Suchergebnisse

A characterization of the American proletarian novel of the 1930's, based upon W. B. Rideout's The Radical Novel in in the United States, 1900-1954. Some of the works of I. K. Friedman, Upton Sinclair, Jack London, Robert Cantwell & others are reviewed in tracing & contrasting the emphases of the Socialist & the proletarian novel. In the latter the Mc has ceased to present itself as the intelligent guide to a better society, the faith in parliamentary change is gone, & a coming struggle for power is predicted. The strike & the conversion to the proletarian cause are the most common themes of the proletarian novel, as they were of the earlier Socialist novel. In most cases the novels end in violence & defeat for the workers, whereas actually labor scored one success after the other in the depression yrs. Such as it was, the proletarian novel flourished in the first half of the depression decade & dwindled away during the later Popular Front days. The most intelligent proletarian novelists did not entirely believe that America had a proletariat - a uniform Lc with a collective will & the capacity for concerted action. Rideout defines as `radical' any novel that advocates that the system be fundamentally changed. This leads him into an arbitrariness of choice which forces him to accept, on his own grounds, pretty much the Communist dogmas on what is radical & what is not. J. A. Fishman.