebook

“Could we say that the short short is to other kinds of fiction somewhat as the lyric is to other kinds of poetry? The lyric does not seek meaning through extension, it accepts the enigmas of confinement. It strives for a rapid unity of impression, an experience rendered in its wink of immediacy. And so too with the short short.”

Writing Kind Doe Fiction Accepting Unity Strive Impression Extensions Strife Rapids Enigma Confinement Immediacy

Author:Irving Howe

About the Author

Born: June 11, 1920
Died: May 5, 1993
Known for: Literary critic
Quotes: 15

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Doe Feelings Mind Phrases Reading Reality Sometimes Speak Writing 1984

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Books & Sources

A Critic's NotebookRelated source material

Celebrations and attacks: thirty years of literary and cultural commentaryRelated source material

Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four: Text, Sources, CriticismRelated source material

The critical point, on literature and cultureRelated source material

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