The Power of Political Art

The 1930s Literary Left Reconsidered

By Robert Shulman

The Power of Political Art

352 pp., 6.125 x 9.25, notes, index

  • Paperback ISBN: 978-0-8078-4853-1
    Published: July 2000

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During the 1930s, radical young writers, artists, and critics associated with the Communist Party animated a cultural dialogue that was one of the most stimulating in American history. With the dawning of the Cold War, however, much of their work fell out of favor, dismissed as dogmatic and un-American and disparaged as aesthetically and imaginatively deficient. Urging a reexamination of the literature and political culture of the 1930s Left, Robert Shulman explores the careers and creative work of five of the most talented writers of this group: Meridel Le Sueur, Josephine Herbst, Richard Wright, Muriel Rukeyser, and Langston Hughes. He shows persuasively that their political art retains the power to engage and challenge contemporary readers.

Shulman fuses close readings with a synthesizing concern for language, politics, and history to illuminate the art of his five writers, calling attention to their prose rhythms, imagery, and linguistic and formal innovations. In reclaiming their place at the forefront of artistic creativity in 1930s America, he demonstrates that these writers' individual voices were amplified by the radical dialogue of which they were part.

About the Author

Robert Shulman is professor of English and American studies at the University of Washington. He is author of Social Criticism and Nineteenth-Century American Fictions.
For more information about Robert Shulman, visit the Author Page.

Reviews

"Shulman does valuable work in emphasizing the range and vitality of the 1930s literary left. . . . A useful addition to critical efforts to re-evaluate the writings of the red decade."--Journal of American Studies

"This study forces new attention to the writings by major figures on the US political Left. . . . The volume is superbly and thoroughly annotated, and the author's use of primary texts is ample and persuasive enough even for those making a first visit to the writers discussed."--Choice

"[An] elegantly conceived and engaging study. . . . Because it uncovers forgotten texts by canonical and lesser-known writers, this book offers an important corrective to U.S. literary history in this century."--Library Journal

"Shulman persuasively demonstrates that, by the very standards the anticommunist critics themselves have set, many texts of 1930s literary radicalism have been unfairly excluded from the canon. His close readings show that, in terms of such presumably 'canonical' standards as complexity, irony, and nuance, Depression-era left-wing writers produced first-rate works of literature. Shulman thus crucially contributes to current reassessments of 1930s proletarian literature by squarely addressing issues of 'quality' at times skirted in the scholarship on this body of texts."--Barbara Foley, Rutgers University-Newark

"The Power of Political Art generously lives up to its title. It reads the works of five 'left' writers of the 1930s as they deserve to be read, as creative artists, artists of power and distinction. Robert Shulman's splendidly lucid and cogent readings are a boon to readers old and new of these once neglected figures from America's 'radical' decade. The book will be a much appreciated companion in many a classroom."--Alan Trachtenberg, Yale University