ENGL 376
MW 8:30 – 9:50
Sean McCann
285 Court St, Rm. 209
Office Hours, MW, 10-11 and by appt
The New York Intellectuals
This course is a research seminar on the cohort of writers commonly referred to as The New York
Intellectuals. Between the late nineteen-thirties and the end of the twentieth century, the members of
this small group of predominantly Jewish artists and thinkers were among the most prestigious
intellectuals in the U.S. and the world. They played a major role in shaping prevailing ideas about
literature, art, and society in the postwar United States. Although most of these writers began their
intellectual lives on the left, nearly all of them rejected radicalism for liberalism during the Cold War. In
later years, some among their members would become the leading voices of neoconservatism--and thus
a major influence on the foreign and domestic policy, and the politics, of the Reagan Revolution and its
successors in the administrations of George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush. The journey that many of
these writers followed—from the left to the liberal center and, sometimes, to the far right; from ethnic
marginality to cultural assimilation and critical prestige—is, in many ways, an exemplary story of the
post-WWII United States.
Our aim will be to understand these writers’ ideas, attitudes, and experience. More specifically, we will
consider two, closely related questions. What factors explain these writers’ extraordinary rise to
prominence? And in what ways did their attitudes become influential on the cultural expression of their
contemporaries and successors? In short, why and how did their once marginal views develop into the
prevailing ideas of their culture?
Requirements

A research project—which can be fulfilled in any of three ways: (1) a research essay; (2) an
original podcast or video; (3) an originally designed and constructed website. Fuller
explanations of these options and of all assignments can be found on the course Moodle. 40%
of final grade.

An annotated bibliography of primary and secondary sources that will be consulted in
completion of the research project. 10% of final grade.

A review of a sample of the existing critical or scholarly literature on your research subject. 10 %
of final grade.

Three 2-4 pp response papers. (Choose any 3 of 4 possible dates.) 30% of final grade.

Class participation. 10% of final grade.
Required Texts
Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler’s Planet
Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
Mike Gold, Jews Without Money
Alfred Kazin, A Walker in the City
Mary McCarthy, The Company She Keeps
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint
A number of PDFs available via the course Moodle (m)
Laptop Policy
Please do not use any electronic devices, including computers, in this class.
Students with Disabilities
It is the policy of Wesleyan University to provide reasonable accommodations to students with
documented disabilities. Students, however, are responsible for registering with Disabilities Services, in
addition to making requests known to me in a timely manner. If you require accommodations in this
class, please make an appointment with me as soon as possible (during the 2nd or 3rd week of the
semester), so that appropriate arrangements can be made. The procedures for registering with
Disabilities Services can be found at www.wesleyan.edu/deans/disability-students.html.
Schedule
9/3 Course Introduction
9/5 What was the New York Intellectual?
Lionel Trilling, “The Function of the Little Magazine,” The Liberal Imagination (m)
Irving Howe, “Literary Life: New York,” A Margin of Hope (m)
Joseph Dorman, “A Lifetime in Argument,” Arguing the World: The New York Intellectuals in
Their Own Words (m)
Recommended:
William Barrett, “Prologue,” “Analytic Exuberance,” “The New York Intellectual,” The
Truants: Adventures among the Intellectuals (m)
Recommended screening, Arguing the World, 7:00 p.m. Downey 113
“One of the longest journeys in the world is the journey from Brooklyn to Manhattan”: The Youth and
Education of the New York Intellectuals
9/10
Alfred Kazin, “From the Subway to the Synagogue,” “The Kitchen,” A Walker in the City
Alexander Bloom, “Young Men from the Provinces,” “A New York Education,” Prodigal
Sons: The New York Intellectuals and Their World (m)
Beth S. Wenger, Introduction and “The Landscape of Jewish Life,” New York Jews and
the Great Depression: Uncertain Promise (m)
Group A Response Paper Due
9/12
Kazin, “The Block and Beyond,” “Summer: The Way to Highland Park,” Walker in the City
Eli Lederhender, “Jews and the Great Urban Utopia,” New York Jews and the Decline of
Urban Ethnicity, 1950-1970 (m)
Recommended: Irving Howe, “Life in a Sect,” “City College and Beyond,” A Margin of
Hope: An Intellectual Autobiography
Writers on the Left: Literary Radicalism in the Great Depression
9/17
Mike Gold, Jews Without Money
Gold, “Proletarian Realism,” “Why I am A Communist,” “The Second American
Renaissance” (m)
Kenneth Fearing, “No Credit” (m)
Richard Wright, “Between the World and Me” (m)
John Patrick Diggins, “The Old Left,” The Rise and Fall of the American Left
Group B Response Paper Due
9/19
Gold, Jews Without Money
Ellen Foley, “The Legacy of Anti-Communism,” “Art or Propaganda,” Radical
Representations: Politics and Form in U.S. Proletarian Literature, 1929-1941 (m)
Recommended:
Daniel Aaron, chs. VII-XI, Writers on the Left: Episodes in American Literary
Communism (m)
Bloom, “The Radical Vanguard,” Prodigal Sons (m)
Richard Pells, “Literary Theory and the Intellectual,” Radical Visions and
American Dreams (m)
The Cultural Politics of Anti-Stalinism
9/24
Leon Trotsky, “Art and Politics” (m)
James T. Farrell, “Leon Trotsky” (m)
Philip Rahv, “Twilight of the Thirties” (m)
Alan Wald, “The Appeal of Trotskyism,” “The Moscow Trials,” The New York Intellectuals:
The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s (m)
Group C Response Paper Due
9/26
Mary McCarthy, The Company She Keeps
Clement Greenberg, “Avant-Garde and Kitsch” (m)
William Philips, “The Intellectuals’ Tradition” (m)
10/1
McCarthy, The Company She Keeps
Group A Response Paper Due
A Second Imperialist War? The New York Intellectuals and WWII
10/3
Clement Greenberg and Dwight Macdonald, “Ten Propositions,” A Partisan Century (m)
Philip Rahv, “Ten Propositions and Eight Errors,” A Partisan Century (m)
Dwight Macdonald, “The Responsibility of Peoples” (m)
Wald, “The Second Imperialist War,” The New York Intellectuals (m)
10/8
Simone Weil, “The Iliad or The Poem of Force” (m)
Bruno Bettleheim, “Behavior in Extreme Situations” (m)
Mary McCarthy, “The ‘Hiroshima’ New Yorker” (m)
Isaac Rosenfeld, “The Situation of the Jewish Writer” (m)
Recommended:
Robert Duncan, “The Homosexual in Society” (m)
Irving Howe, “Jewish Quandaries,” A Margin of Hope (m)
Gregory D. Sumner, “Preface to politics,” “The Moral Crisis of World War II,” Dwight
Macdonald and the politics Circle: The Challenge of Cosmopolitan Democracy (m)
Kevin Mattson, “A Preface to the politics of Intellectual Life in Postwar America,”
Intellectuals in Action: The Origins of the New Left and Radical Liberalism, 1945-1970 (m)
Group B Response Paper Due
Our Country and Our Culture: The New York Intellectuals and The Cold War
10/10 Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. “Not Left or Right, but A Vital Center” (m)
[William Barrett], “The ‘Liberal’ Fifth Column” (m)
“Our Country and Our Culture,” A Partisan Century (m)
Thomas Schaub, “The Liberal Narrative,” American Fiction in the Cold War
Recommended:
C. Wright Mills, “The Conservative Mood” (1954) Fifty Years of Dissent (m)
Andrew Ross, “Reading the Rosenberg Letters,” No Respect: Intellectuals and
Popular Culture (m)
10/17 Lionel Trilling, “Preface,” “Reality in America,” “Manners, Morals, and the Novel,” The Liberal
Imagination (m)
Delmore Schwartz, “The Duchesses Red Shoes” (m)
Hugh Wilford, The Mighty Wurlitzer: How the CIA Played America, chs. 4 and 5
Recommended: Michael Kimmage, “Introduction,” “Toward an Anti-Communism of the
Left and an Anti-Communism of the Right,” The Conservative Turn: Lionel Trilling,
Whittaker Chambers, and the Lessons of Anti-Communism
Group C Response Paper Due
10/22 Ralph Ellison, Invisible Man
James Baldwin, “Everybody’s Protest Novel” (m)
Recommended:
Walter Jackson, “White Liberal Intellectuals, Civil Rights, and Gradualism, 19541960” (m)
Geraldine Murphy, “Subversive Anti-Stalinism: Race and Sexuality in the Early
Essays of James Baldwin,” ELH 63.4 (1996) 1021-1046, available via JSTOR
10/24 Ellison, Invisible Man
Stephen Schryer, Introduction, Fantasies of the New Class: Ideologies of Professionalism in PostWorld War II American Fiction
Group A Response Paper Due
10/29 Ellison, Invisible Man
Christopher Z. Hobson, “Invisible Man and African American Radicalism in World War II,” African
American Review 39, No. 3 (Fall, 2005), pp. 355-376, available via JSTOR
Ellen Foley, “Reading Forward to Invisible Man,” “Finding Brotherhood,” “Recognizing
Necessity,” Wrestling with the Left: The Making of Ralph Ellison’s Invisible Man (m)
Survey of Critical Literature Due
10/31 Ellison, Invisible Man
Group B Response Paper Due
Cultural Contradictions: The New York Intellectuals and the New Left
11/5
Nat Hentoff and Michael Harrington, “The New Radicalism,” A Partisan Century (m)
Irving Howe, “The Best and the Worst,” A Margin of Hope (m)
Recommended:
Diggins, “The New Left,” The Rise and Fall of the American Left (m)
Alan Wald, “Portrait: Irving Howe” and “The ‘Socialist Wing of the West,’” The
New York Intellectuals (m)
11/7
Thomas Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
Susan Sontag, “Against Interpretation,” “Notes on Camp” (m)
Recommended, Ben Yagoda “The Years with Kolatch: Life at America’s Most Significant
Obscure Magazine” (m)
Group C Response Paper Due
11/12 Pynchon, The Crying of Lot 49
11/14 Philip Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint
Group A Response Paper Due
11/19 Roth, Portnoy’s Complaint
Annotated Bibliography due
Birth of the Neocons
11/21 Norman Podhoretz, “My Negro Problem—and Ours,” The Norman Podhoretz Reader (m)
Podhoretz, “Going Too Far for the Trillings,” Ex-Friends (m)
Norman Mailer, “The White Negro” (m)
Recommended:
Wald, “The Bitter Fruits of Anticommunism,”TheNew York Intellectuals (m)
Group B Response Paper Due
11/26 Saul Bellow, Mr. Sammler’s Planet
Irving Kristol, “Reflections of a Neoconservative,” Partisan Review: The Fiftieth Anniversary Issue
(m)
Daniel Bell, “Forward: 1978,” “Preface,” The Cultural Contradictions of Capitalism
Peter Steinfels, from The Neoconservatives (m)
11/28 Bellow, Mr. Sammler’s Planet
Group C Response Paper Due
Decent and Indecent Lefts: The New York Intellectuals, Their Heirs, and the End of the Cold War
12/3
Marshall Berman, “Preface to the Penguin Edition,” “Modernism in New York” (sec. 1-3), All that
is Solid Melts into Air: The Experience of Modernity (m)
David Brooks, “Introduction,” “Rise of the Educated Class,” “Politics and Beyond,” Bobos in
Paradise (m)
Eli Lederhender, “City and Ethnicity,” New York Jews and the Decline of Urban Ethnicity, 19501970 (m)
Russell Jacoby, from The Last intellectuals (m)
Film screening: Woody Allen, dir. Hannah and Her Sisters, 7:00 p.m., Downey 113
12/5
Thomas Frank, et al., “Introduction,”“The New Gilded Age,” Commodify Your Dissent:
Salvos from The Baffler
Michael Walzer, “Can There Be a Decent Left?” Fifty Years of Dissent (m)
Michael Kazin, “A Patriotic Left,” Fifty Years of Dissent (m)
12/15 Final Project due