Bohemian Bolsheviks

Dispatches from the Culture and History of the Left
Erscheinungsjahr 2025
ISBN: 978-90-04-72936-0
Verlag: Brill

Buch, Englisch, Band 344, 622 Seiten, Format (B × H): 162 mm x 241 mm, Gewicht: 1180 g

Reihe: Historical Materialism Book Series

The rubric, ‘Bohemian Bolsheviks,’ captures Alan Wald’s sustained fascination with persistent contradictions between the image of Left political commitment and the actuality of experience, especially in relation to cultural work and cultural workers. Marxist political alignment engages a welter of intimate and biographical factors enriching the record of a varied history of fiction, poetry, literary criticism, and other intellectual practices. Exploring a field of study marked by enduring paradoxes of modernity, this volume is a sharp reminder that historical narrative not only shapes our sense of the terrain under our feet—but also the horizon in front of us.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Wald, Alan M

Fachgebiete

• Sozialwissenschaften Soziologie | Soziale Arbeit Soziologie Allgemein
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Mentalitäts- und Sozialgeschichte
• Sozialwissenschaften Politikwissenschaft Politische Ideologien Marxismus, Kommunismus
• Geisteswissenschaften Literaturwissenschaft Literaturgeschichte und Literaturkritik
• Geisteswissenschaften Geschichtswissenschaft Geschichtliche Themen Kultur- und Ideengeschichte

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments

Introduction– Marxism and Literary Radicalism: Methodology, Memory, and the Lure of Easy History

Part1 The Left in US Literature

1 Inconvenient Truths: The Communist Conundrum in Life and Art

2 The Culture War Over Literary Communism

3 Imagined Solidarities: The Bolshevik Revolution and the Literary Left

4 Reconstructing the ‘Humanscape’ of Left Culture and Commitment: An Interview with Alan Wald

5 Noir and the Ebb of Radical Hope

Part2 Fiction and Poetry

6 Steinbeck and the Proletarian Novel

7 Back to the Future in Howard Fast’s Freedom Road

8 American Poetry and the Popular Front

9 The Murdered Dreams of Aaron Kramer: A Marxist Poet In The ‘American Century’

10 Hero– International Brigade

11 Marxism and the Modernist Poet: A Tale of Two Delmores

Part3 Gender and the Left

12 Bohemian Bolsheviks After World WarII: A Minority Within a Minority

13 Sanora Babb in Her Time and Ours

14 ‘Sexing the Left: Interview with Alan M.Wald,’ by William J.Maxwell

15 Wheelwright and His Kind

16 Motley’s Men: The Queer Haunting of We Fished All Night

17 The Trotskyist Time Forgot: The Permanent Rebellion of Nicolas Calas

18 The Red and the Queer

Part4 Race and Class

19 The Marxist Imagination of Theodore Ward

(September15, 1902–May8, 1983)

20 Race and the Logic of Capital

21 Protesting the Protest Novel: Richard Wright’s The Man Who Lived Underground

22 The Black Internationalism of William Gardner Smith

23 Blood on the Forge: A Masterful Proletarian Novel

24 From ‘Triple Oppression’ to ‘Freedom Dreams’

Part5 Commitment

25 ‘A Seemingly Incongruous Alliance’: Bryan Palmer, Revolutionary Teamsters

26 Trotsky: Between the Power and the Dream

27 Fascinating Antifascism: Enzo Traverso’s Fire and Blood

28 A Theater for the Poor: Cleveland and SDS/ERAP in the Mid-1960s

29 Gramsci’s Gift

30 H.Chandler Davis, a Lifelong Radical and a Moral Touchstone for the Left

31 The Straight and the Crooked: BDS Versus Settler-Colonialism

Part6 The Radical Vision

32 Riddle Me This, Comrade: 100 Years of US Communism

33 Protest, Passion, Politics

34 Reaching for Revolution

35 The Present of Future Things

36 Astonished by the Present: The Impatient Life of Daniel Bensäid

37 Missives for the Future: Michael Löwy’s Close Encounters with the US Left

Bibliography

Index

Über Autor(innen)

Alan M. Wald, H. Chandler Davis Collegiate Professor Emeritus at the University of Michigan, 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).