SOURCE: "It's Fiction All Right, But Is It Political?" in The New York Times Book Review, March 31, 1957, p. 4.

O'Connor was an Irish short story writer and critic. In the following review, he offers a mixed assessment of Politics and the Novel.

The title of Irving Howe's book of essays [Politics and the Novel] seems to me a great pity. It is a pity from the point of view of the Common Reader like myself who does not want to read another word on the subject of Malraux, Koestler and George Orwell, and is liable to overlook the fact that the book also deals with Stendhal, Dostoevsky, Conrad, Turgenev and Henry James, and deals with them in a way that the lover of the novel is bound to appreciate.

It is also a pity from Mr. Howe's point of view, for it is clear that, having invented the category...