Overview

Wald offers a comprehensive history and reconsideration of the U.S. literary left in the mid-twentieth century. Recovering the central role Marxist-influenced writers played in fiction, poetry, theater, and literary criticism, he explores the lives and work of figures including Richard Wright, Muriel Rukeyser, Mike Gold, Claude McKay, Tillie Olsen, and Meridel Le Sueur.

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9780807826836

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"This is a fascinating, perhaps even magisterial record of the complex achievement of those many American writers who gallantly dared to imagine a world free of reckless capitalism and its attendant social plagues. (Arnold Rampersad, author of ""The Life of Langston Hughes"") Alan Wald demolishes the myth of a cultural commissar forcing radical writers to follow Moscow's artistic line. In its place, he offers a fascinating portrayal of a group of gifted left-wing poets and novelists pursuing their own intensely personal literary and political trajectories. (Ellen Schrecker, author of ""Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America"") Wald's study emphasizes biography in order to illumine the connection between political convictions and literary art. The result blends literary scholarship and oral history. . . . Valuable for assessing the contributions of numerous individual writers. (""Library Journal"")"

This is a fascinating, perhaps even magisterial record of the complex achievement of those many American writers who gallantly dared to imagine a world free of reckless capitalism and its attendant social plagues. (Arnold Rampersad, author of The Life of Langston Hughes ) Alan Wald demolishes the myth of a cultural commissar forcing radical writers to follow Moscow's artistic line. In its place, he offers a fascinating portrayal of a group of gifted left-wing poets and novelists pursuing their own intensely personal literary and political trajectories. (Ellen Schrecker, author of Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America ) Wald's study emphasizes biography in order to illumine the connection between political convictions and literary art. The result blends literary scholarship and oral history. . . . Valuable for assessing the contributions of numerous individual writers. ( Library Journal )

This is a fascinating, perhaps even magisterial record of the complex achievement of those many American writers who gallantly dared to imagine a world free of reckless capitalism and its attendant social plagues. (Arnold Rampersad, author of The Life of Langston Hughes )

Wald's study emphasizes biography in order to illumine the connection between political convictions and literary art. The result blends literary scholarship and oral history. . . . Valuable for assessing the contributions of numerous individual writers. ( Library Journal ) Alan Wald demolishes the myth of a cultural commissar forcing radical writers to follow Moscow's artistic line. In its place, he offers a fascinating portrayal of a group of gifted left-wing poets and novelists pursuing their own intensely personal literary and political trajectories. (Ellen Schrecker, author of Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America ) This is a fascinating, perhaps even magisterial record of the complex achievement of those many American writers who gallantly dared to imagine a world free of reckless capitalism and its attendant social plagues. (Arnold Rampersad, author of The Life of Langston Hughes )

Author Information

Linda M. Grasso is Associate Professor of English at York College, City University of New York.

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