Bohemian Bolsheviks

Alan M. Wald is H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan. He is the author of eight books on United States Literary Radicalism, including The New York Intellectuals: The Rise and Decline of the Anti-Stalinist Left from the 1930s to the 1980s (1987).

“In this fascinating collection of essays, Marxist scholar Alan Wald discusses ‘Literary Radicalism’, with empathy, subtlety and openness, and with an exceptional gift for illuminating the links between culture, protest, passion and politics. Readers will discover a new way of seeing the history of American literature.”—Michael Löwy, author of Franz Kafka, Subversive Dreamer“Alan Wald is a generous archive of the many-sided lives of US literary radicals within and beyond Communism [...]. Through careful research and elegant readings, his work reveals hidden recesses within the quirky individuals who comprise collective struggle. [...] His lifetime study of the ‘messy’ histories and politics of literary radicalism will inspire future generations to reframe our understanding of the past—and confront confront the present.”—Paula Rabinowitz, University of Minnesota

• AcknowledgmentsIntroduction– Marxism and Literary Radicalism: Methodology, Memory, and the Lure of Easy HistoryPart 1 The Left in US Literature1 Inconvenient Truths: The Communist Conundrum in Life and Art2 The Culture War Over Literary Communism3 Imagined Solidarities: The Bolshevik Revolution and the Literary Left4 Reconstructing the ‘Humanscape’ of Left Culture and Commitment: An Interview with Alan Wald5 Noir and the Ebb of Radical HopePart 2 Fiction and Poetry6 Steinbeck and the Proletarian Novel7 Back to the Future in Howard Fast’s Freedom Road8 American Poetry and the Popular Front9 The Murdered Dreams of Aaron Kramer: A Marxist Poet In The ‘American Century’10 Hero– International Brigade11 Marxism and the Modernist Poet: A Tale of Two DelmoresPart 3 Gender and the Left12 Bohemian Bolsheviks After World WarII: A Minority Within a Minority13 Sanora Babb in Her Time and Ours14 ‘Sexing the Left: Interview with Alan M.Wald,’ by William J.Maxwell15 Wheelwright and His Kind16 Motley’s Men: The Queer Haunting of We Fished All Night17 The Trotskyist Time Forgot: The Permanent Rebellion of Nicolas Calas18 The Red and the QueerPart 4 Race and Class19 The Marxist Imagination of Theodore Ward(September15, 1902–May8, 1983)20 Race and the Logic of Capital21 Protesting the Protest Novel: Richard Wright’s The Man Who Lived Underground22 The Black Internationalism of William Gardner Smith23 Blood on the Forge: A Masterful Proletarian Novel24 From ‘Triple Oppression’ to ‘Freedom Dreams’Part 5 Commitment25 ‘A Seemingly Incongruous Alliance’: Bryan Palmer, Revolutionary Teamsters26 Trotsky: Between the Power and the Dream27 Fascinating Antifascism: Enzo Traverso’s Fire and Blood28 A Theater for the Poor: Cleveland and SDS/ERAP in the Mid-1960s29 Gramsci’s Gift30 H.Chandler Davis, a Lifelong Radical and a Moral Touchstone for the Left31 The Straight and the Crooked: BDS Versus Settler-ColonialismPart 6 The Radical Vision32 Riddle Me This, Comrade: 100 Years of US Communism33 Protest, Passion, Politics34 Reaching for Revolution35 The Present of Future Things36 Astonished by the Present: The Impatient Life of Daniel Bensäid37 Missives for the Future: Michael Löwy’s Close Encounters with the US LeftBibliographyIndex