The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn The Future Work Of Howard Fast I may be wrong, but it seems to me that Howard Fast's desertion of the Communist party has exceptional significance. In the first...
...I have two reasons for thinking that Howard Fast's recent "disassociation" may have a happier result...
...Whether he can do that remains to be seen...
...Fast's novels have not been as deeply perverted by the class view of society as have those of the regular school of "proletarian'* authors...
...Fast's other works from his orthodoxy...
...He professes not to be ashamed of what he has done...
...Whenever I have read a book of his, I have felt sorry that he was a Communist and have cherished the hope that he would cut loose from that crippling dogmatism...
...Citizen Tom Paine seems to me to have suffered more than Mr...
...But in books like The Last Frontier the author is writing good history in a way which is practically unperverted by dogma...
...In his novels, you can often go on for page after page —sometimes for whole chapters— and forget that you are reading the work of a man who is—or was—the darling of the Daily Worker...
...I am conscious, of course, of the distortions which have resulted from the man's faith in Communism, but in spite of all that he has had a deep feeling for our national growth which is good and sound...
...anti-Semitism and social injustice in general...
...Our experience with reformed Communists is not too encouraging...
...In Silas Timberman, the picture ol the college students and faculty members is honest and human...
...Fast's confession has its good points...
...I should think that he would at least regret having been so long blinded to conditions in the Soviet Union which were fully and convincingly reported by American journalists...
...He was never completely Marxian...
...It has not perverted the whole work...
...He thinks of himself as a fighter against war...
...Human nature has always shone through...
...But this thing is not basic...
...A man who for fifteen years has refused to look at what was before his eyes has some explaining to do...
...The Congressional probe and Washington trial are done to the life...
...In the first place, the man really has talent...
...Instead of furnishing help in the fight against Communism, they have actually helped the Communists by furnishing them easy marks to shoot at...
...It will be fine if he can forswear being a sectarian of any sort and play his part as a good human being, a forward-looking American citizen...
...I am, of course, taking a number of things for granted...
...Negro oppression...
...Many others have sunk into the murky underworld of holier-than-thou splinter groups, where their talents are devoted to the production of theological lucubrations which nobody reads...
...My second reason for being optimistic about Howard Fast's future un-Communist (if not anti-Communist) career is the character of the statement in which he has announced his change of allegiance...
...Perhaps Howard Fast will succeed...
...It is important, in the first place, because Mr...
...Some of the most gifted writers who have left their ranks have gone over to the anti-Marxian, anti-liberal, anti-progressive, anti-intelli-genco, pro-reactionary side...
...Relatively few come out of Communism and take their place in society as normal, unscathed, untwisted human beings...
...In Sparta-cus, both the slaves and the aristocrats are pictured as real human beings with mingled good and evil traits...
...The implication is that he will continue to oppose these evils, that he will function as a reformer, a liberal...
...When I saw in the Times the other morning that this had actually happened, that Howard Fast had "disassociated" himself from the Communist party, this seemed to me an important event...
...Then, suddenly, there will jump from the page the class judgment, the Marxian quirk...
...We need writers like him who have an understanding of our history and a gift for spreading it before our young people in lively and interesting words...
...Much of his work has been in the field of American history, and because of my own interest in this area I have always read his books with exceptional attention...
...His constant effort to present the friend of Jefferson and Washington as a dirty bum seems a curiously unfortunate effect of the "proletarian" doctrine...
...In his statement to the Times, he says that Khrushchev's speech ended all that...
...In recent years there has hardly been another writer representing Communism who came near being his equal...
...It is i big jump, from Marvism to American liberalism, and few there are who have made it...
...I don't think he goes far enough...
...One of them is that this man, who has been a conspicuous Communist for fifteen years, can tear himself loose from Marxism-Leninism and write what ho sees and thinks in straightforward terms...
...Fast is still a young man and has a lot of good work before him...
...In his books there is the frequent implication that things are better in Russia than they are here...
...He definitely proclaims that he no longer considers himself a Communist...
...But, despite its shortcomings...
...It has never taken over the whole man...
...In the first place, Mr...
Vol. 40 • February 1957 • No. 8
