The political novel

by Joseph Blotner

Just as the political novel helped to prepare the way for the Civil War, so it commented upon the events which followed it. In A Fool’s Errand (1879) and Bricks Without Straw (1880), two awkward but intensely felt books, Albion Tourgée criticized the tremendous blunders of the federal government in the Reconstruction era. Using the same techniques of case history, pathos, and melodrama as did Mrs. Stowe, Tourgée applauds the intent of the federal Reconstruction program but is outraged and cynical at the way it was carried out. He praises the work of the Freedmen’s Bureau but laments its dissolution and the government’s virtual abandonment of the Negro. Like Mrs. Stowe, Tourgée states the problem as dramatically and appealingly as he can; then he offers his solution: education. Both of Tourgée’s novels close with appeals for federal aid to education in the South. The Negro is obviously in greatest need, but the aid is meant to be spread over the entire educational system. Discarding all pretense at fiction and writing directly to the reader, Tourgée concludes A Fool’s Errand by telling him that “Poor-Whites, Freedmen, Ku-Klux and Bulldozers are all alike the harvest of ignorance. The Nation can not afford to grow such a crop.”

Perennial Theme: Corruption

In the 1880s the American political novel began to shift from the Civil War and Reconstruction to the theme of corruption. This subject was explored extensively during the next five decades. Whether the scene was the national capitol, as in Henry Adams’ Democracy (1880), or a ward in New York City, as in James L. Ford’s Hot Corn Ike (1923), the theme was the same—the betrayal of public trust for private ends. Although many of these novels were written in the resurgent school of Realism, all of them, in their depiction of pervasive corruption, were capable of being political instruments through the nature of the material which they treated if not through their author’s intent. Whether the writer declaims through his hero against public robbery or simply tries to present dispassionately what he sees, the revulsion of the reader at the travesty of American political ideals is likely to be the same.

There was one notable exception to this trend. It was Jack London’s The Iron Heel (1908). Projecting his story into the future, he wrote of an America under the dictatorship of an Oligarchy serving the interests of the large corporate and industrial groups. The reader learns that the Oligarchy was eventually overthrown, but the book concentrates upon a fictitious era of horrors unequalled until the appearance of Orwell’s 1984 forty years later. In his introduction to the novel, Anatole France called London a Revolutionary Socialist. This he was, and—in the novel, at least—a devoted Marxist as well. The book was clearly meant to be a political instrument. Its fulfillment of this aim may be judged by a comment of Stephen Spender in his contribution to The God That Failed (1950). He remarks that Harry Pollitt, a high official of the English Communist Party, had told him that in his opinion The Iron Heel was “the best revolutionary novel.” The Communist view of the propaganda value of literature makes the comment significant.

Upton Sinclair: Corruption Plus Radicalism. Upton Sinclair’s books were among those which marked the beginning of a transitional phase in the American political novel. In them a new theme was added to that of political corruption: the rise of leftist and radical forces. Oil! (1926) focuses on Bunny Ross’s political journey to the far Left. Bunny’s father, J. Arnold Ross, is one of the tycoons who selects, pays for, and elects an American president. Naming names and placing places, Sinclair sends his characters into the campaign of 1920. Verne Roscoe says that he is negotiating with Barney Brockway of “the Ohio gang.” Sinclair writes that “he made exactly the right offers, and paid his certified checks to exactly the right men,” and Warren Harding was nominated. The fifty million dollars poured into the campaign by the oil interests (according to Sinclair) helped to finish the job. The account of the naval reserve oil lease scandals which follows makes Sinclair’s position on the activities of a powerful lobby very clear. More an exposé than a work of art, the novel describes attempts to hinder the organization of the oil workers and the strikes and strike-breaking which follow. The book ends with an attack upon

an evil power which roams the earth, crippling the bodies of men and women, and luring the nations to destruction by visions of unearned wealth, and the opportunity to enslave and exploit labor.

Two years later Sinclair threw himself into a vindication of the characters and lives of Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti. The cast of Boston (1928) includes the fictitious Thornewell family, but they are all dwarfed by the two Italians whose careers ended in the electric chair. Sinclair presents the case as an effort by the city and state governments to dispose of two representatives of the anarchist movement which was thought to threaten society’s foundations. He maintains that the government was supported in its attempt by representatives of organized religion as well as the socially prominent and economically powerful classes. Although the author said that he had tried to be a historian, that he had not “written a brief for the Sacco-Vanzetti defense,” the novel is precisely that. It is also an indictment of most of the immediate society in which the events took place. He accuses the prosecution of carefully building an illegal, trumped-up case heard by the violently prejudiced Judge Thayer. He declares that the Commission which investigated the case, made up of Cardinal O’Connell, Bishop Lawrence, and President Lowell of Harvard, rendered an endorsement of the state’s actions which amounted to a whitewash. Running parallel to the story of the Italians is that of Jerry Walker, parvenu tycoon of the New England felt industry who is legally plundered by the old commercial and banking interests of Boston and New York. Mr. Sinclair’s intentions to be impartial may have been sincere, but like the exclamation points in his prose, they got away from him.

Growing Political Consciousness: 1930 to 1954

The great wave of political consciousness which struck America in the 1930s surged over into the novel. It took several forms. There was the novel which advocated liberal reforms in government, and the novel which, presenting the Communist point of view, necessarily went farther. The proletarian novel emerged. Sympathetically describing the privations of the so-called proletariat to stimulate betterment of its living conditions, these novels sometimes cleaved to the Communist Party line but were often the work of non-Communist authors writing from genuine concern for their subjects. The Communists regarded this art form as another weapon in the class struggle. Paul Drummond, a fanatical Communist writer in James T. Farrell’s Yet Other Waters (1952), shouts that “now the time has come for Party literature.” Moses Kallisch, leader of a front organization starting a Left Wing Book Club, declares, “The day is not far off when we’ll overwhelm bourgeois culture in America!” Increasing consciousness of the political malignancy of Fascism and Nazism appeared in the novel. With the descriptions of these dangers came appeals for the strengthening and defense of the best in the American political system.

John Steinbeck: The Party Organizer. Appearing in 1936, Steinbeck’s In Dubious Battle sociologically described the violent course and tragic end of a Communist-organized strike of apple pickers in California’s Torgas Valley. Shortly after he applies for membership in the Party, young Jim Nolan is taken down into the valley by McLeod, a hard-shelled, veteran Communist organizer. The underpaid pickers, living in squalor, follow Mac when he helps precipitate the strike. As the apprentice, Jim follows each move carefully, learning both theory and practice from Mac, who wants violence and a prolonged strike in order to gain wide attention and pave the way for organizing subsequent picking operations. Adept and devoted, Jim learns quickly despite a gunshot wound and increasing hunger. He even assumes temporary leadership over Mac when the latter’s vitality momentarily sags. At the book’s end, with the strike failing, Jim falls into a trap and his face is blown off by a shotgun blast. Mac carries his body to the strikers’ camp platform. The book’s last line is Mac’s funeral oration for Jim: “Comrades! He didn’t want nothing for himself.” The novel may be considered a social and political study; the picture that emerges is one of economic oppression, embattled workers, and hard but devoted organizers.