Books: Heresy

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ADVENTURES OF A YOUNG MAN—John Dos Passos—Harcourf, Brace ($2.50).

Critics generally have praised John Dos Passos' trilogy, 1919, The 42nd Parallel, The Big Money (now published in one volume as U. S. A.). Leftist critics have pointed to it with pride as a dramatization of Marxist theory. "It is Dos Passos," said Communist Critic Granville Hicks, "that has shown the [Marxist] way. . . . There is no apparent obstacle to his continued growth. . . ."

Two years ago the American Writers' Congress overwhelmingly voted The Big Money best novel of the year. That was on June 6. Three weeks later, Dos Passos' name was mud with the Marxists. His heresy: an article called Farewell to Europe, damning "the intricate and bloody machinery of Kremlin policy" in Spain, thanking heaven that "the Atlantic is a good wide ocean."

This week Dos Passos published a book that bids fair to cook his goose for good, as far as the Communists are concerned. Adventures of a Young Man, first of an intended series of contemporary portraits, traces the evolution, in the '203 and '305, of a middle-class radical. Sandy-haired, grey-eyed, idealistic Glenn Spotswood was brought up to be a Christian Gentleman. But his father was liberal enough to get fired from Columbia University for opposing U. S. entry into the War. Other radicalizers in Glenn's young manhood were a good-humored rebel chum; a freshman roommate hipped on the Law of Moses and Henry George's single tax; a picturesque Wobbly pal in the Northwest wheatfields one summer; a sociology instructor who took him along when he moved to a professorship at Columbia.

At college, what Glenn learns in extracurricular sex and socialism is not the stock stuff of left-wing propaganda novels. Seduced by a friend's Communist wife, who says he represents "the confused ignorant masses of America," he is brought into the Party only indirectly—the Revolution offers an alternative to being driven crazy by her.

Longest and liveliest part of the story tells of Glenn's shattering experiences as a Red trade-union organizer in a Southern coal strike (resembling that of Harlan County in 1931). When two deputies are shot, mass arrests hit both the Red union and its rival. Glenn, who is nearly killed by vigilantes, urges a united-front defense. But Comrade Silverstone, of Manhattan, sneers: "There's too much of the artist in you, Sandy." Silverstone says they will take care of their own comrades, let the others, who are "politically undeveloped," take care of themselves. Their own comrades get 20 years, are shot trying to escape. Few days later the Party changes its line, decides on a united-front policy, and too late woos the rival union.

Besides getting Glenn expelled from the Party for questioning decisions, Comrade Silverstone steals Glenn's mistress. Glenn's final disillusionment comes in Spain, where he goes to fight with the Loyalists. Again Comrade (now Commissar) Silverstone pops up, this time contrives to get Glenn arrested as a "Trotskyist-Bukharinist wrecker."