The Radical Novel Reconsidered -- the End of a Series?

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>Date: Fri, 02 Jun 2000 14:32:20 -0400
>From: alan wald <awald at umich.edu>
>Reply-To: awald at umich.edu
>To: List for Radical Caucus of the MLA <radcaucus at furrg.montclair.edu>,
>        mlg <mlg-ics+ at andrew.cmu.edu>
>Subject: End of a Series??
>
>To:  All teachers of courses in contemporary U.S. culture, literature,
>history, and politics, engaged in issue of class, gender, race,
>ethnicity, Marxism, and social commitment
>
>From:  Alan Wald, Series Editor, The Radical Novel Reconsidered,
>University of Illinois Press, 6/1/2000
>
>Please circulate to anyone who may be intersted.
>
>
>END OF A SERIES??
>
>As some of you may know, the University of Illinois Press has been
>publishing a PAPERBACK series called The Radical Novel Reconsidered
>since 1995, at the rate of about two books a year.  Around 1993, I was
>asked by then-Director Richard Wentworth to edit the  series on a
>voluntary basis.  This capacity has meant nominating titles (the actual
>selection is made by the staff and the board of U. of Illinois Press),
>soliciting people to write Introductions, reviewing the Introductions
>(along with anonymous readers chosen by the Press), and assisting in
>various kinds of negotiations, publicity, solicitation of reviews, and
>so forth.
>
>The goal of the series is to make available, in attractive paperback
>form, a range of lesser-known out of print radical novels from the
>1920s through the 1950s.  Each volume has a biographical and critical
>introduction by a committed scholar that makes the book user-friendly
>for undergraduate classes as well as for specialists.  My personal
>priorities have been to feature living writers of the Old Left
>generation; women writers and writers of color; and writers from diverse
>regions who employ sundry literary strategies. Of course, most of these
>writers were once associated with the Communist movement, so the
>republication of the novels is a kind of "historical correction" to the
>institutionalized blacklisting that has occurred.  Please note that I
>never had the view that the books should be chosen to represent the
>"best" fiction produced by the Left; I feel that the question of the
>"best" is one that will only be determined, if it ever can be, after
>large numbers of us have had a chance to read and compare this huge body
>of neglected texts.
>
>In my opinion, the project, which has so far produced twelve volumes
>(the last two are in press), has been 90% successful.  All but one
>novelist published was connected with the much-maligned Old (CP) Left,
>and  half of the authors were alive at the time we began to bring their
>books to publication (one died just before, and several died just
>after).  The editions are attractive, and the Introductions are of
>exceptionally high quality, quite often containing information otherwise
>unavailable--which is certainly the case with the detailed biographical
>portraits of Grace Lumpkin, Phillip Bonosky, Alfred Maund, aqnd Ira
>Wolfert,  and the personal memoir by Alexander Saxton.  Scholars who
>prepared these introductions include some of the foremost specialists in
>the field-- Barbara Foley, Constance Coiner, Gay Wilentz, Alan Filreis,
>Doug Wixson, Michael Szalay, Paul Buhle, Suzanne Sowinska, and Ann
>Rasmussen.
>
>The books themselves cover a wide range of settings and employ diverse
>strategies.  Alexander Saxton's THE GREAT MIDLAND treats a love triangle
>among Communist activists in Chicago.  Ira Wolfert's TUCKER'S PEOPLE
>depicts Jewish gangsters in NYC. Myra Page's MOSCOW YANKEE describes US
>radicals in the USSR.  John Sanford's THE PEOPLE FROM HEAVEN dramatizes
>Black resistance to racism in upstate New York. Alfred Maund's THE BIG
>BOXCAR and Grace Lumpkin's TO MAKE MY BREAD  focus on racism in the deep
>South. Abraham Polonsky ‘s THE WORLD ABOVE  narrates the story of a
>Marxist psychologist at the onset of the Cold War. Phillip Bonosky's
>BURNING VALLEY engages the issues of race and ethnicity among miners of
>Western Pennsylvania. Jack Conroy's A WORLD TO WIN and Jack Balch's
>LAMPOSTS AT NOON (in press) provide the only novelistic portraits of
>radical writers employed on the Federal Writers Project in the
>mid-West.
>
>From what I can tell, the publicity for the novels has been good in
>terms of well-crafted ads in appropriate scholarly journals.  Reviews
>appeared mainly in Left-wing and mainstream publications, although not
>in academic journals such as AQ, AL, etc.
>
>I think that the major complaint from radical teachers has been from
>people who have approached me with perfectly good proposals for
>novels--only to find that over 100 had previously been suggested, and
>that the rate of two per year could mean an awfully long wait.
>Moreover, from the outset, there was a surfeit of proposals for books by
>white male authors so that further suggestions for such titles could not
>be placed at the top of the list.
>
>In my own assessment, the major failure of the series has been the
>non-appearance of the novels by writers of color, but this is not the
>fault of the press.  Contracts were made out for three African American
>novels and efforts were taken to secure a reproducible edition of one
>Asian American work.  Yet  various obstacles occurred in each case,
>including one instance of relatives intervening to block publication in
>the hope of obtaining more money from a commercial publisher.
>
>Unfortunately, sales in the recent period have dropped off
>considerably.  Several of the first books sold over a thousand copies,
>which is the acceptable bottom line for Illinois,  and two even sold
>several thousand (Lumpkin, Yezierska).  But all the recent ones have
>been selling less than 500, which the University of Illinois Press
>judges to be far too few to sustain the series.  Understandably, such
>sales figures have convinced the new director of the press, Willis
>Regier, that the series may have peaked, even though my opinion is that
>the recent novels are among the most important and the best is yet to
>come. I also see many signs of a dramatic growth of working-class
>cultural studies around the country, and feel that it is only a matter
>of time before the relevance of the radical novels series is registered
>in this milieu.
>
>Therefore, the series is scheduled to be reviewed by Regier in January
>2001.  If the last group of novels have not sold over 1000 copies each
>by that time, the series will almost certainly be canceled.  If sales
>pick up, there is a chance it will be renewed for another period.
>
>I think that the press is aware that many of the books are of
>extraordinarily high quality and have already made a unique contribution
>to a fuller recovery of US culture.  (Almost all the reviews have been
>enthusiastic along these lines.)  However, the majority of the Illinois
>Press staff seems to have reached the conclusion that a Radical Novel
>series is simply not viable. The reason is that some degree of classroom
>adoption is necessary for decent sales, and such adoptions for this
>series have been sporadic.  The staff holds that the reason for the lack
>of adoptions is that few professors will actually teach an entire course
>on The Radical Novel;  and, when a radical novel is used in a
>"regular" course, the teacher will order a standard radical novel (Dos
>Passos, Steinbeck, Wright) which will of course be available at a
>cheaper price than the Illinois series.
>
>This assessment by the Press is not based on any national survey, but
>does have a certain common sense appeal. As for myself, I am uncertain
>as to its accuracy. I find that the novels in the series fit into a wide
>range of my courses (although all my courses emphasize class, gender and
>race, and usually "commitment"),  and I have found myself continually
>trying out new ones rather than relying on the repetition of any
>standard one.  Tim Libretti, at Northeastern Illinois University, tells
>me that he teaches a standard US literature course where he compares the
>series novel  SALOME OF THE TENEMENTS to THE GREAT GATSBY.
>
>I also think that it would be a shame for this series to die--and I
>suspect that, after it is gone, it will be sorely missed.  There are
>scores of novels, with prospective authors of Introductions, that have a
>chance of appearing in coming years:  William Attaway's LET ME BREATHE
>THUNDER, Edwin Lanham's THE STRICKLANDS, Willard Motley's WE FISHED ALL
>NIGHT, Carolyn Slade's THE STERILE SUN, Daniel Fuchs' LOW COMPANY, Arna
>Bontemp's DRUMS AT DUSK, Frank London Brown's TRUMBULL PARK, and so
>forth.  The series might also  branch out to include science fiction,
>detective fiction, popular fiction, etc., by radicals.  Although a lot
>of reprinting is going on by various presses, it is rare to see novels
>of this kind selected; and, when they are, it is even rarer to see the
>kinds of comprehensive Introductions that Illinois has been willing to
>publish.
>
>Yet the series will surely die if there isn't some kind of support
>from the community of committed scholars for whom the series was partly
>intended as a means of enhancing the classroom experience with the
>imaginative achievements of others who tried to change the world.  All
>it would take is a rather modest number of course adoptions to bring the
>sales of the last group of novels up above 1000 each.  And the selection
>of texts fits almost every course concern.  (Moreover, the press has
>been liberal about sending out complimentary examination copies in
>response to requests from faculty.)
>
>So, if you want to see the series continue, and have been thinking
>about using one or more novels in a course at some point, consider
>making a course adoption for this fall.  Naturally, if you feel strongly
>about the importance of the series, you can give your reasons in a
>friendly letter to the press (c/o Richard Wentworth, University of
>Illinois Press, 1325 S. Oak St., Champaign, Illinois 61820).
>
>LIST OF TITLES
>Anzia Yezierska, SALOME OF THE TENEMENTS (1923); introduction by Gay
>Wilentz
>
>John Sanford, THE POEPLE FROM HEAVEN (1943); introduction by Alan Wald.
>
>Myra Page, MOSCOW YANKEE (1935);  introduction by Barbara Foley
>
>Grace Lumpkin, TO MAKE MY BREAD (1932);  introduction by Suzanne
>Sowinska
>
>Josephine Herbst, PITY IS NOT ENOUGH (1933); introduction by Mary Ann
>Rasmussen
>
>Alfred Maund, THE BIG BOXCAR (1957);  introduction by Alan Wald
>
>Phillip Bonosky, BURNING VALLEY (1953);  introduction by Alan Wald
>
>Alexander Saxton, THE GREAT MIDLAND (1948);  introduction by Constance
>Coiner
>
>Ira Wolfert, TUCKER’S PEOPLE (1943); introduction by Alan Filreis.
>
>Abraham Polonsky, THE WORLD ABOVE (1951); introduction by Paul Buhle and
>Dave Wagner
>
>IN PRESS:  Jack Conroy, A WORLD TO WIN; introduction by Douglas Wixson,
>and  Jack Balch, LAMPS AT HIGH NOON; introduction by Michael Szalay
>
>
>--
>******************************************************
>Alan Wald, Dept. of English, 3271 Angell Hall, University of Michigan,
>Ann Arbor, Mi. 48109   tel:  734-995-1499
>e-mail:  awald at umich.edu
>******************************************************

At 12:06 PM -0400 6/5/00, alan wald wrote:
>Date: Mon, 05 Jun 2000 12:06:13 -0400
>From: alan wald <awald at umich.edu>
>Reply-To: awald at umich.edu
>To: Barbara Foley <bfoley at andromeda.rutgers.edu>
>CC: mlg-ics at andrew.cmu.edu
>Subject: Radical Novel Website
>
>Grover suggested that I send out the address of the Radical Novel web
>page, which is really quite good & accesses useful information about
>each book:
>                        http://www.press.uillinois.edu/f96/rnr.html
>
>Also, the recent titles that have yet to sell 500 are:  The Great
>Midland, The Big Boxcar, Burning Valley, The World Above.
>--
>******************************************************
>Alan Wald, Dept. of English, 3271 Angell Hall, University of Michigan,
>Ann Arbor, Mi. 48109   tel:  734-995-1499
>e-mail:  awald at umich.edu
>******************************************************