New York Intellectuals
Mid-20th-century American writers and critics
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The New York Intellectuals were a group of American writers and literary critics based in New York City in the mid-20th century. They advocated left-wing politics, being firmly anti-Stalinist. The group is known for having sought to integrate literary theory with Marxism and socialism while rejecting Soviet socialism as a workable or acceptable political model.
Irving Kristol, Irving Howe, Seymour Martin Lipset, Leslie Fiedler, and Nathan Glazer were members of the Young People's Socialist League, under the influence of Max Shachtman.[1][verify]
Many of these intellectuals were educated at City College of New York ("Harvard of the Proletariat"),[2] New York University, and Columbia University in the 1930s,[citation needed] and associated in the next two decades with the left-wing political journals Partisan Review, Dissent, and the then-left-wing but later neoconservative-leaning journal Commentary.[citation needed] Writer Nicholas Lemann has described these intellectuals as "the American Bloomsbury".[citation needed]
Some, including Kristol, Sidney Hook, and Norman Podhoretz, later became key figures in the development of neoconservatism.[3][verify]
Members
Writers often identified as members of this group include:
- Lionel Abel
- Hannah Arendt
- William Barrett
- Daniel Bell[4][5][6][7]
- Saul Bellow (despite his usual association with the city of Chicago)
- Norman Birnbaum[citation needed]
- Anatole Broyard[7]
- Elliot E. Cohen
- Lewis Coser[7]
- Rose Coser[7]
- Midge Decter
- Morris Dickstein[8]
- Leslie Fiedler
- Herbert Gans[7]
- Nathan Glazer[citation needed]
- Clement Greenberg[9]
- Paul Goodman[10]
- Michael Harrington[7]
- Gertrude Himmelfarb[7]
- Richard Hofstadter
- Sidney Hook[11][12]
- Irving Howe[7]
- Alfred Kazin
- Irving Kristol[7]
- Norman Mailer[13]
- Seymour Martin Lipset
- Mary McCarthy[14][12]
- Dwight Macdonald[9]
- William Phillips
- Norman Podhoretz[citation needed]
- Philip Rahv
- Harold Rosenberg
- Isaac Rosenfeld
- Bayard Rustin[7]
- Delmore Schwartz[10]
- Susan Sontag
- Harvey Swados
- Diana Trilling
- Lionel Trilling
- Robert Warshow[citation needed]