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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Michael Pugliese <<A
href="mailto:debsian@pacbell.net">debsian@pacbell.net</A>>
wrote:<BR></FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>>Thanks, Doug [snip] I have to agree with
your to the point<BR>>review of their [Rage Against the Machine etc.]
aesthetic </FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>>akin the the worst of the 30's proletarian
novels.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2></FONT> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Which novels are we talking about here?
One problem - addressed by Foley in the book mentioned and also Alan Wald -
is that a myth of the dreadful proletarian novel, written according to the
CP's party line, has considerable influence. Yet those picking up this
story tend to run with a diluted version of what Rahv and Phillips were
saying in the 40s & 50s.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>What did happen is that New Masses
literary critics sometimes judged novels according to their 1930s 'political
correctness'. This was coincided with CPUSA cliqueishness &
nepotism in literary circles, and vicious campaigns against 'Trotskyism'.
Against this sordid background, it's no surprise that the 30s proletarian novel
was parodied. But we need evidence based on evaluating the
actual books for Doug's point to make sense (even before comparing them to
thrash bands).</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>.<BR>On a related issue: back on Fri, 10 Dec 1999
17:08:26 -0500 (EST) "Michael Hoover" <<A
href="mailto:hoov@freenet.tlh.fl.us">hoov@freenet.tlh.fl.us</A>>
in<BR>>Subject: Re: dead topix</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>went a bit far the other when he
wrote:<BR><BR>>re. sectarians, Granville Hicks, in responding to James T.
Farrell's<BR>>attack (_A Note on Literary Criticism_) on CP and *New
Masses*,<BR>>acknowledged constraining elements but suggested that
sectarianism<BR>>of Marxist (that is, party) critics was necessary response
to<BR>>aestheticism of bourgeois critics who deemed working class
experience<BR>>unsuitable for literature.</FONT></DIV>
<DIV> </DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>It's precisely the approach of Hicks and co.
that is used to support the claim, usually from right wing literary critics,
that there was a party line in literature and that proletarian novels were
written to the orders of the central committee. I took issue with this in
a book chapter published last year:</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2><BR>'The Novel as Propaganda: Revisiting the
Debate'</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>in Bertrand Taithe and Tim Thornton
(eds.),</FONT></DIV>
<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>_Propaganda: Political Rhetoric and Identity,
1300-2000_<BR>(Sutton Publishing, 1999)<BR><BR>Graham
Barnfield</FONT></DIV></BODY></HTML>