Books by Alan M. Wald

In this study of two neglected New England poets, Alan Wald challenges the literary culture that has obscured the radical and Marxist heritage of American letters in our century. "Simply by aspiring to accurate historical remembrance," Wald writes, "this book aims to subvert the currently sanctified canon of letters and the vision of society legitimized by its codification."

In contrast to other scholars who emphasize the affinity of the "New York Intellectuals" for literary modernism and its largely Jewish composition as its defining characteristics, Wald finds these traits to be secondary to the group's agonizing efforts in the 1930s and after to build a Marxist alternative to the official Communist movement.

American Night: The Literary Left in the Era of the Cold War