by Darrin McMahon

Let me put in a shameless plug for the work of my colleague and friend, Neil Jumonville, whose The New York Intellectuals Reader has just been published by Routledge. Under ordinary circumstances I might refrain from such an obvious conflict of interest (in addition to everything else, Neil is my department chair). But given that the Open University list of contributors includes at least two direct descendents of the New York intellectuals, and The New Republic has a long and storied relationship with a number of their leading voices, it seemed altogether appropriate.

What is more, it is a fabulous book, edited by a leading scholar of the subject. It gathers in one place--and in many cases reprints for the first time--the essential writings of a good number of America's most important critics of the twentieth century. But don't take my word for it. Just flipping through the pages of the handsome volume is like watching an amazing hors d'oeuvre tray go by: Where to begin the intellectual feast? Perhaps a little Alfred Kazin or Irving Howe on starting out in New York in the 1930s. Or maybe you'd prefer a classic bit of Clement Greenberg or Meyer Shapiro on abstract art and kitsch. There are spicy pieces by Norman Podhoretz and Nathan Glazer on race and ethnicity, substantial fare by Daniel Bell on the end of ideology, and other fortifying indulgences, including an exchange between Sidney Hook and Bertrand Russell, as well as familiar, if no less hearty, contributions by Hannah Arendt, a fellow traveler, and the late Susan Sontag, the youngest of the lot. You'll also find here Mary McCarthy's epitaph for her former lover and fellow New York intellectual Philip Rahv; a wonderful Lionel Trilling essay on the teaching of modern literature; and several of the early editorial statements of the editors of Partisan Review, the first in a long line of journals published by the New York Intellectual that would later include Commentary, Dissent, and the Public Interest, to name only a few. In short, this book is no chopped liver.

Younger readers may be amazed to learn that literary critics--for many of the New York intellectuals were among other things critics of literature--were once fully capable of talking sense about politics and much else, including (imagine!) literature (David Bromwich, Richard Stern, and Caroline Weber--notable exceptions all--will accept my apologies and take my point, I trust). And at a time when America's political battle lines are seemingly intractable, it is helpful to be reminded, as Jonathan Chait has done recently in a fine TNR piece, that breaking ideological ranks has a style and structure of its own. Irving Kristol's "Memoirs of a Trotskyist" makes delightful reading for anyone who can recall the folly of youth.

Each piece (prepare for the brown nose) is introduced with a compact and efficient one-page biography by Jumonville, who has also written (here it is) an excellent and insightful introductory essay that puts the many writers and their works into context. If you are interested in American liberalism or socialism in the twentieth century, the origins of neo-conservatism, anti-communism and the intellectual history of the cold war, non-formalist art criticism, Jewish-American life and culture, intellectuals, New York, or just want to savor the majesty of the life of the mind, this is a book you'll want to check out.