This collection presents all of Earle Birney's known published and unpublished writings on Trotsky and Trotskyism for the very first time. It includes their correspondence as well as a selection of Birney's letters and literary writings. 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. During his years as a Trotskyist in Canada, the United States and England, Birney wrote extensively about Trotsky, corresponded with him, organized Trotskyist cells in two countries, and recruited on behalf of Trotskyism; he also lectured on Trotsky and interviewed him over the course of several days. One of his two novels is based on some of these activities. The collection traces the origins of Trotsky's mistrust of the British to his experiences in Canada; shows Birney's influence on a major shift 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.
Authors
- Bibliography, etc. Note
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 379-408) and index
- Control Number Identifier
- CaOOCEL
- Description conventions
- rda
- Dewey Decimal Classification Number
- C811/.54
- Dewey Decimal Edition Number
- 23
- Distributor
- Canadian Electronic Library (Firm),
- General Note
- Issued as part of the desLibris books collection
- Geographic Area Code
- n-cn---
- ISBN
- 9780776624631 9780776624648
- LCCN
- PR9199.3.B44
- LCCN Item number
- A6 2017eb
- Modifying agency
- CaBNVSL
- Original cataloging agency
- CaBNVSL
- Physical Description | Extent
- 1 electronic text (xvii, 418 pages)
- Published in
- Ottawa, Ontario
- Publisher or Distributor Number
- CaOOCEL
- Rights
- Access restricted to authorized users and institutions
- System Control Number
- (CaBNVSL)thg00974780 (OCoLC)983482226 (CaOOCEL)453435
- System Details Note
- Mode of access: World Wide Web
- Title proper/short title
- Earle Birney and the radical 1930s
Table of Contents
- Cover 1
- Title Page 4
- Copyright 5
- Contents 10
- Preface 14
- Acknowledgements 20
- Introduction 22
- I An “optimistic sort of revolutionary” 1933–1935 84
- 1 Report to the Toronto Branch of the International Left Opposition 86
- 2 Letter to an American Medical Student 100
- 3 Mine Strike, Martial Law and a Student Delegation 106
- 4 To the Section Bureau, CPUSA, Salt Lake City, Utah 114
- 5 To the Salt Lake Section Committee, CPUSA 118
- 6 A Letter Refused by the Salt Lake City Press 126
- 7 In Defence of Party Democracy 128
- 8 The Struggle Against British Imperialism 136
- II Conversations with Trotsky 1935 144
- 9 Birney to Trotsky 146
- 10 Interviewing Leon Trotsky 150
- 11 Conversations with Trotsky 156
- 12 Further Conversations with Trotsky 172
- 13 Trotsky on the Canadian Farmer 180
- 14 Birney to Trotsky 184
- 15 Birney to Trotsky 188
- III Political Writings 1935–1939 190
- 16 Incident in Berlin 192
- 17 Trotsky to Birney 19 January 1936 198
- 18 Birney to Trotsky 19 February 1936 200
- 19 Birney to Trotsky 27 February 1936 212
- 20 Birney to Trotsky 29 January 1937 214
- 21 Another Month—January 216
- 22 Another Month—February 220
- 23 Another Month—March 224
- 24 Birney to Joe Hansen 226
- 25 Trotsky to Birney 232
- 26 Birney to Trotsky 234
- 27 Canadian Capitalism and the Strategy of the Revolutionary Movement 238
- 28 The Land of the Maple Leaf Is the Land of Monopoly: Canada and World Politics 256
- 29 Is French Canada Going Fascist? 270
- 30 Trotsky to Birney 282
- 31 Birney to Trotsky 284
- 32 War Is Here—What Now? 288
- IV Literature and Revolution 1934–1940 294
- 33 Escape by Emetic 296
- 34 On “Proletarian Literature” 300
- 35 The Brave New Words of Aldous Huxley 304
- 36 Cecil Day Lewis, The Loving Communist 306
- 37 Proletarian Literature: Theory and Practice 308
- 38 What Do Canadians Tell Stories About? 314
- 39 R.M. Fox: Worker–Fighter 318
- 40 Soviet Fiction and American Fustian 320
- 41 The Importance of Being Ernest Hemingway 322
- 42 Polygamous Communists from Toronto to Salt Lake 326
- 43 Yorkshire Proletarians 328
- 44 The Rhymes of the Irish Revolution 330
- 45 The Lost Irish Lenin? 332
- 46 Onward with Edward Upward 336
- 47 The Two William Faulkners 338
- 48 John Bull’s Other Hell 342
- 49 The English Worker 346
- 50 New Writing in Britain and Elsewhere 350
- 51 The Fiction of James T. Farrell 352
- 52 The New Byronism: Poets and the Spanish Civil War 360
- 53 Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath 362
- 54 The Left Theatre in English 364
- 55 Whitewashing the Stalinist Persecutors of Artists 366
- 56 The Mad Sanity of Henry Miller 368
- 57 To Arms with Canadian Poetry 370
- 58 Fashion and Change on Broadway, or Propaganda Is What You Disagree With 376
- 59 New Writing and Literary Stalinism 378
- 60 Erika Mann and the Middle-Class Martyrs of Fascism 380
- 61 Literary Stalinism: Lehmann vs. Birney 382
- 62 Changing Minds in Wartime 386
- V Envoi 1940 388
- 63 In Memory: Lev Davidovich Bronstein 390
- Acronyms and Abbreviations 396
- Textual Sources 400
- Works Cited 418
- Index 430
