RIPOSTES
where
Dos
Passos found bombs horrifying, bloodshed grue–
some, anarchists hounded by a Stalinist camarilla, the
People's Front conceding to Anglo-French imperialism
and suppressing socialism. He consequently criticized
the Stalinists to his companion.
Returning to the United States
Dos Passos published articles criticizing the Com–
munist International, defended the honor of the
Spanish anarchists, supported the Trotsky Defense
Committee, opposed coiiective security.
And then in 1938
63
Hemingway found bombs
intriguing, bloodshed ex–
citing, anarchists "treas–
onable," the People's
Front noble, socialism
nonsense. He consequent–
ly denounced his com–
panion.
Hemingway performed at
the Communist Party's
Writers Congress, joined
skinteen C.P.-controiied
committees, wrote a play
"exposing" the "Fifth
Column,'' fished tarpon
at Key West, and socked
Max Eastman.
Mike Gold, reviewing
USA
(the publication of whose separate parts he greeted
warmly) in the
Daily Worker
of Feb. 28, discovers in that book "the clue" to a
new esthetic "judgment" of Dos Passos:
"The most frequent word in it is 'merde,' a French euphimism I shaii use
for the four-letter word, s--t, that Dos Passos so boldly scatters through his
pages. (Oh, the courage of it!).
"The merde was there formerly when we praised Dos Passos. But we praised
him as a feilow-traveiier, not as a Communist. We were anxious to win the
feiiow-traveilers and ignored the merde and looked for every gleam of the
proletarian hope.
"There was such hope Dos Passos was moving up from the bourgeois merde.
It was right that we recognized in him a powerful if bewildered talent, tried to
help free that talent from the muck of bourgeois nihilism.
"He was going somewhere; it was right to hope to the limit and to ignore
the merde. Now Dos Passos is going nowhere. On rereading his trilogy, one can–
not help seeing how important the merde is in his psychology, and how, after a
brief, futile effort, he has sunk back into it, as into a native element.
"Like the Frenchman Celine, Dos Passos hates Communists because organ–
icaily he seems to hate the human race. It is strange to see how little real humane–
ness there is in his book. He takes a duii, sadistic joy in showing human beings at
their filthiest, meanest, most degraded moments. They have no wiii power; they
are amoeba, moved by chemistry. Everything about them is blah!
"You cannot be a Communist on hate and disgust alone. Lenin 'deeply loved
the people,' was his wife's final word upon him. There's not a spark of such
dynamic love in the merde-writers like Dos Passos, Farreii, Dahlberg, et al.
They reflect only the bourgeois decadence.
"The transition to Trotskyism is easy for such folks. It is only a new form
of hatred of the people and of life, and of whatever human hope there is.
"Celine, the French merde-writer, came for a brief speii close to Communism,
then departed. Now Celine is an avowed fascist. From merde he came, to merde
he has returned.
