Trinity of Passion: The Literary Left and the Antifascist Crusade

by Alan M. Wald

Overview

The second of three volumes by Alan Wald that track the political and personal lives of several generations of U.S. left-wing writers, Trinity of Passion carries forward the chronicle launched in Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary Left. In this volume Wald delves into literary, emotional, and ideological trajectories of radical cultural workers in the era when the International Brigades fought in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39) and the United States battled in World War II (1941-45). Probing in rich and haunting detail the controversial impact of the Popular Front on literary culture, he explores the ethical and aesthetic challenges that pro-Communist writers faced.

Wald presents a cross section of literary talent, from the famous to the forgotten, the major to the minor. The writers examined include Len Zinberg (a.k.a. Ed Lacy), John Oliver Killens, Irwin Shaw, Albert Maltz, Ann Petry, Chester Himes, Henry Roth, Lauren Gilfillan, Ruth McKenney, Morris U. Schappes, and Jo Sinclair. He also uncovers dramatic new information about Arthur Miller's complex commitment to the Left.

Confronting heartfelt questions about Jewish masculinity, racism at the core of liberal democracy, the corrosion of utopian dreams, and the thorny interaction between antifascism and Communism, Wald re-creates the intellectual and cultural landscape of a remarkable era.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780807882368
Publisher:	The University of North Carolina Press
Publication date:	04/01/2011
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	344
File size:	4 MB

About the Author

Alan M. Wald is the H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor of English Literature and American Culture at the University of Michigan and is the recipient of the Mary C. Turpie Prize of the American Studies Association. His six previous books include The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s and Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary Left.

Table of Contents

Preface     xiii
Introduction: The Strange Career of Len Zinberg     1
Tough Jews in the Spanish Civil War     16
Unmanly Doubles     16
Jews with Guns     22
Whose Revolution?     31
Golems and Gimpels on the Barricades     42
The Agony of the African American Left     46
"The War Is Everywhere We Find It"     46
Black Bolshevik from Georgia     50
Youngblood versus Trueblood     56
A Double Perspective on Double V     62
The Peculiarities of the Germans     74
"A Jew Must Learn to Fight"     74
Willing Executioners?     81
"An Eye for an Eye"     87
The Natural     93
The Blood and the Stain     102
A Rage in Harlem     108
The Black Crusaders     108
"Talent as a Weapon"     115
Lutie Johnson's War     122
"Hitler's Uprisings in America"     128
Fighting the Fifth Column     137
Disappearing Acts     146
Henry Roth's Landscape of Guilt     146
The Ordeal of Lauren Gilfillan     154
Of Genders and Genres     158
TheWound and the Bow     161
An Ordinary Life     166
From New Masses to Mass Market     170
The Conversion of the Jews     176
The Lost World     176
Between Insularity and Internationalism     182
The Mirror of Race     186
Fascinating Fascism     194
From Emily Dickinson to Emma Lazarus     201
Arthur Miller's Missing Chapter     210
Miller the Marxist     210
Socialism Was Reason     215
Becoming Matt Wayne     221
Innocence Was Shattered     228
Conclusion: The Fates of Antifascism     236
Three Lives     236
The Wounded Heart     242
Changeling     250
Notes     261
Acknowledgments and Sources     303
Index     307

What People are Saying About This

From the Publisher

“Wald’s enterprise is distinguished by his sympathy for his writers' existential struggle and his expansive notion of [literature]. . . . One could use his work to assemble a respectable mid-twentieth-century canon of pop Modernist and social realist left literature. . . . [Wald’s] complicating of the received canon and deepening of individual political conflicts . . . makes one look forward to the final panel of his triptych.”—The Nation

“Wald skillfully and knowledgeably handles the political motives, context, and implications of those writers' works.”—Journal of American History

“Readable and informative. . . . A garden of reader delights.”—Jewish Book World

“Recommended.” — CHOICE

“Unveils prodigious original research. . . . [It] enhances America’s moral development by bringing the past into present conversation.” — American Literature

“Relevant and . . . timely. . . . A worthy addition to the study of radical literature. . . . Wald’s meticulous research, extensive notes, and photographs of the authors he studies present a vivid image of lives free from intellectual terrorism and far from retreat.” — Journal of the Midwest Modern Language Association

“[A] remarkable work in commemorating the lives of this talented and largely forgotten generation.” — 7Days

Editorial Reviews

“A valuable addition to scholarship on the history of left-wing Jews. . . . Informative [and] richly detailed.”—American Jewish History

“Wald’s meticulously researched thumbnail biographies of individual writers, many of them hitherto little-known, amount to far more than literary-historical detective work.”—Science & Society

“A vibrant and insightful reading of American sociopolitical literary culture.”—Contemporary Jewry

From the Publisher