SOURCE: "The Inevitable Tensions of the Political Novel," in The Commonweal, Vol. LXVI, No. 6, May 10, 1957, pp. 159-60.

In the following review of Politics and the Novel, Duffy praises Howe's commentary on nineteenth- and twentieth-century novels but finds that his political commitment sometimes supercedes his literary judgement.

The number of intelligent and perceptive books on the novel is so few that it is especially pleasant to welcome an addition to that small group. In Politics and the Novel Irving Howe makes a limited approach to fiction, but it is a worthwhile one because of the material he has chosen and because of his special talents and interests as a critic.

Howe is one of those critics whose concern is not solely with the literary work as formal object but also, and often more notably, with its cultural and ideological ramifications. In the field of literary history the late F...