SOURCE: "Critics at the Top," in The New York Review of Books, Vol. XXXVIII, No. 14, August 15, 1991, pp. 53-6.

Donoghue is an Irish-born educator and critic. In the following excerpt, he comments on Selected Writings 1950–1990, noting the relationship between Howe's social views and his literary criticism.

I don't know what readers would make of Irving Howe's Selected Writings 1950–1990 if they didn't place a high valuation upon the axiom of society; if they didn't regard social considerations as of the first importance. It is not to be expected that in a selection of his essays over a period of forty years Howe will always be found enforcing the same emphases, but he has never forgotten the social imperative or its bearing upon literature and criticism. In "Writing and the Holocaust" (1986) he has this paragraph:

Chaim Kaplan's Warsaw diary, covering a bit less than a year from its opening date of...