This review essay about Marjorie Heins' excellent books elicited a large number of comments from ... more This review essay about Marjorie Heins' excellent books elicited a large number of comments from historians in the US Intellewctual History Society.
The oeuvre of Brazilian-born and Parisian-educated Michael Löwy is widely recognised as the achie... more The oeuvre of Brazilian-born and Parisian-educated Michael Löwy is widely recognised as the achievement of an exacting revolutionary cultural worker who integrates theory with his political duties, and labours hard at his craft so that the poetic imagination can reclaim and thereby re-enchant the reified reality of capitalist modernity. Nevertheless, when we come to Löwy's reputation in the United States we face a curious situation. There is no doubt that his work is known and respected among many activists and scholars. Yet from the perspective of the needs of the Marxist Left, the disparity is striking between what Löwy has to offer as a militant thinker and the actuality of his impact. The search for an explanation of such a discrepancy must begin with a preliminary stab at what I regard as a 'Löwyian' interpretation of Michael Löwy's life and writings. The method includes an exploration of his possible 'elective affinities' , defined in a broad sense, with the cultural and political work of US radicalism since the 1960s. Are there analogies, kinships, or attractions of meaning that have entered into a relationship of reciprocal appeal and influence? In the end, however, I conclude that the disproportion between potential and actual stems largely from fractional perceptions of his accomplishment that are rooted in the peculiarities of US Marxist thought in general and of US Trotskyism in particular. Such partial and one-sided assessments are a profound barrier because the achievement of Michael Löwy needs to be understood in its totality.
A review essay about Aaron Lecklider's "Love's Next Meeting: The Forgotten History of Homosexuali... more A review essay about Aaron Lecklider's "Love's Next Meeting: The Forgotten History of Homosexuality and the Left in American Culture"
At the start of the last century a modern tradition of literary radicalism crystallized with insp... more At the start of the last century a modern tradition of literary radicalism crystallized with inspiring results. From 1900 onward, socialists and bohemians yoked their ideals to become a marathon of forward-thinking activist cultural workers. For the next three decades, writers and intellectuals of the Left, such as Max Eastman (1883–1969), were oracles of enchantment in a world increasingly disenchanted, initially by the international war of 1914–1919 and subsequently by a decline in popular political defiance as capitalism consolidated. Still, the adversarial dream persevered during the violence and later, often in little magazines such as the Masses, Liberator, Seven Arts, and Modern Quarterly. Since the 1920s, literary radicalism meant creativity in the service of an insurrection against political power combined with a makeover in human relationships. With the economic catastrophe of 1929 and the triumph of Nazism in 1933, what might have been a generational succession morphed in...
Alan Wald: When we read your memoir that came out in 1990, Being Red, many of us had also read an... more Alan Wald: When we read your memoir that came out in 1990, Being Red, many of us had also read an earlier book called The Naked God in 1957 — and our impression of your experience was represented by The Naked God until we read Being Red. There seems to many of us to be a big difference between the two books and it is also noticed by some of us that in your long list of books in front of Being Red you don't mention The Naked God, and in Being Red you don't talk about The Naked God. So we are wondering whether or not Being Red is sort of a new version of the past that is appropriate for some reason. Is there something inadequate, perhaps, about the earlier version or some political need now to rethink and reform your ideas? What are the differences between the two books? Why did you write the second?Howard Fast: The chief difference is thirty-five years — which is a big difference. When I wrote The Naked God, I was very angry. I was furious with what I considered a betrayal of...
This review essay about Marjorie Heins' excellent books elicited a large number of comments from ... more This review essay about Marjorie Heins' excellent books elicited a large number of comments from historians in the US Intellewctual History Society.
The oeuvre of Brazilian-born and Parisian-educated Michael Löwy is widely recognised as the achie... more The oeuvre of Brazilian-born and Parisian-educated Michael Löwy is widely recognised as the achievement of an exacting revolutionary cultural worker who integrates theory with his political duties, and labours hard at his craft so that the poetic imagination can reclaim and thereby re-enchant the reified reality of capitalist modernity. Nevertheless, when we come to Löwy's reputation in the United States we face a curious situation. There is no doubt that his work is known and respected among many activists and scholars. Yet from the perspective of the needs of the Marxist Left, the disparity is striking between what Löwy has to offer as a militant thinker and the actuality of his impact. The search for an explanation of such a discrepancy must begin with a preliminary stab at what I regard as a 'Löwyian' interpretation of Michael Löwy's life and writings. The method includes an exploration of his possible 'elective affinities' , defined in a broad sense, with the cultural and political work of US radicalism since the 1960s. Are there analogies, kinships, or attractions of meaning that have entered into a relationship of reciprocal appeal and influence? In the end, however, I conclude that the disproportion between potential and actual stems largely from fractional perceptions of his accomplishment that are rooted in the peculiarities of US Marxist thought in general and of US Trotskyism in particular. Such partial and one-sided assessments are a profound barrier because the achievement of Michael Löwy needs to be understood in its totality.
A review essay about Aaron Lecklider's "Love's Next Meeting: The Forgotten History of Homosexuali... more A review essay about Aaron Lecklider's "Love's Next Meeting: The Forgotten History of Homosexuality and the Left in American Culture"
At the start of the last century a modern tradition of literary radicalism crystallized with insp... more At the start of the last century a modern tradition of literary radicalism crystallized with inspiring results. From 1900 onward, socialists and bohemians yoked their ideals to become a marathon of forward-thinking activist cultural workers. For the next three decades, writers and intellectuals of the Left, such as Max Eastman (1883–1969), were oracles of enchantment in a world increasingly disenchanted, initially by the international war of 1914–1919 and subsequently by a decline in popular political defiance as capitalism consolidated. Still, the adversarial dream persevered during the violence and later, often in little magazines such as the Masses, Liberator, Seven Arts, and Modern Quarterly. Since the 1920s, literary radicalism meant creativity in the service of an insurrection against political power combined with a makeover in human relationships. With the economic catastrophe of 1929 and the triumph of Nazism in 1933, what might have been a generational succession morphed in...
Alan Wald: When we read your memoir that came out in 1990, Being Red, many of us had also read an... more Alan Wald: When we read your memoir that came out in 1990, Being Red, many of us had also read an earlier book called The Naked God in 1957 — and our impression of your experience was represented by The Naked God until we read Being Red. There seems to many of us to be a big difference between the two books and it is also noticed by some of us that in your long list of books in front of Being Red you don't mention The Naked God, and in Being Red you don't talk about The Naked God. So we are wondering whether or not Being Red is sort of a new version of the past that is appropriate for some reason. Is there something inadequate, perhaps, about the earlier version or some political need now to rethink and reform your ideas? What are the differences between the two books? Why did you write the second?Howard Fast: The chief difference is thirty-five years — which is a big difference. When I wrote The Naked God, I was very angry. I was furious with what I considered a betrayal of...
This does not include the series I edited at the University of Illinois, "The Radical Novel Recon... more This does not include the series I edited at the University of Illinois, "The Radical Novel Reconsidered."
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