The New York Intellectuals

This study of the New York Intellectuals uses original sources to reconstruct their history during the period of their greatest influence, the 1940s and 1950s. It takes as its major theme the contradiction between the Intellectuals' avant-garde principles and the institutional locations they had come to occupy. Amongst those known collectively as the New York Intellectuals were such thinkers and activists as Philip Rahv, Mary McCarthy, Dwight Macdonald and Lionel Trilling. They assembled on the margins of American society in the 1930s and formed an intellectual community on the basis of their shared concern with Marxism and Modernism. Afterwards they enjoyed a steady ascent to national and international prominence. Their influence is still felt in many spheres of American public life today. While defending the New York Intellectuals against charges that they 'sold out', this book also mounts a sustained critique of their cultural and political vanguardism. The author pays particular attention to three of the illustrious magazines associated with the Intellectuals, Partisan Review, Politics and Encounter, providing fresh insights into their contents and new information about their material histories.