SOURCE: "Critical Mind, Stubborn Heart," in Commonweal, August 9, 1991, pp. 489-90.

Siegel is an American educator, nonfiction writer, poet, and critic. In the following review of Selected Writings 1950–1990, he remarks on Howe's literary tastes and criticism.

Irving Howe's writings continue to enact the tension between thinking and doing, cerebral play and social responsibility, that has been the public trial of the modern, urban-based intellectual; they approach literature as a consequential event, and analyze social and political events as if they deserved the attention of great literature. "My belief," Howe writes in the preface to [Selected Writings 1950–1990], "is that it should be possible for a serious person to hold more than one interest, or one idea, at a time." The lightly ironic tone should not be necessary. No serious person reading these brilliant essays on literature, culture, politics, and society will fail to admire the range of Howe's interests and...