The Naked God: The Writer and the Communist Party

Howard Fast

1957

I asked about a certain Russian poet. All good writers are poets to one extent or another, but that is a way of saying something. It is something else and clearer, to say that the poet is a very special sort of writer; and when the poet is a great poet, his songs come as close to probing the meaning of human existence and human destiny as any human…

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Creator Bio

Howard Fast

1914–2003

Born in New York, Howard Fast was a prolific novelist and scriptwriter who often depicted historical struggles for rights and freedoms, including those of Native Americans and African Americans. In the 1950s, Fast joined the Communist Party USA and was imprisoned for three months for his refusal to provide the House Un-American Activities Committee with names of his colleagues. Blacklisted throughout the decade, Fast began writing under pseudonyms including Behn Boruch and E. V. Cunningham, the latter of which he continued to use into the 1980s. In 1960, Dalton Trumbo wrote the screenplay for Spartacus as an adaptation of Fast’s 1951 novel of the same title.

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