American Night : The Literary Left in the Era of the Cold War

American Night, The Final Volume Of An Unprecedented Trilogy, Brings Alan Wald's Multigenerational History Of Communist Writers To A Poignant Climax. Using New Research To Explore The Intimate Lives Of Novelists, Poets, And Critics During The Cold War, Wald Reveals A Radical Community Longing For The Rebirth Of The Social Vision Of The 1930s And Struggling With A Loss Of Moral Certainty As The Communist Worldview Was Being Called Into Question. The Resulting Literature, Wald Shows, Is A Haunting Record Of Fracture And Struggle Linked By Common Structures Of Feeling, Ones More Suggestive Of The Negative Dialectics Of Theodor Adorno Than The Traditional Social Realism Of The Left. Establishing New Points Of Contact Among Kenneth Fearing, Ann Petry, Alexander Saxton, Richard Wright, Jo Sinclair, Thomas Mcgrath, And Carlos Bulosan, Wald Argues That These Writers Were In Dialogue With Psychoanalysis, Existentialism, And Postwar Modernism, Often Generating Moods Of Piercing Emotional Acuity And Cosmic Dissent. He Also Recounts The Contributions Of Lesser Known Cultural Workers, With A Unique Accent On Gays And Lesbians, Secular Jews, And People Of Color. The Vexing Ambiguities Of An Era Wald Labels Late Antifascism Serve To Frame An Impressive Collective Biography. Preface -- Introduction Late Antifascism -- Chapter 1. Postwar -- The Culture Wars Of Kenneth Fearing -- The Mask Of Irony -- Rage Against The Machine -- Study In Fundamentals -- The Virtue Of Intentions -- Chapter 2. Scenes From A Class Struggle -- Somewhere Beyond Proletarianism -- The Intellectual Under Fire -- The Making Of Zhdanovists -- Grand Illusions -- Humboldt's Gift -- Chapter 3. The Cult Of Reason -- Coming Home -- After The Popular Front -- The Sublime Saxton -- The Ruins Of Memory -- Gender And The Crisis Of Form -- Chapter 4. The Homintem Reconsidered -- Butterfly Friends -- The Closeted Past -- The Double Life Of Harry Dana -- Tough Guys -- Mama's Boys -- Chapter 5. Lonely Crusaders, Part I -- The Great Outsider -- I Tried To Be A Communist -- Personal History -- American Pages -- The Radical Stranger -- Chapter 6. Lonely Crusaders, Part Ii -- Melville In Old Saybrook -- Contingencies Of Gender -- The Fog -- The Etiology Of Mourning -- Red, Black, And Gay -- Exile And Its Discontents -- Chapter 7. Jews Without Judaism -- Deconversion And Disavowal -- Friends Of The Unconscious -- Analytical Realism -- The Book Of Memory -- A Novel Of Emotions -- Chapter 8. Off Modernity's Grid -- The Strange Career Of People's Poetry -- Imaginary Friends -- Memories Of The Future -- Socialist Surrealism -- Auden In Brooklyn -- Conclusion The Sense Of An Ending -- The Afterlife Of Literary Communism -- The Indeterminacy Of Art -- The Presence Of An Absence -- A Note On Methodology -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index. Alan M. Wald. Includes Bibliographical References And Index.