BEING RED [Hardcover]

Howard M. Fast (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 11, 1990

Being Red is an intimate memoir of an extraordinary time--the years Howard Fast, one of our nation's most popular authors, spent in the American Communist Party, and under the constant surveillance of the FBI. 8-page photo insert.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Fast, still astonishingly prolific and frequently bestselling at 75, was catapulted to early fame by such books as Freedom Road and Citizen Tom Paine . He joined the Communist Party in 1944, at the height of U.S.-Soviet wartime amity, and in the ensuing Cold War paranoia found his life torn apart. Though hailed overseas as a successful writer who stood against McCarthyite hysteria, his name and books became anathema at home. Here he tells the remarkable story of how, when all the major U.S. publishers backed away from his Spartacus , he brought it out himself, with only a small, courageous order from the Doubleday chain--to see it eventually become a multimillion-copy seller and a celebrated movie. Fast does not regret his 13 years of party membership, and in that is refreshingly different from the many who later sourly recanted. Critical of party leadership, dogmatism and its unswerving idealization of the Soviet Union, he nevertheless argues convincingly that most American members were compassionate people who cared deeply for their country while deploring its racism and dog-eat-dog ethics; the idea that they could be, or wanted to be, a threat to national security is ludicrous to him. Fast describes this passage in his life like the master storyteller he is, and his insights into the failure of American communism make his book valuable as well as highly entertaining.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

Passionately, artlessly, and with winning personal candor, Fast tells of his lower-class Bronx childhood, World War II work for Voice of America, disillusioning journalistic travels in the Third World, and activities in the Communist Party, to which he remained doggedly loyal until 1957. The book offers an invaluable account of a spirited fighter for the underdog whose prolific writing career was early caught between the paranoid cruelty of his own government and the ideological rigidity of the Communist leadership. While the basic outlines of his story are familiar, the vivid details are immensely revealing. Indispensable to the growing body of literature on America's terrifying postwar Red Scare. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 7/1/90.
- Charles C. Nash, Nevada, Mo.
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 8 pages
• Publisher: Houghton Mifflin; First Edition edition (November 11, 1990)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0395551307
• ISBN-13: 978-0395551301
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 2.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #563,761 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars AN AMERICAN COMMUNIST CADRE TELLS THE TALE OF THE RED SCARE, October 19, 2006

By 

Alfred Johnson (boston, ma) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Being Red: A Memoir (Paperback)

I have always been intrigued by the American Communist Party's ability up until the period of the "red scare" of the late 1940's and the 1950's to draw to and recruit a relatively large number of free-lance intellectuals and cultural workers. Whether the party could keep them over the long haul is a separate question. However, if one was to draw up a Who's Who of those members of the American intelligentsia who passed through the party's orbit during the first half of the 20th century one would find numbers far greater than would be indicated by the party's actual influence in American politics. The novelist Howard Fast in his memoir of his decade long membership in the American Communist Party is highly representative of that trend. Or, at least of the trend that could rationally explain their experience without either foaming at the mouth or running to the nearest government law enforcement agency.

The tale Mr. Fast has to tell is informative and, except for the utter poverty of his childhood and the early loss of his mother, not atypical of the urban children of immigrants in general and New York Jewish youth in particular who came of age between World War I and II and joined the party. The key events that drove many into the party's orbit were the Depression, the rise of Nazism in Europe and the hope that Soviet Union could provide a model for a socialist future. Those events also drove many youth into the Social Democratic and Trotskyist movements as well.

What is interesting about Mr. Fast's story is that he joined the party at the tail end of the Communist Part's Popular Front period. That period was exemplified by then Party Chairman Earl Browder's declaration that "Communism is 20th century Americanism" and he and those recruited during the period really believed that this was the road to socialism. Unfortunately for them, Browder and those recruits got caught between the hammer of the American end of Cold War strategy and the Soviet's "left" turn which for a long period effectively ended the harmonious relationships provided during the Popular Front period. Mr. Fast is somewhat exceptional in that rather than leaving during the "red scare" he dug in his heels, stuck it out and did his duty as he saw it. The curious thing about this honorable position is that from what this reviewer was able to read between the lines of his book Mr. Fast was much closer to a Social Democratic or pacifist view than a Communist view during this period. But, such are the vagaries of the human personality.

As Mr. Fast unfolds his story he has many antidotes to relate concerning background to events such as the last part of World War II, the "red scare" as seen down at the local level, the beginning of the Cold War, the start of the Korean War, and the execution of the Rosenburgs. Some of this information I knew previously but much is new and interesting. One should be glad that an old ex-Stalinist decided to write about his experiences. Maybe future generations can learn from those mistakes but should also take a page from the courage of those political opponents, and the American Stalinists were politcal opponents of serious leftists, who stood up to government repression while others, too many, ducked. Read on.

3 of 23 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars Disappointed Fan, May 27, 2003

By 

susannesd (fountain valley, ca United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Being Red: A Memoir (Paperback)

I am fond of Fast's book's but was so disappointed with this book and with him. Fast where were you during World War II? Was your head buried in the sand? His book is full of lame excuses and errors. For instance, the Rosenbergs who were executed for being spies were in fact confirmed guilty per recent unsealed documents. The government was able at the trial, to find them guilty without using testimony from secret agents who would have been publically identified. The book is a portrait of a weak, uninformed,narrow minded "useful idiot" , as Churchill called ignorant, uninformed persons who unknowingly were used to help the enemy's agenda both during & after the war.If a reader is looking for a good read I'd recommend The Long Walk by Slavomir Rawicz, We Die Alone by David Howarth, The Shadow of War by T. Childers, or Intrepid's Last Case by William Stevenson-all of which are non-fiction & 5 star reading!!!