While it is not possible to list all their names, my first debt is to the graduate and undergraduate students in my seminars and lecture courses at the University of Michigan, including “Marxism and Cultural Studies,” “Writers on the Left,” “Resistance to Racism in U.S. Literature,” “The Radical Novel,” “The African-American Literary Left,” “Radical Culture Reconsidered,” “The ‘Other’ Thirties,” and “The ‘Other’ Fifties.” Several of my graduate students in the field of U.S. literary radicalism have launched their own academic careers, publishing impressive books and essays from which I have learned much, and have thus in turn become my teachers. These include Howard Brick, Robbie Lieberman, Tim Libretti, Brian Lloyd, Mark Pittenger, Paula Rabinowitz, and Zaragosa Vargas.
Another spur to my undertaking has been the appearance of a new, post-1960s generation of scholars who creatively engage the categories of race, ethnicity, and gender; accord serious treatment to mass, folk, and popular culture; and who have rethought the concepts of class and ideology on a more sophisticated plane than had radicals of earlier decades. Numerous debts to earlier, contemporary, and younger scholars will be evident in references throughout this book. Space limitations have obligated me to publish my review of recent scholarship in the field as a separate essay.*
In addition, it is no secret that the ability to carry out primary research on the scale employed in this book requires not only enormous amounts of time, but significant amounts of money to pay for travel, living expenses on the road, photographic reproduction of materials, and myriad other costs that accrue collaterally in carrying out a major research project. Therefore, I could not have completed the research for this book without generous financial support from the limited resources of my mother, Ruth Jacobs Wald, who underwrote several emergency domestic expenses that threatened to halt my work; and without the extraordinary personal assistance in family care matters provided by Dorothy and Quentin Stodola. Equally important was the willingness of my late wife, Celia, and my children, Sarah and Hannah, to give up most of our vacation time for many years. I am grateful to the American Philosophical Society for a travel grant; the Yip Harburg Foundation for research funds to study blacklisted writers; the F. O. Matthiessen Room at Harvard University for a week’s free lodging; Yale University for a one-month visiting fellowship at the Beinecke Library; the Michigan Humanities Fellowship Program for one term of release time in the winter of 1996; the University of Michigan Institute for the Humanities for a faculty fellowship in 1997–98; the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation for a fellowship in 1999–2000; and several units of the University of Michigan for funds which allowed me to augment attendance at scholarly conferences with a few additional days of research. The University of Michigan English Department, Undergraduate Research Opportunity Program, and Institute for the Humanities variously provided support for student assistants to help with library errands and the transcription of tape-recorded interviews and handwritten letters. The office of the Vice President for Research (OVPR) at the University of Michigan provided a grant to assist with the cost of obtaining photographs and permission to quote published work.
As I indicated in the acknowledgments of earlier books, my political views are tempered by my activities in a variety of social movements, and through a fifteen-year association with the journal Against the Current and its sponsoring organization, Solidarity. The grievous loss of renowned Marxist Ernest Mandel, who died in 1995, deprived me of challenging criticism from the individual who taught me the most about contemporary socialist theory and practice. Fortunately, the pages of International Viewpoint, New Left Review, Monthly Review, Z Magazine, New Politics, Science & Society, and many other similar publications continue to keep alive the spirit of creative, liberatory, and combative socialism.
In Exiles from a Future Time, I cite materials from the following libraries and institutional collections, and I am grateful for assistance and in some instances for permission to quote from letters and manuscripts: George Arents Research Library, Syracuse University; Homer Babbidge Library, Storrs, Connecticut; Beinecke Library, Yale University; Butler Library, Columbia University; FBI Reading Room (for the FBI files of Nelson Algren, Michael Gold, Kenneth Fearing, Josephine Herbst, John Herrmann, F. O. Matthiessen, Irwin Shaw, and Richard Wright); Hoover Institution, Stanford University; Huntington Library, Huntington Beach, California; Labadie Collection, University of Michigan; Library of Social History, Los Angeles; Moorland Spingarn Research Center, Howard University; Newberry Library, Chicago; New York Public Library; Northwestern University Library; Oral History Collection (for the oral histories of Guy Endore and Albert Maltz), University of California, Los Angeles; University of Oregon Library; Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas; Research Library, University of California, Los Angeles; Research Library, Indiana University, Bloomington; Research Library, Southern Illinois University; Research Library, University of Wisconsin; the Schomburg Center for the Study of Black Culture; the State Historical Society of Wisconsin; Sterling Library, Yale University; Tamiment Library, New York University; Charles Patterson Van Pelt Library, University of Pennsylvania; and the Marion E. Wade Collection, Wheaton College. The following individuals gave me access to material from their private collections: Daniel Aaron, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Nathan Adler, Marin County, California; Robert Gorham Davis and Hope Hale Davis, Cambridge, Massachusetts; Franklin Folsom, Boulder, Colorado; Maurice Isserman, Clinton, New York; and Aaron Kramer, Long Island, New York.
For material used in this volume, the following people participated in personal interviews of varying degrees of formality, some of them tape-recorded: Nathan Adler, Herbert Aptheker, Sanora Babb, Michael Blankfort, Philip Bonosky, Lloyd Brown, Stanley Burnshaw, Malcolm Cowley, Hope Hale Davis, Robert Gorham Davis, Josephine Hayes Dean, Mary Elting, Hy Fireman, Angel Flores, Franklin Folsom, Marcia Folsom, Sender Garlin, Marcia Endore Goodman, Elizabeth Granich, Gert Granich, Nick Granich, Horace Gregory, Gil Green, Louis Harap, Gertrude Hayes, Dorothy Healey, Rose Hoffman, Leo Hurwitz, Esther Jackson, James Jackson, Paul Jarrico, Howard Johnson, Matthew Josephson, Aaron Kramer, Bobby Lees, Meridel Le Sueur, Alice McGrath, A. B. Magil, Jerre Mangione, David Montgomery, Edward Newhouse, Tillie Olsen, Carl Rakosi, Annette Rubinstein, Muriel Rukeyser, William Rukeyser, Eva Russo, John Sanford, Morris U. Schappes, Wilma Shore, Janet Sillen, Adelaide Walker, Saul Wellman, Tiba Willner, and Marya Zaturenska.
The following people shared information with me, usually through correspondence (including email) and phone conversations: Bill Bailey, Lee Baxandall, Dan Bessie, James Bloom, Melba Boyd, Ernie Brill, Alex Buchman, Paul Buhle, Art Casciato, Larry Ceplair, Robert Chrisman, Constance Coiner, Jack Conroy, Bill Costley, John Crawford, Robert Cruden, Sam D’Arcy, Peggy Dennis, Ben Dobbs, Bill Doyle, Dorothy Doyle, Joe Doyle, Michel Fabre, Milt Felsen, Henry Ferreni, Alan Filreis, Fred Fine, Barbara Foley, Eric Foner, Moe Foner, Marvin Gettleman, Dan Georgakas, Alan Golding, Max Gordon, Reuben Granich, Frances Gray, Archie Green, Trevor Griffiths, Albert Halper, Elaine Harger, Granville Hicks, Eric Homberger, Peter Hyun, Edith Jenkins, Chris Johnson, Richard Kalar, Robin Kelley, Harvey Klehr, Herb Kline, Elinor Langer, Andrew Lee, Robbie Leiberman, Jerry Lembke, James Lerner, Elsie Levitan, Minna Lieber, Townsend Luddington, Esther McCoy, John McDonald, Ben Maddow, Harry Mahoney, Anouar Majid, Bill Maxwell, James Miller, Charles Miller, Paul Mishler, Jessica Mitford, Herbert Mitgang, Cary Nelson, Steve Nelson, Mark Nichols, Victor Paananen, Carl Padover, Howard Parsons, David Peck, Ruth Pinkson, Patrick M. Quinn, William Reuben, Mary Ann Rasmussen, Dolly Rauh, Abe Ravitz, T. V. Reed, Sam Roberts, Lester Rodney, M. L. Rosenthal, John Schultz, Mimi Schwartz, Pete Seeger, Sol Segal, Per Seyersted, Harry Shachter, Myron Sharpe, Mike Sharple, Alice Shugars, Paul Siegal, Layle Silbert, Dave Smith, Judith Smith, Morton Sobel, Clare Spark, Beverly Spector, Judy Spector, Jacquilene Steiner, Fred Stern, Jon Christian Suggs, Claude Summers, Loretta Szeliga, Shelley Tenzer, Vic Teich, Toby Terrar, Rachel Tilsen, Helen Travis, Joseph Vogel, Jerry Warwin, Seama Weatherwax, Tom Weatherwax, Susan Weissman, Hilda Wenner, Fred White-head, David Williams, Leon Wofsy, Ella Wolfe, Richard Wormser, Richard Yarborough, and Arthur Zipser.
The following provided various kinds of technical assistance and offered suggestions about the content of the book: Daniel Aaron, Marvin Gettleman, Doris Gold, Murray Goldberg, John Gonzalez, Ernie Goodman, Tim Hall, Glenn Jenkins, Carol Jochowitz, Walter Kalaidjian, Elissa Karg, Sharon Krauss, Elinor Langor, Mike Parker, Paula Rabinowitz, Robert Ryley, Ellen Schrecker, Justin Schwartz, Zaragosa Vargas, Edward Weber, and Douglas Wixson.
This is the third book that I have published with the University of North Carolina Press. The fact that I keep returning to UNC Press is evidence of the high esteem I have for the competency of its entire staff. I am grateful, also, to the two anonymous readers for the Press and to proofreader Jessica K. Printz.
Portions of the manuscript-in-progress were presented orally before several meetings of the American Studies Association, the Modern Languages Association, and the Institute for the Study of Culture and Society of the Marxist Literary Group. They were also presented at the 1993 National Poetry Foundation conference on “Poets of the Thirties”; the 1996 Paris Conference on “African-American Music in Europe”; the 1996 Tag Lecture at East Carolina University; the English Department and Program in Jewish Studies at UCLA; the Institute for the Study of Ideas and Society at the University of California at Riverside; and the 1993 Liverpool Conference on “Africa in the Americas.” I appreciate the critical comments and suggestions from fellow panelists and audience participants on those occasions. In addition, a section of chapter 3 appeared in a different form as “The Many Lives of Meridel Le Sueur” in Monthly Review 49, no. 4 (September 1977); I am grateful to Monthly Review for permission to republish.
Draft sections of the manuscript were critically read by Howard Brick, Laurence Goldstein, Jean Hauptman, A. B. Magil, Patrick M. Quinn, Christopher Phelps, and Paula Rabinowitz. My friend Arlene Keizer, a devoted scholar and poet in her own right, endured nearly two years of my talking incessantly about numerous issues in the research, writing, and editorial preparation of the book. None of these individuals, nor anyone else who was interviewed or who rendered assistance, is in any way liable for the opinions or judgments expressed in this book.
* See “Revising the Barricades: Scholarship about the U.S. Cultural Left in the Post-Cold War Era,” Working Papers Series in Cultural Studies, Ethnicity, and Race Relations, no. 11 (2000), published by the Department of Comparative American Cultures, Washington State University, Pullman, Washington.