Remembering Irving Howe

For Irving, Orwell was the model of a writer. For me, Irving was. They had much in common: passion, commitment, clarity, an eloquent simplicity. Both were plainspoken. Both trusted their instincts and judgments, and did not confuse emotion with prejudice. I usually wrote with him in mind, my ideal reader as well as ideal writer. When I hit on a phrase I especially liked, a particularly felicitous combination of adjective and noun, it was his eye and his ear, more than anyone else’s, that I wanted to please. His praise was by far the sweetest.

I admired his mastery of language, his effortful rewritings that produced, ultimately, an impression of effortless ease. Even more, I admired the way he came to a book. He knew how to r...