New York Intellectuals

The New York Intellectuals were a group of American writers and literary critics based in New York City in the mid-20th century. Mostly Jews, 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]

Overview

Writers often identified as members of this group include Hannah Arendt, William Barrett, Daniel Bell,[2][3][4] Saul Bellow (despite his usual association with the city of Chicago), Elliot Cohen, Midge Decter, Leslie Fiedler, Nathan Glazer, Clement Greenberg,[5] Paul Goodman,[6] Richard Hofstadter, Sidney Hook,[7][8] Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, Irving Kristol, Seymour Martin Lipset, Mary McCarthy,[9][8] Dwight Macdonald,[5] William Phillips, Norman Podhoretz, Philip Rahv, Harold Rosenberg, Isaac Rosenfeld, Delmore Schwartz,[6] Susan Sontag, Harvey Swados, Diana Trilling, Lionel Trilling, and Robert Warshow.

Many of these intellectuals were educated at City College of New York ("Harvard of the Proletariat"),[10] New York University, and Columbia University in the 1930s, 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. Writer Nicholas Lemann has described these intellectuals as "the American Bloomsbury".

Some, including Kristol, Hook, and Podhoretz, later became key figures in the development of Neoconservatism.[11]

See also

References
  1. Alexander Bloom: Prodigal Sons. The New York Intellectuals and Their World, Oxford University Press: NY / Oxford 1986, p. 109.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. Wilford, Hugh (2003). "Playing the CIA's Tune? The New Leader and the Cultural Cold War". Diplomatic History. Oxford University Press (OUP). 27 (1): 15–34. doi:10.1111/1467-7709.00337. ISSN 0145-2096.
  5. Howe 1970, p. 226.
  6. Howe 1970, p. 228.
  7. 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.
  8. 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
  9. 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.
  10. Leonhardt, David (2017-01-18). "America's Great Working-Class Colleges". New York Times. Retrieved 2020-06-27.
  11. Hartman, Andrew (2015). A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226379234.

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.
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