Remembering Irving Howe

The hymns of praise that followed Irving’s death overlooked one of his most special qualities: his capacity to change and grow, at a time of life—his fifties and sixties—when most people stagnate or shrink. But we can’t appreciate his growth without facing some of his other qualities that needed to be outgrown. I want to focus on Irving in the late 1960s and early 1970s: before he grew, and after.

Before he outgrew, Irving acted out, and some of his most extravagant acting out was aimed at my generation. In 1965, he brought out an essay called “New Styles in Leftism,” an assault on the New Left. Before and after it ran in Dissent, he went on tour and gave it at colleges around the country (I he...