The Radical Novel and the Classless Society: Utopian and Proletarian Novels in U.S. Fiction from Bellamy to Ellison

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The Radical Novel and the Classless Society analyzes utopian and proletarian novels as a single socialist tradition in U.S. literature. Utopian novels by such writers as Edward Bellamy, William Dean Howells, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, and Sutton E. Griggs and proletarian novels by such writers as Robert Cantwell, John Steinbeck, Richard Wright, Meridel Le Sueur, Claude McKay, and Ralph Ellison can help us conceive of a unity of utopian and Marxist socialisms. We can combine the imagination of the future classless society with present-day socialist strategy. Utopian and proletarian novels help us to imagineand realizethe classless society as achieving the utopian goal of recognizing race and gender and the Marxist goal of overcoming social class.

Reviews

Robert Birdwells down-to-business The Radical Novel and the Classless Society freshly defines the tradition of American radical fiction as a synthesis of utopianism and proletarianism, cultural recognition and economic redistribution. Its inclusive but clear-eyed view of the progressive past is just what the doctor ordered in an era in which dreams of a classless society have never seemed less historical.

-- William Maxwell, Washington University St. Louis
Birdwell establishes a timely dialogue between the utopian fiction of the 1890s and the tradition of the radical novel, reminding us forcefully of the power of literature to prefigure and inspire social hope and change. This important dialogue deserves to continue and expand. -- Maria Giulia Fabi, University of Ferrara

Author Bio

Robert Birdwell is visiting assistant professor in the Department of English at Tulane University.