WHAT IS A PROLETARIAN NOVEL?
Notes Toward A Definition
Edwin Seaver
I
r
IS NOT NECESSARILY
A
NOVEL
written by a worker, about workers or
for workers. We have only to think of a "worker" like Matthew Woll
writing a novel about patriotic workers for the average wallcing-delegate–
minded
A.
F. of L. memb-er to arrive at a conception that is the complete
parody of the proletarian novel. On the other hand, it is possible for an
author of middleclass origin to write a novel about petty-bourgeois charac–
ters which will appeal primarily to readers of the same class, and yet such
a work can come within the classification, Proletarian Novel. Thus Albert
Halper's
The Foundry,
although altogether about workers, does not seem
to us to be a genuine proletarian novel, while Josephine Herbst's
The
Executioner Waits,
which deals primarily with middleclass folk, most cer–
tainly does. Obviously everything depends upon what we mean by workers
in a
scene
that has been, and to a large extent still is, saturated with the
middleclass ideology. Everything depends upon what we mean by petty–
bourgeois in a
time
when the rapid proletarianization of considerable sec–
tions of the lower middleclass necessitates a corresponding change in our
topography of the classes.
•
•
•
Some critics are of the opinion that the term Proletarian Literature
cannot be satisfactorily defined and that all discussions based on this term
are therefore a priori doomed to futility. These same critics are also
generally of the opinion that the word Proletariat is "un-American" and
that, since it cannot be naturalized or at least does not readily lend itself
to naturalization, it ought to be dropped in favor, let us say, of a simple
American word like Workers. About this business of "un-American," it
is perhaps sufficient to point out that a number of words which a decade
ago seemed to be the exclusive property of the Communist Party may be
seen today walking around in their bed-slippers on the front page of the
New
York Times.
All this, however, is aside from the point. What
these critics fail to see is that Proletariat and Workers are by no means
synonymous-especially in terms of the American scene-and that m our
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