Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary LeftWith this book, Alan Wald launches a bold and passionate account of the U.S. Literary Left from the 1920s through the 1960s. Exiles from a Future Time, the first volume of a trilogy, focuses on the forging of a Communist-led literary tradition in the 1930s. Exploring writers' intimate lives and heartfelt political commitments, Wald draws on original research in scores of archives and personal collections of papers; correspondence and interviews with hundreds of writers and their friends and families; and a treasure trove of unpublished memoirs, fiction, and poetry. In fashioning a "humanscape" of the Literary Left, Wald not only reassesses acclaimed authors but also returns to memory dozens of forgotten, talented writers. The authors range from the familiar Mike Gold, Langston Hughes, and Muriel Rukeyser to William Attaway, John Malcolm Brinnin, Stanley Burnshaw, Joy Davidman, Sol Funaroff, Joseph Freeman, Alfred Hayes, Eugene Clay Holmes, V. J. Jerome, Ruth Lechlitner, and Frances Winwar. Focusing on the formation of the tradition and the organization of the Cultural Left, Wald investigates the "elective affinity" of its avant-garde poets, the "Afro-cosmopolitanism" of its Black radical literary movement, and the uneasy negotiation between feminist concerns and class identity among its women writers. |
Contents
| 1 | |
Chapter 1 American Jeremiad | 9 |
Chapter 2 Inventing Mike Gold | 39 |
Chapter 3 The Great Promise | 71 |
Chapter 4 The New Masses and the Social Muse | 103 |
Chapter 5 Yogis and Commissars | 163 |
Chapter 6 Three Moderns in Search of an Answer | 193 |
Chapter 7 Sappho in Red | 229 |
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A. B. Magil Aaron African American American Writers appeared artistic became Black Brinnin Browder Burnshaw career Carmon Chicago collection Communism Communist movement Communist Party Congress criticism Daily Worker early editor Ellison Endore essay father fiction Folsom Freeman Papers Funaroff Gold’s Granville Hicks Hayes Hayes’s Hollywood Horace Gregory Howard Ibid intellectual issue Jerome Papers Jerome’s Jewish John Reed Clubs Joseph Freeman Josephine Herbst Kenneth Fearing Langston Hughes later League of American Lechlitner Left-wing letter Literary Left magazine Marxist Masses McKay Michael Gold Mike Gold modern Moreover munist Muriel Rukeyser Negro novel novelist organization Party member Party’s People’s poem poetic poetry political Popular Front pro-Communist published radical revolutionary Richard Wright Sender Garlin social socialist Soviet Union Spector Stanley Burnshaw Sterling Brown story Taggard Theater theNew Trachtenberg tradition United University Press V. J. Jerome verse Wald interview Whitman women working-class World wrote York City young