Born in New York City, the Jewish-American novelist, Howard Fast (1914-2003) grew up in poverty. His mother died when he was nine years-old and his father was out of work. It was through a job at the New York Public Library that Fast first began reading and soon took to writing, being published at the age of eighteen with his first book, Two Valleys (1933), set in Virginia during the American Revolution and depicting a love triangle. The political background of this first text was a precursor to the further novels that Fast would go on to write, all of which have a political slant – particularly his Citizen Tom Paine (1943), the first one of his books to gain real popularity.[1]
Although writing prolifically, Fast didn’t stop working. During World War II, he was employed by the United States Office of War Information and wrote in the magazine Voice of America – but he came under scrutiny when he joined the Communist Party in 1943.[2] In 1950, he was called before HUAC (The House Un-American Activities Committee), and refused to name the contributors towards a home for orphans in the Spanish Civil War. In process he actually shouted at his interrogator. Fast was famously quick to anger.[3] He was sent to Mill Point Federal Prison on a three-month sentence, during which time he began to write his most famous work, Spartacus (1951), later adapted by Stanley Kubrick into a Hollywood film in 1961.[4]
Many of his novels take ancient stories and societies as their subjects – but none quite compare to Spartacus.[5] He dedicated the novel to his children, stating the following:
‘The heroes of this story cherished freedom and human dignity, and lived nobly and well. I wrote it so that those who read it, my children and others, may take strength for our own troubled future and that they may struggle against oppression and wrong – so that the dream of Spartacus may come to be in our own time.’
Clearly, we have Leftist watchwords enshrined in the very subject matter of the text – a slave revolt against oppressors that can easily be mapped onto the capitalist society of the 1950s (and, indeed, today). Spartacus and his fellow fugitive slaves are transformed into the ideal Communist sect. It reads like something from a political pamphlet when Fast’s slaves declaim:
We are people. We are not alone. … A man has a little strength, a little hope, a little love. Those things are like seeds that are planted in all men. But if he keeps them to himself, they will wither away and die very quickly, and then God help that poor man because he will have nothing and life will not be worth living. On the other hand, if he gives his strength and hope and love to others, he will find an endless store of such stock. He will never run dry of those things. Then life will be worth living. And believe me, gladiator, life is the best thing in the world. We know that. We are slaves. All we have is life. So we know what it is worth.[6]
This profile was written by Anna Coopey
[1] Other books of his with political issues foregrounded include: The Last Frontier (1941) (about Cheyenne Indians trying to return to their native land; Freedom Road (1944) (about former slaves); and Power (1962) (about miners’ social protests).
[2] For more on Voice of America and Fast’s time there, see the Voice of America – Hidden History page on Fast.
[3] Footage of this outburst in his HUAC hearing can be see on YouTube – see Howard Fast: Celebrating 100 Years from Open Road Media.
[4] He did have some difficulties finding a publisher for the novel, as he had been blacklisted from the majority of publishers after his prison sentence, so he self-published it. 50,000 copies were printed in the first four months, and 48,000 of those were sold.
[5] Just a few include: My Glorious Brothers (1948), detailing the revolt of the Maccabees in 167 BC; Moses, Prince of Egypt (1958); Agrippa’s Daughter (1964); and In the Beginning: The Story of Abraham (1958).
[6] Fast, Howard (1951): Spartacus (Routledge), p. 264.
