Book Review : Make a Pledge to Pass on This One

The Pledge by Howard Fast (Houghton Mifflin: $18.95; 324 pages)

I think I must have drawn the short straw on this book. Someone looked around and thought: Who do we have here who’s mean-spirited enough to give Howard Fast’s self-proclaimed “autobiographical” novel about his blacklisting and persecution during the ‘50s a bad review?

Howard Fast, whose early novel, “Freedom Road” inspired millions; Howard Fast, who so bravely in the face of the blacklist self-published (at least, as I’ve heard the story) “Spartacus,” which turned into a huge success. Fast then went on to exact a particularly ironic capitalistic revenge upon his enemies by writing a string of popular historical novels that made him at once respectable, famous and very rich. Who could give a bad review to a culture-hero like that? I guess I drew the short straw.

“The Pledge” is about Bruce Bacon, a writer in World War II with a national reputation, who, after V-E Day, decides to take time out in India, which is still under British rule. Bacon, fresh from the hideous knowledge of the German concentration camps, which killed 6 million Jews, among others, stumbles upon a British plot to engineer a famine in Bengal, which has already killed 6 million Indians. In addition to this, Bacon falls into the company of a couple of Indian communists whose self-chosen duty is to bicycle around the countryside to fill in the peasants on the current nightmarish situation.

Bacon naturally thinks this is a good story to write about. He does so, and is surprised, back in New York, that he cannot find a publisher for a story that puts the British in the same category as the Nazis. (This, while World War II is still going on, remember.)

Never mind. Bacon gets a verbal agreement from a prestigious publisher for his memoirs of the war, with a promise of a $50,000 advance. (No contract, no advance, no agent. And Bacon is presented as smart, a famous writer with a national reputation.) Then, one fateful night, Bacon gives a talk to an organization that happens to be a “Communist front.” There he meets a lady with a highly symbolic name of Molly Maguire, who works as reporter for the Daily Worker. Then, a year or so later, Bacon is hugely surprised to get a subpoena from the House Un-American Activities Committee. . . .

Let’s take a look at some of this. “The Pledge” is billed as somewhat “autobiographical.” But Bacon is a wealthy white Protestant who never had a political thought in his life, and is so out-to-lunch that he falls for it when his Wall Street lawyer tells him he won’t need legal counsel at the HUAC hearings. Bacon also takes along his girlfriend from the Daily Worker with him to the hearings, even though by this time his book is in serious trouble, he’s being watched, and people keep asking him if he’s a Communist. Also, this Daily Worker chick is a devout Catholic who keeps referring to herself as a “Shanty Mick,” as in, “I’m just a Shanty Mick, that’s all.”

Bacon goes to jail for contempt, where he loses 20 pounds, gets in shape, learns how to fix cars. And there’s a surprise ending. But all during this novel the reader keeps wondering: Why does Howard Fast switch tenses all the time? Why does he refuse to use contractions in ordinary conversation? Why do his lovers speak in callow political speeches to each other? Why does Bacon say things like: “And speaking of first things first, we have to get up to Boston and meet your mother and sisters Mary and Bernadette.”? Doesn’t Molly know the name of her own sisters?

A Garbled Message

Fast used to be socially committed and conscious of the issues. Bruce Bacon, his spoiled WASP, is in a political coma. Fast later became disillusioned with the Communist Party, and in this novel, refers to Molly as having been “duped.” Those who remember the period will recall this word as the ultimate right-wing insult. The political “message” here is garbled and strange.

Also, no one reminded the author to stay in one tense, or questioned him about sentences like: “I used to think that Russia would give it a shot, but like the Pope, Stalin doesn’t understand the religion he preaches and doesn’t dare give it a chance to work.” (This last from that “Shanty Mick.”)

There you have it. The master wrote a stinker. I drew the short straw and have to pass on the news.