The New York Intellectuals were a group of American writers and literary critics based in New York City in the mid-20th century. They advocated left-wing politics but were also firmly anti-Stalinist. The group is known for having sought to integrate literary theory with Marxism and socialism while rejecting Soviet socialism as a workable or acceptable political model.
Trotskyism emerged as the most common standpoint among these anti-Stalinist Marxists. Irving Kristol, Irving Howe, Seymour Martin Lipset, Leslie Fiedler and Nathan Glazer were members of the Trotskyist Young People's Socialist League.[1]
Many of these intellectuals were educated at City College of New York ("Harvard of the Proletariat"),[2] New York University, and Columbia University in the 1930s,[citation needed] and associated in the next two decades with the left-wing political journals Partisan Review and Dissent, as well as the then-left-wing but later neoconservative-leaning journal Commentary.[citation needed] Writer Nicholas Lemann has described these intellectuals as "the American Bloomsbury".[citation needed]
Some, including Kristol, Sidney Hook, and Norman Podhoretz, later became key figures in the development of Neoconservatism.[3]
Members
Writers often identified as members of this group include:
- Lionel Abel
- Hannah Arendt
- William Barrett
- Daniel Bell[4][5][6]
- Saul Bellow (despite his usual association with the city of Chicago)
- Norman Birnbaum[citation needed]
- Elliot E. Cohen
- Midge Decter
- Morris Dickstein[7]
- Leslie Fiedler
- Nathan Glazer[citation needed]
- Clement Greenberg[8]
- Paul Goodman[9]
- Richard Hofstadter
- Sidney Hook[10][11]
- Irving Howe
- Alfred Kazin
- Irving Kristol
- Norman Mailer[12]
- Seymour Martin Lipset
- Mary McCarthy[13][11]
- Dwight Macdonald[8]
- William Phillips
- Norman Podhoretz[citation needed]
- Philip Rahv
- Harold Rosenberg
- Isaac Rosenfeld
- Delmore Schwartz[9]
- Susan Sontag
- Harvey Swados
- Diana Trilling
- Lionel Trilling
- Robert Warshow[citation needed]
See also
References
- ^ Alexander Bloom: Prodigal Sons. The New York Intellectuals and Their World, Oxford University Press: NY / Oxford 1986, p. 109.
- ^ Leonhardt, David (2017-01-18). "America's Great Working-Class Colleges". New York Times. Retrieved 2020-06-27.
- ^ Hartman, Andrew (2015). A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226379234.
- ^ Wald, Alan M. (1987). The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s. UNC Press Books. p. 210. ISBN 978-0-8078-4169-3. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
- ^ Brick, Howard (1986). Daniel Bell and the decline of intellectual radicalism : social theory and political reconciliation in the 1940s. Madison, Wis: University of Wisconsin Press. p. 60-61,90,148. ISBN 978-0-299-10550-1. OCLC 12804502.
- ^ Wilford, Hugh (2003). "Playing the CIA's Tune? The New Leader and the Cultural Cold War". Diplomatic History. 27 (1). Oxford University Press (OUP): 15–34. doi:10.1111/1467-7709.00337. ISSN 0145-2096.
- ^ Roberts, Sam (2021-03-29). "Morris Dickstein, Critic and Cultural Historian, Dies at 81". New York Times. Retrieved 2021-04-07.
- ^ a b Howe 1970, p. 226.
- ^ a b Howe 1970, p. 228.
- ^ Wald, Alan M. (1987). The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s. UNC Press Books. p. 50. ISBN 978-0-8078-4169-3. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
- ^ a b Michael HOCHGESCHWENDER "The cultural front of the Cold War: the Congress for cultural freedom as an experiment in transnational warfare" Ricerche di storia politica, issue 1/2003, pp. 35-60
- ^ Jumonville, Neil (1991). Critical Crossings: The New York Intellectuals in Postwar America. University of California Press. p. 187. Retrieved 7 April 2021.
- ^ Wald, Alan M. (1987). The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s. UNC Press Books. p. 141. ISBN 978-0-8078-4169-3. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
Bibliography
- Bloom, Alexander. Prodigal Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World, Oxford University Press, 1986, ISBN 0-19-503662-X
- Cooney, Terry A. The Rise of the New York Intellectuals: Partisan Review and Its Circle, 1934-1945, University of Wisconsin Press, 1986, ISBN 0-299-10710-8
- Dorman, Joseph. Arguing the World: The New York Intellectuals in their Own Words. New York: Free Press, 2000. ISBN 0-684-86279-4.
- Howe, Irving (1970). "The New York Intellectuals". Decline of the New. New York: Harcourt, Brace & World. pp. 211–265. ISBN 978-0-15-124510-9.
- Jumonville, Neil. Critical Crossings: The New York Intellectuals in Postwar America, University of California Press, 1991, ISBN 0-520-06858-0
- Laskin, David. Partisans: Marriage, Politics, and Betrayal Among the New York Intellectuals University of Chicago Press, 2001, ISBN 0-226-46893-3
- Podhoretz, Norman (1967). "The Family Tree". Making It. New York: Random House. pp. 109–136. OCLC 292070.
- Wald, Alan M. (1987). The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s. University of North Carolina Press. ISBN 0-8078-4169-2.
Further reading
- Eisenstadt, Peter, ed. (2005). "New York intellectuals". The Encyclopedia of New York State. Syracuse University Press. pp. 1088–. ISBN 978-0-8156-0808-0.
External links
- Lives of the New York intellectuals by Robert Fulford in The Globe and Mail
- The Failure of the New York Intellectuals by Daniel Silliman in Comment
- Arguing the World, the PBS documentary
This page was last edited on 6 June 2024, at 15:27