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Vivian Gornick
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The Romance of American Communism Paperback – April 7, 2020

by Vivian Gornick (Author)
4.5 out of 5 stars 104 ratings
Writer and critic Vivian Gornick’s long-unavailable classic exploring how Left politics gave depth and meaning to American life

“Before I knew that I was Jewish or a girl I knew that I was a member of the working class.”

So begins Vivian Gornick’s exploration of how the world of socialists, communists, and progressives in the 1940s and 1950s created a rich, diverse world where ordinary men and women felt their lives connected to a larger human project.

Now back in print after its initial publication in 1977 and with a new introduction by the author, The Romance of American Communism is a landmark work of new journalism, profiling American Communist Party members and fellow travelers as they joined the Party, lived within its orbit, and left in disillusionment and disappointment as Stalin’s crimes became public.
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  1. Print length
    288 pages
  2. Language
    English
  3. Publisher
    Verso
  4. Publication date
    April 7, 2020
  5. Dimensions
    6 x 0.74 x 9.19 inches
  6. ISBN-10
    1788735501
  7. ISBN-13
    978-1788735506
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From the Publisher

history of the communist party, communism, American history, oral history

history of the communist party, communism, American history, oral history

history of the communist party, communism, American history, oral history

Editorial Reviews

Review

"The best book ever written on the inner life of socialists."
—Corey Robin, New York Magazine

“When first published in the 1970s, Vivian Gornick’s book helped to launch her distinguished career as a writer and humanized, explained and, yes, romanticized, a generation of American radicals … Thanks to the dysfunctionality of American capitalism, socialism has reentered the American political vocabulary. Gornick introduces us to a slice of history we need to know.”
—Eric Foner, author of Battles for Freedom

“Gornick’s language is so fresh and so blunt; it’s a quintessentially American voice, and a beautiful one.”
—Dwight Garner, New York Times

“The lasting value of her work lies in her commitment to the question of what it means to feel ‘expressive’: to experience the feeling that tells a person ‘not approximately, but precisely’ who they are.”
—Dayna Tortorici, New York Review of Books

“I first read The Romance of American Communism in the early eighties, and it has been for many years the book I would rescue if my house was burning down. I based the the narrator of my first novel, The Cast Iron Shore, on the character of ‘Diane Michaels,’ a vain shallow woman for whom communism had made her better than she was—‘it could all have been so much worse.’ Vivian Gornick explores the passion of ideas rather than the ideas themselves, how they make us human. This book has languished out of print for far too long.”
—Linda Grant, author of A Stranger City

“A profound guide to the ecstasy and despair of living a life structured by political commitment. These accounts of ordinary Communists will make you ache for such a coherent and purposeful world, even as Gornick shows with enormous sensitivity how it all fell apart. In our new era of political intensity, everyone should have this subtle and exquisite book on hand.”
—Sarah Leonard

“Her unrepentant belief in strong feeling as the heartbeat of any political approach to the world explains why, though many good histories of American communism have appeared since Romance, none have captured, elevated, and lit up the experience in quite the same way.”
—Lana Dee Povitz, Los Angeles Review of Books

“[Gornick] presents her interview subjects like characters in literature, as the protagonists of their own experience, and, for that reason, the book is not simply documentary but a work of literature, too, rich, moving, and contradictory.”
—Alexandra Schwartz, New Yorker

“First published in 1977, Gornick’s book feels as relevant now as it ever did. As new secular movements, from reactionary atavism to progressive social justice activism, capture our imaginations and provide us with a feeling of belonging, The Romance of American Communism provides a valuable glimpse into just how vital these movements can be—and how potent they are at creating community.”
—Tara Isabella Burton, Washington Examiner

“Gornick’s task in Romance was clear. She wanted to rekindle [the] flame not for warmth but for illumination, to retrieve the truth of the communist experience, as it was lived from the inside, from the highbrow obscurantism of Cold War liberalism.”
—Nation

“Most brilliantly evoked, however, is the exhilaration of conversion and the soul-expanding experience of finding a cause … again and again people speak of the sense of purpose and meaning they derived from being communists; they speak of a process of ‘becoming’ and a sense of ‘wholeness’: a cohesion between what they believed in and what they poured their life’s efforts into.”
—Guardian

“Romance is a color portrait against the black-and-white rhetoric of the Cold War … The newfound interest in Romance speaks to a growing, shared desire to work, together, to extricate humankind from the trap in which it is now caught.”
—Sophie Pinkham, The New Republic

“Gornick offers no blueprints, but she teaches us that we must address the slippery ingredient of the emotions of a committed political life by first recognizing and naming them. Besides being wonderful, The Romance of American Communism is also a bit strange because it is so seductive.”
—Alan Wald, Boston Review

“A passionate, unwieldy auto-ethnographic work that zoomed out from her own upbringing to encompass the everyday life of the Communist Party in the United States … Gornick [is] interested in the prefigurative aspect of political organizing, in which action in the present serves not just as a step toward change in the future, but also as a model for that change.”
—Ari Brostoff, n+1

“A crucial book for today’s radical movements.”
—Steven Wishnia, The Indypendent

“Extraordinary … More than a political writer, Gornick is an intensely social writer: usually classified as an ‘oral history,’ Romance can be described as a book of conversations that is also about conversation, and about the relationship between conversation and conversion.”
—Lola Seaton, New Statesman

“A key go-to writer for those seeking insight on organised resistance in previous generations.”
—Fiona O’Connor, Morning Star, Best Books of 2020

“In its exploration of the emotions, relationships, love and heartbreak of political commitment, Romance is an engrossing book.”
—Charlie Morgan, Oral History

About the Author

Vivian Gornick is a writer and critic whose work has received two National Book Critics Circle Award nominations and been collected in The Best American Essays 2014. Growing up in the Bronx amongst communists and socialists, Gornick became a legendary writer for Village Voice, chronicling the emergence of the feminist movement in the 1970s. Her works include the memoirs Fierce Attachments (1987) and The Odd Woman and the City (2015) and the classic text on writing, The Situation and the Story.

Product details

  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Verso
  • Publication date ‏ : ‎ April 7, 2020
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Print length ‏ : ‎ 288 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1788735501
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1788735506
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 2.31 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 0.74 x 9.19 inches
  • Best Sellers Rank: #1,104,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.5 out of 5 stars 104 ratings

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Customer reviews

4.5 out of 5 stars
104 global ratings

Top reviews from the United States

  • Margo
    5.0 out of 5 stars A part of history we don't hear too much about
    Reviewed in the United States on September 30, 2008
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    Want to learn about the socialist movement in NYC during the '30s - '50s? Then this is the book to read.Learn about hard working New Yorkers who wished to better working conditions, etc. for the average working man/woman. A segment of NYC/USA history that is rich, compelling, and intriguing. What makes the reading so appealing are the personal accounts of the individuals who were part of the movement.The author conducts interviews cross country to obtain info/ individuals' perspectives.
    If you are the child or grandchild of a "Red Diaper Baby"
    you'll want to read this book.
    21 people found this helpful
    Helpful
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  • Jeffrey P.
    3.0 out of 5 stars Puzzling
    Reviewed in the United States on September 2, 2020
    Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase
    Even though growing up in a suburb as far from radical politics as can be imagined, I met a few red-diaper babies in my late teens. I knew little about their parents and understood even less about their histories. This book opened up a world that must have existed before I was born. The book, a series of long interviews with nostalgic followers of the Party line, never comes to terms with the many lies, manipulations and destroyed lives the American Communist Party left in its wake. I wish the author had.
    5 people found this helpful
    Helpful
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  • patsy Hickman
    5.0 out of 5 stars Rare book
    Reviewed in the United States on May 29, 2019
    Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase
    All good
    2 people found this helpful
    Helpful
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  • KarenRachel
    5.0 out of 5 stars The Romance of American Communism
    Reviewed in the United States on June 23, 2020
    Format: Paperback
    I first read the Romance of American Communism in 1980 when I was 20 years old and just out of college. In the late 1970’s I found feminism and my world changed forever. How I saw, how I felt, and how I loved was impacted. New ways of being, seeing and loving reshaped my belief system but more importantly it reshaped my inner life and in some ways, my personality. I am now 60 and my relationship to feminism has shifted. There have been political battles and broken connections but I am still remember the falling in love and there is nothing like it. And I am still in awe.
    When I read the Romance of American Communism it was the only book that best described my own political and emotional journey. I felt like I knew these people, understood their commitments, their dedication and how life was meaningful and deep. I gobbled it up and read it again. Although I did not know much about Communism or American Communism it was the affective experience of reading about people like me that made me cherish it so.
    Of course, the lie was exposed and the dreams and hopes of American Communists died. Grief, fury, guilt, depression and a host of other reactions ricocheted throughout the movement. Ms. Gornick and especially her mother grieved it too.

    It seems a perfect time to read The Romance of American Communism given the passion, dedication and determination of Blacks Lives Matter. Political change will sweep you in and change you forever.
    13 people found this helpful
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  • Harold Goodman
    5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing book that will leave your wanting more.
    Reviewed in the United States on July 16, 2012
    I have read this book twice and will probably read it again.

    What Vivian Gornick does is to bring alive the many people who sincerely believed that building Communism in America would lead to a better life.

    I have known some of these people and was always curious to learn more about who they were, how they came to their actions and what became of them after the collapse of their dream.

    Most of them were deeply idealistic on one hand and on the other hand they also could be very difficult to be with. Communism became their religion and they could be quite insistent that it was the only way. This black and white view of life comes through in the book.

    The book could very well be describing the lives of religious fanatics and, in a way, they were. Their church was the Communist Party, USA and their holy land was the USSR. Neither could do any wrong.

    This belief led to an even more overwhelming collapse when the truth of how they had not only been lied to by the party, the USSR, and others they worshipped but, more so, how they lied to themselves and those they loved, became evident.

    This chapter is also beautifully covered.

    I love that this book exists.
    18 people found this helpful
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  • GiovanniGF
    5.0 out of 5 stars The virtues and drawbacks of ideology
    Reviewed in the United States on April 1, 2017
    Format: Hardcover
    Evenhanded, moving account of what ideology does to and for people. Beautifully written, if a little repetitive in her physical descriptions (women are often described as slim and men and women as looking 15 years younger than their age).
    7 people found this helpful
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  • Harry Hoch
    1.0 out of 5 stars Nothing romantic about it.
    Reviewed in the United States on June 15, 2020
    It felt like I was reading an expose of Scientology. She obviously sees it as cult, her perspective of it is quite hateful. Not written from a sympathetic viewpoint.
    2 people found this helpful
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