SOURCE: A review of Decline of the New, in The Saturday Review, New York, Vol. LII, No. 27, July 4, 1970, pp. 30-1, 50.

Littlejohn is an American educator, novelist, and critic. In the following review, he examines the central themes of Decline of the New and faults Howe's tone as bitter and defensive.

The scrapbooks of literary critics—those periodic collections of essays, reviews, lectures, and prefaces—have always seemed to me a bit difficult to justify. Who ever buys them, except libraries? In the present case justification might appear even harder than usual, since seven of the seventeen pieces in Decline of the New are reprinted from Irving Howe's last collection, A World More Attractive, published only seven years ago. And two of these—one on black writers, one on the "angries" and the "beats"—the author admits are seriously out of date.

My guess is that this book came...