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122 SHOFAR Winter 2000 Vol. 18, No.2 have arisen in the 1950s or earlier are overlooked. IfJews had significant problems with southern values, they are not explored in this book. The author is sensitive to communal needs and attitudes and knows that the Jewish Historical Society of Memphis wants to put its best foot forward rather than openly analyze Jewish anxieties orthe complexities oftheir relationships with their non-Jewish neighbors. She attributes the reluctance of Jews to take ,independent stands on controversial issues to the fact they are such a tiny minority in the community. The book is full oftidbits which enlighten us all. Elvis Presley, for example, was once poor and served as shabbos goy for a nearby synagogue; he also purchased his clothes from a Jewish haberdashery. Individuals who were in the forefront ofeconomic and communal development are named and praised for their accomplishments. Abe Plough, born in Mississippi but raised in the section of the city where poor East European Jews lived, "the Pinch," starteda chemical company which eventually became a drug colossus: Schering-Plough. While accounts such as this one frustrate those who want to understand the dynamics, uniqueness, and interactions ofpeople who live and have lived in Memphis, individuals who thrive on filiopietistic accounts will certainly find this book accessible and enjoyable reading. Leonard Dinnerstein Judaic Studies University ofArizona Irving Howe: Socialist, Critic, Jew, by Edward Alexander. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. 284 pp. $35.00. Near the end ofEdward Alexander's study ofIrving Howe, he comments on two works Howe published in the second half of the 1970s. "In World ofOur Fathers [1976], Howe embraced what he had once rejected; in Leon Trotsky, published in 1978, he repudiated much (if not quite all) of what he had once embraced." While this observation might seem a touch off-hand, it hits upon several crucial elements in the work of Irving Howe. Not the least ofthese elements is the wide array ofintellectual areas in which Howe made significant contributions to American intellectual life, beginning in the immediate postwar years and continuing until his death in 1993. As Alexander's subtitle suggests, Howe wrote provocatively and importantly as a socialist thinker, as a literary critic, and as historian and archivist ofthe Eastern European Jews and their literary traditions. He was, in the phrase of John Simon, a "one man triumvirate." Book Reviews 123 Yet Alexander's cryptic comment also suggests that a careful reading of Howe's work shows not only inconsistencies, but a sense in which his arguments often seem pegged to the moment. Always intellectually engage, one can still feel the heat of Howe's words, years after they appeared. What we may not feel, after reading about it all, is a sense ofthe total person. Edward Alexander has set about the task of assessing this enormous literary outpouring. He has chosen, or felt obligated, to write "a biography of Howe's mind," telling us that he was unable to interview Howe's wives and children and prohibited from quoting from Howe's letters. A professor of English at the University of Washington, Alexander moves through Howe's books and articles chronologically, tying them to the issues and events of each era. This tends to create an awkward sense in which books and articles corne to be equated with decades, crucial events only creating the context for the works. Alexander's approach does offer the reader a glimpse ofthe multifaceted interests ofthis New York intellectual. But it ultimately leaves the impression that the sum ofthe parts is different from the whole. In the 1970s, Howe catapulted out ofthemore narrow world of intellectuals and critics and climbed to the top of the bestseller lists with his evocative portrait of the world of his father. He had already taught at Brandeis, Stanford, and the City University, had been published in all the important intellectual journals of the era, and was a widely respected socialist and literary critic. Yet today, just five years after his death, Howe seems, ifnot forgotten, something of a tangential personality of the era. Perhaps this is because ofhis wide-ranging interests, perhaps because ofhis streetfighter 's style. We read Alexander's summaries...

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