Volume 8, Number 4 · March 9, 1967
Old Flames
By William Phillips
Echoes of Revolt: The Masses 1911-1917
edited by William O'Neill, Introduction by Irving Howe
Quadrangle Books, 304 pp., $12.95
This handsome, almost too handsome, collection of pieces and drawings from The Masses (the old pre-Communist magazine, not to be confused with the New Masses) could not have come out at a better time. For with the emergence of a New Left, the radicalism of the past has come into vogue again, though lately some periods have become more fashionable than others. Hence the recent renewal of interest in the Thirties. But for people who like their radicalism on the light side the Thirties seem to be too old and heavy with ideology, too much associated with failures, too sectarian, and too full of questions that radicals today, particularly the younger ones, do not care to revive. It now looks as though we will have to go back further still, to the period in this country before World War I and the Russian Revolution, to find a seemingly more carefree spirit on the Left, one that at least appears to be youthful and innocent and frisky—unencumbered by theory and too immature to be worried about its responsibilities.
Review, 2109 words
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