Exiles from a Future Time - by Alan M Wald (Paperback)

About the Book

Exiles from a Future Time: The Forging of the Mid-Twentieth-Century Literary Left

Book Synopsis

With this book, Alan Wald launches a bold and passionate account of the U.S. Literary Left from the 1920s through the 1960s. Exiles from a Future Time, the first volume of a trilogy, focuses on the forging of a Communist-led literary tradition in the 1930s. Exploring writers' intimate lives and heartfelt political commitments, Wald draws on original research in scores of archives and personal collections of papers; correspondence and interviews with hundreds of writers and their friends and families; and a treasure trove of unpublished memoirs, fiction, and poetry.

In fashioning a "humanscape" of the Literary Left, Wald not only reassesses acclaimed authors but also returns to memory dozens of forgotten, talented writers. The authors range from the familiar Mike Gold, Langston Hughes, and Muriel Rukeyser to William Attaway, John Malcolm Brinnin, Stanley Burnshaw, Joy Davidman, Sol Funaroff, Joseph Freeman, Alfred Hayes, Eugene Clay Holmes, V. J. Jerome, Ruth Lechlitner, and Frances Winwar.

Focusing on the formation of the tradition and the organization of the Cultural Left, Wald investigates the "elective affinity" of its avant-garde poets, the "Afro-cosmopolitanism" of its Black radical literary movement, and the uneasy negotiation between feminist concerns and class identity among its women writers.

Review Quotes

This is a fascinating, perhaps even magisterial record of the complex achievement of those many American writers who gallantly dared to imagine a world free of reckless capitalism and its attendant social plagues. (Arnold Rampersad, author of "The Life of Langston Hughes")

Alan Wald demolishes the myth of a cultural commissar forcing radical writers to follow Moscow's artistic line. In its place, he offers a fascinating portrayal of a group of gifted left-wing poets and novelists pursuing their own intensely personal literary and political trajectories. (Ellen Schrecker, author of "Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America")

Wald's study emphasizes biography in order to illumine the connection between political convictions and literary art. The result blends literary scholarship and oral history. . . . Valuable for assessing the contributions of numerous individual writers. ("Library Journal")