Title Conversations with Trotsky : Earle Birney and the radical 1930s / edited and with an introduction by Bruce Nesbitt

Published Ottawa : University of Ottawa Press, 2017

Click on the following:
EBSCO eBooks

Copies

Description 1 online resource Series Canadian literature collection Canadian literature collection. Contents Machine generated contents note: I. "OPTIMISTIC SORT OF REVOLUTIONARY," 1933 -- 1935 -- 1. Report to the Toronto Branch of the International Left Opposition -- 2. Letter to an American Medical Student -- 3. Mine Strike, Martial Law and a Student Delegation -- 4. To the Section Bureau, CPUSA, Salt Lake City, Utah -- 5. To the Salt Lake Section Committee, CPUSA -- 6. Letter Refused by the Salt Lake City Press -- 7. In Defence of Party Democracy -- 8. Struggle Against British Imperialism -- II. CONVERSATIONS WITH TROTSKY, 1935 -- 9. Birney to Trotsky, 5 November 1935 -- 10. Interviewing Leon Trotsky, 19 -- 23 November 1935 -- 11. Conversations with Trotsky -- 12. Further Conversations with Trotsky -- 13. Trotsky on the Canadian Farmer -- 14. Birney to Trotsky, 8 December 1935 -- 15. Birney to Trotsky, 16 December 1935 -- III. POLITICAL WRITINGS, 1935 -- 1939 -- 16. Incident in Berlin -- 17. Trotsky to Birney, 19 January 1936 -- 18. Birney to Trotsky, 14 February 1936 -- 19. Birney to Trotsky, 27 February 1936 -- 20. Birney to Trotsky, 29 January 1937 -- 21. Another Month -- January -- 22. Another Month -- February -- 23. Another Month -- March -- 24. Birney to Joe Hansen, 15 November 1937 -- 25. Trotsky to Birney, 27 November 1937 -- 26. Birney to Trotsky, 2 January 1938 -- 27. Canadian Capitalism and the Strategy of the Revolutionary Movement -- 28. Land of the Maple Leaf Is the Land of Monopoly -- 29. Is French Canada Going Fascist? -- 30. Trotsky to Birney, 5 June 1939 -- 31. Birney to Trotsky, 6 June 1939 -- 32. War Is Here -- What Now? -- IV. LITERATURE AND REVOLUTION, 1934 -- 1940 -- 33. Escape by Emetic -- 34. On "Proletarian Literature" -- 35. Brave New Words of Aldous Huxley -- 36. Cecil Day Lewis, The Loving Communist -- 37. Proletarian Literature: Theory and Practice -- 38. What Do Canadians Tell Stories About? -- 39. R.M. Fox: Worker -- Fighter -- 40. Soviet Fiction and American Fustian -- 41. Importance of Being Ernest Hemingway -- 42. Polygamous Communists from Toronto to Salt Lake -- 43. Yorkshire Proletarians -- 44. Rhymes of the Irish Revolution -- 45. Lost Irish Lenin? -- 46. Onward with Edward Upward -- 47. Two William Faulkners -- 48. John Bull's Other Hell -- 49. English Worker -- 50. New Writing in Britain and Elsewhere -- 51. Fiction of James T. Farrell -- 52. New Byronism: Poets and the Spanish Civil War -- 53. Steinbeck's Grapes of Wrath -- 54. Left Theatre in English -- 55. Whitewashing the Stalinist Persecutors of Artists -- 56. Mad Sanity of Henry Miller -- 57. To Arms with Canadian Poetry -- 58. Fashion and Change on Broadway, or Propaganda Is What You Disagree With -- 59. New Writing and Literary Stalinism -- 60. Erika Mann and the Middle-Class Martyrs of Fascism -- 61. Literary Stalinism: Lehmann vs. Birney -- 62. Changing Minds in Wartime -- V. ENVOI, 1940 -- 63. In Memory: Lev Davidovich Bronstein Summary "Before he became one of Canada's most influential and popular twentieth-century poets, Earle Birney lived a double life. To his students and colleagues, he was an engaging university lecturer and scholar. But for seven years from 1933 to 1940, the great Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky was the focus of his writing and much of his life. Although Lenin favoured Trotsky to succeed him as leader of the USSR, Stalin outmanouvred Trotsky and banished him. Yet for thousands of followers like Birney, the former head of the Red Army and literary intellectual charted the path to true socialism through world-wide revolution. During his years as a Trotskyist in Canada, the United States and England, Birney wrote extensively about Trotsky, corresponded with Trotsky, organized Trotskyist cells in two countries, recruited in behalf of Trotskyism, lectured about Trotsky, and interviewed Trotsky himself over several days. One of his two novels is based on some of these Trotskyist activities. For the first time this book presents all Birney's known published and unpublished writing on Trotsky and Trotskyism, including their correspondence, a selection of other letters on his political work, and his literary writing from a demonstrably Trotskyist perspective. As well as providing original source material for helping to understand Canadian Trotskyism, the volume traces the origins of Trotsky's mistrust of "the British" to his experiences in Canada; shows Birney's influence on a major change in Trotsky's policy of "entrism" in British politics; includes the largest body of Trotskyist criticism in Canadian literary history; and demonstrates the need for a radical re-reading of Birney's poetry in light of his Trotskyism."-- Provided by publisher Analysis Literary studies: general Bibliography Includes bibliographical references Subject Birney, Earle, 1904-1995. Trotsky, Leon, 1879-1940 Birney, Earle, 1904-1995 -- Correspondence Trotsky, Leon, 1879-1940 -- Correspondence SUBJECT Birney, Earle, 1904-1995 fast Trotsky, Leon, 1879-1940 fast Subject Communists -- Canada -- Correspondence Communism. LITERARY CRITICISM -- Poetry. Communism Communists Canada Genre/Form Electronic books Personal correspondence Form Electronic book Author Nesbitt, Bruce, 1941- editor. ISBN 9780776624648 0776624644

Other Titles Works. Selections

  Permalink