Synopses & Reviews
“
The Education of a Reluctant Radical is beautifully written, informing us beyond the events it relates, thus touching us all. It is a walloping wonder of a memoir.”
—John A. Williams
“At a time when socialists all over the world awaken each day to a welter of pain, confusion, and regret, Carl Marzani is sitting down to remind us that socialism remains a powerful response to organized human need.”
—Vivian Gornick
“Delightful reading . . . the life of a 'premature anti-fascist' that spans nearly the whole of the century.”
—Studs Terkel
“For Carl Marzani, a brave and staunch dissident and now one of those rare autobiographers who is simultaneously a first-rate biographer of his place(s) and time.”
—Jane Jacobs
This book spans a period of forty years, from my entering jail in March of 1949 to November of 1989, when the Berlin Wall came down. It touches nine presidencies—all dominated by the Cold War. That long period contained some of the most traumatic events in the history of the United States: the assassinations of John F. Kennedy, Robert Kennedy, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X, as well as the wars in Korea and Vietnam.
Reconstruction, Book 5 is the final volume of memoirs from one who was, according to Italo Calvino, "a unique man . . . truly in love with the United States." Here is a remarkable first-hand account of many formative events of our time, and contains portraits of some of its great figures, including encounters with Fidel Castro and Che Guevara. It also recounts the reconstruction of Carl Marzani's life following imprisonment and divorce, with the building of a new life and family.
This volume also includes Carl Marzani's Prison Notebooks—confiscated by the prison authorities in 1949 and retrieved from the FBI files in the 1980s—which now take their place among the literature of incarceration.
Review
Praise for the original edition:
“These letters . . . are indispensable for the serious student of American literature.”
-Library Journal,
Synopsis
Edited by Edwin Haviland MillerIn discussing letter-writing, Whitman made his own views clear. Simplicity and naturalness were his guidelines. "I like my letters to be personal—very personal—and then stop." This collection of nearly 3,000 letters written over a half century reveals Whitman the man as no other documents can.
Volume I includes the poet's correspondence from Washington, DC, during the Civil War, where he nursed wounded and dying soldiers.
Volume II presents the poet during the years he was developing an international reputation. As they came to understand one of the most important American voices of the century, European writers such as Edward Dowden and John Addington Symonds began to correspond with Whitman.
Volume III covers the years in which Whitman radiated a personal and artistic magnetism, despite the paralysis that struck him in 1873. This period was full of important events, including the attempted censoring of Leaves of Grass, Whitman's renewed friendship with William D. O'Connor, and the arrival in America of Whitman's unrequited lover, Anne Gilchrist.
Volumes IV and V cover the last seven years of Whitman's life, giving an almost day-by-day account of his long struggle with various ailments, his stoical acceptance of constant pain, but also his continuing energy.
Volume VI offers updates, corrections, and an index to the preceding volumes in the set.
Synopsis
General Series Editors: Gay Wilson Allen and Sculley Bradley
Originally published between 1961 and 1984, and now available in paperback for the first time, the critically acclaimed Collected Writings of Walt Whitman captures every facet of one of Americas most important poets.
In discussing letter-writing, Whitman made his own views clear. Simplicity and naturalness were his guidelines. “I like my letters to be personal—very personal—and then stop.” The six volumes in The Correspondence comprise nearly 3,000 letters written over a half century, revealing Whitman the person as no other documents can.
Volume I includes the poets correspondence from Washington, DC, during the Civil War, where he nursed wounded and dying soldiers. In letters to his mother, Whitman describes the suffering and sorrow he encountered in unsanitary hospitals. He wrote to the parents of soldiers and offered hope—or consolation at the loss of an unsung hero. Soldiers who recovered and left the hospitals often wrote to Whitman, and he replied with friendly advice and paternal solicitude. As Whitman himself admitted, rarely was his heart so engaged as in these hospital scenes and war letters, which, like his greatest poems, reflect his characteristic themes—love and death.
About the Author
Carl Marzani was imprisoned in 1950 as one of the first victims of the gathering cloud of McCarthyism, his case a cause celebre. He would subsequently become one of New York's foremost left publishers and, as a writer and polemicist, a distinctive voice of the Cold War years. Right up until his death in 1994, he retained the sense of anger at injustice that burned throughout his intellectual and working life. A passionate belief in the value of democracy informs every page of this book.