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Trinity of Passion. The Literary Left and the Anti-Fascist Crusade.

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Trinity of Passion. The Literary Left and the Anti-Fascist Crusade. By Alan M. Wald. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2007. xiii + 319 pp.

Alan Wald has written a fascinating, yet frustrating, book about Communist and pro-Communist writers during the 1930s and 1940s. He focuses mainly on overlooked figures with important exceptions--such as Henry Roth and Arthur Miller--who populated the "substructure" of American literature (237). Unfortunately, Wald does not explain that crucial concept, which forms the rationale for his choice of subjects. Nonetheless, Trinity of Passion offers a vivid tour of writers--mostly Jews and, to a lesser extent, African Americans--inspired by the antifascist cause.

Trinity of Passion starts off running with an engrossing discussion of a novel from 1967 called In Black and Whitey. Written by Ed Lacy, an enormously popular novelist considered to have been the creator of the first black detective character, In Black and Whitey tells the story of an African American cop and his Jewish partner, Albert Kahn. Kahn appears to be a sympathetic leftist throughout much of the story, but in the novel's denouement it turns out that Kahn is a racist who intends to ignite a riot in Harlem. Soon thereafter comes a second revelation: Kahn is not actually a Jew, but the son of a former German Nazi Party member. The person who exposes him is a Jewish shopkeeper, whose daughter is active in the civil rights movement. To make this story of race and identity more interesting, Wald explains that the author Lacy was not black, as many individuals...

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