Synopses & Reviews
During the 1930s, radical young writers, artists, and critics associated with the Communist Party animated a cultural dialogue that was one of the most stimulating in American history. With the dawning of the Cold War, however, much of their work fell out of favor, dismissed as dogmatic and un-American and disparaged as aesthetically and imaginatively deficient. Urging a reexamination of the literature and political culture of the 1930s Left, Robert Shulman explores the careers and creative work of five of the most talented writers of this group: Meridel Le Sueur, Josephine Herbst, Richard Wright, Muriel Rukeyser, and Langston Hughes. He shows persuasively that their political art retains the power to engage and challenge contemporary readers.
Shulman fuses close readings with a synthesizing concern for language, politics, and history to illuminate the art of his five writers, calling attention to their prose rhythms, imagery, and linguistic and formal innovations. In reclaiming their place at the forefront of artistic creativity in 1930s America, he demonstrates that these writers' individual voices were amplified by the radical dialogue of which they were part.
Review
[An] elegantly conceived and engaging study.
Library Journal
Review
The author's use of primary texts is ample and persuasive enough even for those making a first visit to the writers discussed.
Choice
Review
It reads the works of five 'left' writers of the 1930s as they deserve to be read, as creative artists.
Alan Trachtenberg, Yale University
Synopsis
Reclaims the importance of five leading writers of the 1930s American Left: Meridel Le Sueur, Josephine Herbst, Richard Wright, Muriel Rukeyser, and Langston Hughes.
Synopsis
Shulman does valuable work in emphasizing the range and vitality of the 1930s literary left.
Journal of American Studies The author's use of primary texts is ample and persuasive enough even for those making a first visit to the writers discussed.
Choice [An] elegantly conceived and engaging study.
Library Journal It reads the works of five 'left' writers of the 1930s as they deserve to be read, as creative artists.
Alan Trachtenberg, Yale University
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. [305]-331) and index.
About the Author
Robert Shulman is professor of English and American studies at the University of Washington. He is author of Social Criticism and Nineteenth-Century American Fictions.
Table of Contents
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Chapter 1. The Cultural Dialogue of the Thirties Left
Chapter 2. Representative Careers and Reputations
Chapter 3. The Radical Art of Meridel Le Sueur
Chapter 4. The Dialectical Imagination of Josephine Herbst: The Trexler Trilogy
Chapter 5. Richard Wright's Native Son and the Political Unconscious
Chapter 6. Muriel Rukeyser's The Book of the Dead: The Modernist Poem as Radical Documentary
Chapter 7. The Left Poetry of Langston Hughes
Notes
Index