Ralph Ellison v. Irving Howe: Worth A Read

Have the arguments dated? Yes. Have the Howe-Ellison essays become museum pieces? Not entirely. An echo of their debate occurs whenever one minority member accuses another of “forgetting his roots” or whenever shouting matches erupt over whether “the canon” consists predominantly of dead white European males. But insofar as the Howe-Ellison squabble pitted the values of the committed artist against the values of aesthetic purity, it appears hackneyed, largely because today minority artists feel much less pressure to view “commitment to the struggle” and aestheticism as oppositional. Times have changed.