John Reed and the Writing of Revolution - Softcover

Lehman, Daniel W.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0821414682 ISBN 13: 9780821414682

Publisher: Ohio University Press, 2002

Synopsis

John Reed (1887-1920) is best known as the author of Ten Days That Shook the World and as champion of the communist movement in the United States. Still, Reed remains a writer almost systematically ignored by the literary critical establishment, even if alternately vilified and lionized by historians and by films like Warren Beatty's Reds.
John Reed and the Writing of Revolution examines Reed's writing from a different critical perspective―one informed by a theoretical and practical understanding of literary nonfiction. In both politics and writing, John Reed defied fashion. In his short career, Reed transcended the traditional creative arts of fiction, poetry, and drama in favor of deeply researched histories composed with the cadence of fiction and the power of fact. Reed thereby alienated literary critics who had idealized timeless artistry against the rough-and-tumble world of historical details and political implications.
Working from a close investigation of rare articles, manuscripts, and the Reed papers at Harvard as well as from Reed's published work, Daniel W. Lehman offers the first detailed literary study of the man who followed Pancho Villa into battle; wrote literary profiles of such characters as Henry Ford, William Jennings Bryan, and Billy Sunday; explicated the Byzantine factionalism of Eastern Europe; and witnessed the storming of the Winter Palace and the birth of Soviet Russia.

About this title

About the Author

Daniel W. Lehman is a professor of English at Ashland University in Ohio. He is the author of Matters of Fact: Reading Nonfiction over the Edge and is the co-editor of River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative.

Edition details

• Publisher: Ohio University Press
• Publication date: 2002
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0821414682
• ISBN 13: 9780821414682
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 288