The General Zapped an Angel: Stories

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In 1950, Joseph McCarthy tried to silence Howard Fast. It was a fool’s errand. Called to testify before the House Un-­American Activities Committee, Fast refused to name names, served three months in prison for contempt of Congress, and had to resort for some time to a pseudonym to survive the blacklist. It was scarcely a speed bump in a career of astonishing variety and prolificity. Fast was a novelist, an essayist, a poet, a playwright, a young adult author before that was even a named genre (his April Morning was a staple of middle school curricula for decades), a biographer, an autobiographer, and, as this volume attests, a short story writer. Something like one hundred books bore his name (or one of his aliases). His first novel was published in 1933, when he was eighteen, and his pace barely abated for the next seventy years. Even in prison, Fast didn’t take a break; he started what would become one of his most famous novels, Spartacus, self-­publishing it to great success upon his release. He wrote—­including, during the blacklist years, for the Daily Worker—­like it was a job and a calling. And he wore his politics on his sleeve.

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