COMMENT
ANOTHER CONGRESS, ANOTHER TIME.
At best, literary cong–
resses are not noted for their intellectual level. They are occasions
for travel, for meeting people, and for demonstrating one's loyalties.
They are usually promoted to serve some political ends,
ei~her
open
or concealed. I did not attend the recent American Writers Congress
in New York. But from what I have heard and read, it seems to have
been a wild and discordant bash, whose only unifying principle was
to regroup the forces of the left that had been diffused after the sixties
and to combat what they see as the menace of reaction in this
country.
Perhaps one way to judge a Congress is by the nature and size
of the opposition . I gather, as Morris Dickstein indicates in his
comment in this issue, that there was little or no articulate oppo–
sition at this Congress, and this led me to recall the Second
American Writers Congress in 1937, which I attended briefly as a
member of a small and endangered minority.
Those familiar with the politics of the thirties will remember
that this Congress, like the First American Writers Congress, was
controlled by the Communist Party. But unlike the first one, which
danced to the tune of the "revolutionary" line of the party, this one
had to adapt to the new People's Front policy. This meant that while
the party was still to be in command, the revolution had to be played
down. For the Congress had to appear to be a coalition of "progres–
sive" writers upholding American "democratic traditions ." This was
to be accomplished not only by a doctrinal shift, but a change in the
cast of characters. Hence some of the leading figures had to be non–
communists or people not known to be communists. But to ensure a
tight control by the party, these writers had to be sympathetic and
had to be trusted not to criticize the Soviet Union .
In
the thirties,
this was not too difficult, as a large section of intellectual opinion was
swayed by the myth of the Soviet Union as the vanguard of historic
progress. Among the prominent figures who had been lured into the
Congress were Ernest Hemingway and Archibald MacLeish, along
