The 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, Elliot Cohen, Midge Decter, Leslie Fiedler, Nathan Glazer, Clement Greenberg, Paul Goodman, Richard Hofstadter, Sidney Hook,[5][6] Irving Howe, Alfred Kazin, Irving Kristol, Seymour Martin Lipset, Mary McCarthy,[7][6] Dwight Macdonald, William Phillips, Norman Podhoretz, Philip Rahv, Harold Rosenberg, Isaac Rosenfeld, Delmore Schwartz, 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"),[8] 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.[9]

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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. 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.
  6. 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
  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. 141. ISBN 978-0-8078-4169-3. Retrieved 22 June 2020.
  8. Leonhardt, David (2017-01-18). "America's Great Working-Class Colleges". New York Times. Retrieved 2020-06-27.
  9. Hartman, Andrew (2015). A War for the Soul of America: A History of the Culture Wars. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0226379234.
  • 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.
  • 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
  • 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.
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