Toward a Workers\u27 America: the Theory and Practice of the American Proletarian Novel, Based Upon Four Selected Works (original) (raw)

This dissertation examines the background of that movement in terms of its roots in both the nineteenth century theory of the writer in a democracy propounded by Emerson and Whitman and the amalgam of radicalism and Bohemianism that flourished especially in the salons and flats of Greenwich Village im mediately before and after World War I. It also analyzes the more immediate causes of twenties discontent with bourgeois America and of early Depression conditions which drove writ ers to the Left. This study also collates the theoretical criticism about the Proletarian writer and the Proletarian novel that appeared in such Leftist journals as New M asses, Modern Quarterly, and Partisan Review from the late twenties, when it first began to coalesce into a revolutionary sensi bility, until the time of the First American Writers' Congress in April of 1935. The Proletarian literary movement reached a pinnacle at that moment. Soon afterward, forces within the movement in America as well as the shift in Comintern policy from the militant Third Period stance to the more ecumenical position of the Popular Front policy combined to deflect and weaken the drive for the creation of an American Proletarian literature. This study treats four representative Proletarian novels: Michael Gold's Jews Without M o n e y , Jack Conroy's The Disin herited, Robert Cantwell's The Land of Plenty, and James T. Farrell's Studs Lonigan. It considers them in terms of the rhetorical use of fiction in the service of a political end-v Co describe aspects of American life as revealing the class struggle and to move readers to revolutionary class-conscious ness. The novels are also examined in light of the prescrip tions of Leftist critical theory, to show the variety of approaches attempted according to different novelists' con ceptions of their literary and political tasks. This study concludes that there is a good deal of variety in the Proletarian novel, both as to literary practice and achievement, contrary to the general critical opinion that the politically-motivated fiction of the thirties is a uniform lump of indistinguishable propagandistic tracts. It also at tempts to place the radical sensibility of the thirties and the Proletarian novel back into the context of the American literary tradition, to argue that it was more broadly human istic in its emphases than pointedly Marxian and thus an in tegral part of that tradition and not the result of foreign influences at work during a time of national instability. vi 2 Reed Clubs were founded to encourage and develop revo lutionary writers. Critical discussion of literature from the Leftist point of view spread to such liberal maga zines as The New Republic and The Nation. New Leftist journals for the promulgation of Marxist literary theory and the publication of new Proletarian writers appeared. Some seventy Proletarian novels were published, and in general, American letters saw a new attention given to the instrumental value of literature. The culmination of the Proletarian literary movement was the First American Writers' Congress, held in New York in April, 1935, under the auspices of the American Communist Party. This meeting attracted not just party members but prominent literary men from across the whole Leftist spec trum. Its widespread publicity and open atmosphere indicate the respectability Marxism had attained by 1935. However, at the same time as Marxism in literature was reaching the moment of its most widespread influence and interest in America, other events, together with the very broadening of the Leftist movement, were combining to effect the reversal of the movement's popular appeal. Faced with the growing threat of Fascism in Spain and Germany in the spring of 1935, the Soviet Communist Party decided to shift emphasis from the promotion of the international proletarian revolution to the formation of a united front against Fascism and imperi alistic war. This Popular Front policy greatly broadened the criteria for judging "acceptable" political positions; made of the literature of the thirties in terms of its avowed ly political aims. This dissertation seeks to at least par tially fill that void. My critical purpose will be primarily descriptive, not interpretive or explanatory. Art was a wea pon in the class struggle, and the Proletarian novel was to promote the Revolution. There were, of course, several means to this general end, and no one believed that reading a Pro letarian novel would cause a worker Immediately to take up arms and revolt. But there did exist on the literary Left a common belief in the service of literature to purposes beyond aesthetic ends. And in this belief the writers and critics in the Leftist literary movement, for a brief period anyway, stood counter to the prevailing opinion of modern literary theory-dating from Pater in England and James in Araericathat literature must be basically aesthetic in nature. 12 stories, poems, cartoons, and political and social satire of an irreverent nature in the spirit of preWar Bohemianism and Socialism. After the demise of The Masses, The Liberator, under the editorship of Eastman and Dell, succeeded as the leading voice of the American Left in literary matters, al though its format included more social and political material than The Masses. In financial trouble in 1922, the editors, who now included Michael Gold, turned the magazine over to the Communist Party, which continued to publish it for sev eral years. However, when the magazine became an official party organ, its previous independent artistic orientation was lost, along with its peculiar vitality, leaving emerging artists of radical persuasion without a forum for the publi cation of their work. Furthermore, as control of The Liberator passed into the hands of political functionaries, the radical literary men who had composed the editorial staff began to drift away. But still desirous of publishing a radical magazine of literary orientation after the model of the original Mass e s , a group of radical artist-intellectuals approached the Garland Fund in 1925 with a proposal for a new non-partisan radical magazine. After some hesitation on the part of the Fund's administrators, who wanted the spon sors of the new magazine to match fifty percent of the Gar land Fund's grant, and after a shuffle of editors, The New Masses was born in early 1926 under the joint editorship of Mike Gold and Joseph Freeman. For the next few years, New Masses attempted a sort of radical cosmopolitanism, V. F. Calverton, "For a New Critical Manifesto," Modern Quarterly. 4 (1927), 7.