to the shaping of American character. Through a few characters, particularly the reporter, Jackson, and also by occasional author's intrusions which are not very fortunate, Mr. Fast puts his finger on the fact that where the servants of democracy violate its essential principles in a small matter, the way may be opened to greater violations.

This argument is weakened by subtle references to Nazism which seem anachronistic and forced, but there is real strength in the study of the effect of the Indians upon white individuals. While filing objections, I enter one against the author's claim (justifying his title) that with this incident the frontier ended. He should, for instance, read up on his Apache history, or follow a little further the career of Wyatt Earp, whom he himself mentions….

The faults are slight, nor need one stress the democratic moral of this book in urging that it be read. The point is that it is a finely written, moving, exciting story, and something quite new in the literature of our frontier.

Oliver La Farge, "Flight of the Cheyennes," in The Saturday Review of Literature (copyright © 1941 by Saturday Review; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission), Vol. XXIV, No. 14, July 26, 1941, p. 5.

Little has been written about the [Cheyenne Indians who defiantly journeyed from their reservation to their former homes in the Montana Territory, but in "The Last Frontier"] Howard Fast puts the story into a compact, restrained, ruthlessly pruned and tremendously dramatic novel. Even the bare records must have made a moving story, jumbled and confused as they doubtless were. As Mr. Fast has disentangled and rewoven them the tale becomes a triumph of the historical novelist's art.

Two points about "The Last Frontier" deserve special mention.

One is the exceptionally successful development of the people of the story….

The other point is the underlying significance of the author's treatment of the theme he has selected.

Mr. Fast, of course, is well aware of the importance, today particularly, of the novel in which the ideal of freedom is put forward from a fresh angle. "The Last Frontier," when all's said and done, is such a novel—a story of men who loved freedom sufficiently so that they considered themselves dead men without it. It is also a reminder, to those who have let themselves undervalue freedom, that there may be times when the desire to be free can bring about miracles. It is not stretching a point too far, I believe, to note an obvious contemporary parallel in this tale of ninety proud, fearless men, with their women and children to hamper them, standing up against the armed might of an entire nation and by hook or crook winning through.

In the end, however, Mr. Fast's novel will stand or fall upon its value as a dramatic, finely presented story. It is all of that: a model, which may easily become a classic example, of what to put in and what to leave out in the writing of a historical novel. Mr. Fast has come a long way since his Valley Forge story, "Conceived in Liberty," good as that book was. I do not believe it is saying too much to suggest that in the person of Mr. Fast we may have the next really important American historical novelist.

Joseph Henry Jackson, "An Important American Historical Novel," in New York Herald Tribune Books (© I.H.T. Corporation; reprinted by permission), July 27, 1941, p. 3.

In the late Seventies, according to Howard Fast, who seems to have examined all the documents with the scrupulous imagination of a historical novelist, the Cheyenne Indians were the heroes and the victims of a persecution which will touch any American on one of his conscience's sorest spots. Mr. Fast tells the story in The Last Frontier. It is a great story, even if the book is something short of great. Mr. Fast is not sentimental, and the agonized sympathy with which one puts the novel down is the result of what happens in its pages, not of any tears Mr. Fast sheds himself or asks us to shed. Here is a solid and memorable addition to the vast literature about the American Indian. (p. x)

Mr. Fast tells [the story] from the white man's point of view. We see little of the Indians save as a pathetic, dwindling, infinitely courageous cloud of horsemen on the horizon. There are some battles, and many skirmishes, in which the Indians morally come off best. Always, and increasingly, do we feel on their side, longing to have them escape and reach their ancient home. Which was all that they were trying to do. The Last Frontier is a memorable lesson in humility to the aliens who broke treaty after treaty with the original Americans and justified their cruelty by saying to themselves that the only good Indian was a dead Indian. (pp. x, xii)

Robert Littell, "Outstanding Novels: 'The Last Frontier'," in The Yale Review (© 1941 by Yale University; reprinted by permission of the editors), Vol. XXXI, No. 1, September, 1941, pp. x, xii.

[In "The Unvanquished" Mr. Fast makes George Washington's greatness] human and credible. Describing the retreat from New York in 1776—and describing it through Washington's eyes, a feat attempted by no other novelist of our time—he presents a series of disasters never mentioned in the schoolbooks…. Without [all the necessary details that Mr. Fast supplies,] we cannot understand the meaning of ritualistic phrases like "father of his country" or "the soul of the Revolution."

Not so long ago, the apparent aim of every popular biography was to prove that great men of the past were hypocritical, stupid, drunken, fond of other men's wives and, in short, totally incapable of achieving the enlightened standards of the 1920's. Washington was treated no worse and no better than the others…. The real originality of "The Unvanquished" is that it uses the technique and even the material of the debunkers for a purpose exactly the opposite of theirs: to restore our conviction of human greatness. In these times, Mr. Fast is saying by implication, we have no less need of it than during the retreat across the Jersey meadows, when the summer soldier and the sunshine patriot were stealing back to their homes.

I don't mean to imply that "The Unvanquished" is a book for the ages or even that it is among the best novels of 1942. Mr. Fast writes with a catch in his breath and sometimes brings tears to his own eyes instead of the reader's. Sometimes his words are less an echo of history than they are of Hemingway…. Sometimes he takes his characters from the same casting agencies that are used by other historical novelists…. Washington himself is a combination of General Kutuzov (in "War and Peace") and Captain Horatio Hornblower. He questions his own abilities so often, he spends so much time pretending to be stolid, he drinks so much flip and Madeira that you wonder how he ever commanded an army. And yet, for all this awkwardness in presenting him, Mr. Fast somehow makes him both likable and heroic. If his book does not belong to the history of American literature, at least it will be important in the history of the popular mind. It restores a great figure to our mythology. In the national pantheon, it reconsecrates a somewhat neglected shrine.

Malcolm Cowley, "The Death of Debunking" (reprinted by permission of the author), in The New Republic, Vol. 107, No. 7, August 17, 1942, p. 203.

To the ever-increasing number of books that deal with the events and the personages of our own brief American past, Howard Fast has made an interesting and valuable addition with his fictionalized biography of Thomas Paine. In Citizen Tom Paine he has succeeded, to a laudable degree, not only in sketching a vivid portrait of one of the most extraordinary figures of the eighteenth century, but in projecting it against the stormy background of the times in which he lived and played a part, whose importance has been far too little recognized. (p. 1)

[Mr. Fast] tells his story by means of a series of quick and vivid impressions, with frequent changes of locale and sudden flash-backs to Paine's early life—in short, a kind of montage. And though one might take exception, now and then, to a certain lushness in the writing, there emerges from the book, as a whole, a clearly delineated portrait of Paine…. (p. 18)

Elmer Rice, "Tom Paine, Prophet of Liberty," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1943 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), April 25, 1943, pp. 1, 18.

I propose Howard Fast as one of America's most important historical novelists. For one thing, he is almost alone in his ability to relate a historical narrative in around three hundred pages, so reading him amounts to something less than a lifework. More weighty, however, is the fact that he always penetrates to the heart of our history. His interest lies in the projection of meaningful men involved in a meaningful situation. His mind has a clarity which is almost cold at times and never charming. You cannot go to him for the warm details of historical costume, slang, or local and temporal color. He values intelligence above the picturesque. Perhaps he will never be overwhelmingly popular….

"Citizen Tom Paine" novelizes the miserable, glorious life of the first American to understand that our Revolution was a small part of a continuing process…. (p. 73)

Paine appears as a fool on occasion, a weakling on occasion, a bad politician always, but also as one of the few men of his time (Franklin was another) who understood the Revolution, who understood "the inevitability of America" (Mr. Fast's phrase), who understood that the thirteen quarrelsome, jealous colonies bore within them the seeds of a new world. (p. 74)

Clifton Fadiman, "Books: 'Citizen Tom Paine'" (© 1943 by The New Yorker Magazine, Inc.; reprinted by permission of Lescher & Lescher Agency on behalf of Clifton Fadiman), in The New Yorker, Vol. XIX, No. 11, May 1, 1943, pp. 70-4.

[Thomas] Paine is a good subject for a historical novelist; a master controversialist, he lived one of the stormiest of lives, and his picturesque career ended in tragedy…. But much in Paine's mind and character remains unknown, and the historical novelist has scope for original interpretation. He can well present Paine as a hero—and Mr. Fast does so; he can with good reason paint him as one of the liberators of the human mind.

The best element in [Citizen Tom Paine] is the portrait of Paine; a portrait vigorous, consistent, and admiring. The story is a series of vividly imagined and highly dramatic scenes…. From beginning to end the novel is swift-paced, lusty-spirited, and rhetorical. It grips the reader, and leaves him feeling that he understands some of the personages and occurrences of the turbulent period better. In fact, it is so good that we cannot help wishing that it were a great deal better. To its feverish speed and rhetorical energy it sacrifices the finer shades of historical truth and the more delicate effects of art. It contains many false touches—false to fact, false in taste; it draws altogether too lurid a picture of different social environments; its rude sketches of men like Hamilton, Greene, Condorcet, and Anachorsis Clootz need more finish. The novel has power. But until Mr. Fast learns to combine power with more restraint, more careful accuracy, and more studied art, his books will not last.

Allan Nevins, "Man of Reason with a Mission," in The Saturday Review of Literature (copyright © 1943 by Saturday Review; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission), Vol. XXVI, No. 18, May 1, 1943, p. 8.

There is neither confusion nor stylistic nonsense in Howard Fast's "Freedom Road," which has at once the virtues and the defects of a cleanly written political tract. Mr. Fast, in adding another volume to his series of American historical novels, sets out to right the balance on the Reconstruction Period in South Carolina, which, following the precedent of Pike's "The Prostrate State," has been set down in one book after another as a horrible record of Negro, Carpetbagger and Scalawag ignorance, brutality and corruption….

But Mr. Fast's account of Gideon Jackson's rise from slave to statesman and the experiment in racial and social democracy on what had been the Carwell plantation never achieves "the solidity of specification" (the phrase is Henry James') that we have come to demand of fiction. It lacks dimension, depth, above all [saturation in its materials]…. (p. 196)

Mr. Fast has written a useful democratic tract for the times and anyone who desires racial equality is in his debt, but in his effort to counterbalance the distortions of the majority of the historians of the Reconstruction he has made overstatements, if not errors, of his own. (pp. 196-97)

George Mayberry, "Two Down," in The New Republic (reprinted by permission of The New Republic; © 1944 The New Republic, Inc.), Vol. III, No. 7, August 14, 1944, pp. 195-97.∗

I respect Howard Fast as one of the ablest and most patriotic of our novelists, and I see in … Freedom Road, a valiant effort to inform us of a period when, in the aftermath of the Civil War, blind emotionalism and black hatred defeated the very ideals for which our ablest men had been fighting….

In the writing of Freedom Road, Mr. Fast the historian has sometimes been outmaneuvered by Mr. Fast the moralist…. The moralist in Mr. Fast reminds me at times of John Bunyan. His Gideon is a paragon whose integrity and courage are spotless white; his anti-christs, the planter Stephan Holms and Jason Hugar, are blacker than hell. What redeems this book is the sure narrative skill of the novelist when at last the forces of darkness, the Klan, are closing in.

Edward Weeks, "Black Hatred," in The Atlantic Monthly (copyright © 1944, by The Atlantic Monthly Company, Boston, Mass.; reprinted with permission), Vol. 174, No. 3, September, 1944, p. 127.

Mr. Fast gives us a liberal mixture [of stories in "Departure and Other Stories,"] and every time you might think you have him summed up the next story will be something different again. But let it be said that he never fails to be fluently readable and that always (or almost always) he has a story to tell.

Out of these nineteen stories, though, certain groupings can be discerned. There are three, for instance, that deal with the frontier. I think it is a true accomplishment to be able to give the reader the feeling, as economically as Mr. Fast does, that he is in another time. Mr. Fast doesn't use the sort of trick common to many historical novelists: no costume description or bits of Americana. He just gives you human beings and the mood and feel of a time and place.

Another grouping that might be noticed is that containing the kind of story that shows contemporary New Yorkers caught in a delicate and self-revelatory situation…. In story ideas as good as [his] the irony bites deep, and one must admire the brevity with which the incident, the development of it, and the outcome are handled. But one could wish, too, that the main character in each case was a trifle less generalized.

I found the kind of emotion that infuses the title story, "Departure," on the phony side. There is a certain kind of sentimentality still adhering to the literary treatment of the Spanish Civil War that can occasionally set my teeth on edge. And "Departure" has it. Flag waving of almost any kind is still flag waving. Now and then Mr. Fast gives way to temptation and does it. (pp. 27-8)

Hollis Alpert, "Fiction Notes: 'Departure and Other Stories'," in The Saturday Review of Literature (copyright © 1949 by Saturday Review; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission), Vol. XXXII, No. 52, December, 24, 1949, pp. 27-8.

Once it was possible to distinguish the creative writer from the pamphleteer in the works of Howard Fast. Unfortunately for his success in the field of the novel, his steady shift to the left has cast an increasingly hectic fever-flush on each of his recent productions…. ["Spartacus"] is a far cry from such notable books as "The Unvanquished," a dreary proof that polemics and fiction cannot mix.

This time, Mr. Fast has gone back two thousand years in history—to the last century of the pagan era and the famous gladiators' revolt against the empire. As always, his heroes (the revolting slaves) are more than merely heroic. From their leader down, they are saints in shining armor, ready to level the walls of Rome and admit the proletarian sunlight. Naturally the villains of the piece (the Senate, and the legions that do its bidding) are blackhearted rogues whose only god is the status quo….

[It] is obvious from the first page that Mr. Fast has not set out to illumine a poignant episode in ancient history. "Spartacus," like so much of his later work, is a tract in the form of a novel. Occasionally (when he is describing the inferno of a slave bivouac in the desert, the torments of a crucified gladiator, the life-and-death struggle in the arena) Mr. Fast's pages take on a brilliance that recalls his earlier work. But the Q.E.D. he proposes simply does not square with the geometry of history.

Melville Heath, "War of the Gladiators," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1952 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), February 3, 1952, p. 22.

As material for ["Spartacus"], Howard Fast has taken the slave revolts that troubled the Roman Empire just before the coming of Christ…. As an historian Mr. Fast is, as usual, persuasive. He has supplied all the homely details and evidences of careful research which, a few years back, called forth the critical encomium "one of America's finest writers of historical novels." As a polemicist he has happily restrained the tendency to the orotund phrase, the too sophomoric declamation of his political faith which marred many of his earlier works….

"Spartacus" is peopled with roundly realized characters. We know not only the nobilities and strengths of Mr. Fast's heroes but also their weaknesses. More importantly, he has given us real glimpses into the humanity of his villains. He tells us what Graccus and Crassus are, in his book; but he also lets us know what they might have been. The result is a good novel which may suffer from the fact that attention to Mr. Fast has shifted from the book page to the front page.

Edward J. Fitzgerald, "Fiction Notes: 'Spartacus'," in The Saturday Review, New York (copyright © 1952 by Saturday Review; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission), Vol. XXXV, No. 10, March 8, 1952, p. 17.

[The impact of "Spartacus"] is diffused and scattered, and it is to be doubted that readers will carry away a coherent memory of the sequence of events that led to Spartacus and the slaves becoming masters for a time of all southern Italy. What they will remember with some vividness is Mr. Fast's description of crucified slaves along the Roman highways, of gladiatorial combat, of pitched battles against the Roman legions.

Mr. Fast's conception of history is not really much different from that of Cecil B. DeMille. His technicolor characters are determinedly banal, stubbornly refusing to speak in any other accents than those we have come to expect from the heroes and heroines of the movie epics.

Harvey Swados, "Epic in Technicolor," in The Nation (copyright 1952 The Nation magazine, The Nation Associates, Inc.), Vol. 174, No. 14, April 5, 1952, p. 331.

If [Upton] Sinclair's chief contribution to modern American fiction was to help establish the novel of contemporary history, Fast's has been to show how an already established form, the traditional historical novel, may be used for radical ends. The conception basic to most of his work is a dialectic of revolutionary development whereby certain past events are viewed as acts in the extended drama of mankind's struggle toward a classless society. Fasts's type-story is that of a revolt of the oppressed against their oppressors—Washington and his starving troops against the power of England, Spartacus and the gladiators or the Maccabees and their people against the power of Rome. Each of these struggles, Fast implicitly or explicitly argues, helped bring mankind closer to its inevitable future, and he hopes to persuade the reader of the magnitude of what might be called the tradition of revolt. (pp. 275-76)

Walter B. Rideout, "The Long Retreat," in his The Radical Novel in the United States: Some Interrelations of Literature and Society (copyright © 1956 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College; excerpted by permission), Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1956, pp. 255-91.∗

Mr. Fast's repentance [for his support of Communism is set forth in The Naked God,] a tiny masterpiece of urgent, diamond-hard prose. He tells of the gradual destruction of a writer's personality by the Party, and of his slow and agonised remaking of himself. Once again we see how Communism works to stamp out the last trace of individuality in its adherents in those lands where it is unable to take their lives; once again we see the parade of inbred lunacy that is the American, as it is the British, Communist Party….

Howard Fast's book leaves one with hope for man's collective wisdom even as one marvels at the depth and breadth of his individual folly. For, after reading it, one is reminded that in Hungary at least they had no such illusions….

Bernard Levin, "Hard and Fast," in The Spectator (© 1958 by The Spectator; reprinted with permission of The Spectator), Vol. 201, No. 6790, August 15, 1958, p. 227.∗

The vision of a utopian future guided Fast through fiction and communism….

Fast never has been clear about how to attain this utopia. At first, he assumed that the example of early America would lead the world there, and he set out to glorify the American Revolution in a series of novels. Misunderstanding much of its character, he viewed the Revolution solely as the beginning of a world struggle for liberty. Later, dissatisfied with the state of political freedom in twentieth-century America, he also grew dissatisfied with his interpretation of her early history. He started to look elsewhere for examples to inspire more struggles for liberty.

Significantly, he never used the Soviet Union as an example. He turned instead to the slaves of Rome and the ancient Jews. But his description of their struggles for freedom did not clear up his vagueness about how to achieve his goal. Through suffering and struggle, he said, freedom can be won, at least for awhile. He never was more concrete than that. Even since his break with communism, Fast has kept his utopian goal and his confusion about how to get there.

Fast's early books about the American Revolution reveal his dream of America: a land of freedom, fighting slavery throughout the world. In essence, his description begins as a simple ode to freedom, with no complications, no questions asked. A Jewish soldier, talking to his comrades at Valley Forge in Conceived In Liberty (1939), comes closest to defining Fast's early view of what America could be: "… the land for the dream of God in man."

By choice of hero, Fast amplified the universal aspects of the American Revolution in Citizen Tom Paine (1943). The emphasis in this book lies almost wholly on the world significance of the colonies' struggle. Mankind, according to Fast, received two things from the Revolution: an example and a promise. The example was the "awkward, stumbling, self-conscious first citizen army the world had ever known." The promise was, as Paine tells the Philadelphia militia, "We are the beginning, and we are making a new world."

When we consider that Fast joined the Communist Party in 1943, the same year Citizen Tom Paine was published, the difference between a Communist like Arthur Koestler and one like Fast becomes apparent. Koestler, after rebelling against a polluted society, sought a utopia. Fast reversed the emphasis and sought the utopia first. While his society may have dissatisfied him, he did not view it as polluted and, in fact, found the vision of his utopia in the folklore of the society itself. The Communist Party became, for Fast, an American way of achieving an American end.

Not until he joined the party did Fast seriously start to criticize America. His first attempts to describe pollution in American society came with Freedom Road (1944) and The American (1946).

Although Freedom Road ends with a tribute to the unconquerable memory of Gideon Jackson, a former slave who becomes a congressman and then dies at the hand of the Klan, it is Fast's most despairing book…. His picture of Reconstruction was as all black as his picture of the Revolution had been all white.

The American, a biographical novel about John Peter Altgeld, reveals a more subtle and magnificant disillusion with American society…. Altgeld refuses the plea of Eugene V. Debs to look toward socialism and so, in Fast's view, rejects the only true weapon.

This failure signaled the cracking of Fast's first dream. Somehow he had equated a Communist utopia with his vision of America, but now he decided American society, past as well as present, was too polluted to sustain it. (pp. 498-99)

In the years between The American and Khrushchev's speech on Stalin in 1956, Fast followed two paths. He wrote a series of novels carping at contemporary life in the United States, and he wrote two novels exploring ancient battles for freedom in Rome and Israel. Clarkton (1947), Silas Timberman (1954) and The Story of Lola Gregg (1956) read like Communist analogues to the cheap bestseller or the roaring Western. They are characterized mainly by a ludicrous struggle between the bad guys (either strikebreakers or FBI agents) and the good guys (either Communists or fellow travelers) and by a complete lack of understanding of the American judicial system. These novels were weak as political statements because Fast had no clear notion of what his Communist utopia should be or how it should be attained. He did not look toward the Soviet Union as an example nor, any longer, toward the goals of early America, but contented himself with trying to pick faults in the society around him. The Passion of Sacco and Vanzetti (1953), a departure from Fast's main paths during this period, expressed his Communist dream most clearly, and it is a very vague expression….

The novels of ancient history [Spartacus (1951) and My Glorious Brothers (1948)] tell us even less about communism…. Instead of having 1775 open a great battle for world freedom, Fast now assigns this role to the unsuccessful slave revolt against ancient Rome and the Jewish uprising led by the Maccabees against Greek tyrants. These struggles, however, seem to be more important as precursors than as first steps. They change the world little, but give Fast an opportunity to pay tribute to what he considered the first outbursts against tyranny.

The aimless generalizations in the novels of the late 1940s and the early 1950s indicate that communism without any special American character could not hold him….

And the more communism separated him from American traditions, the more Fast became separated from communism. His later novels, carping about modern America and extolling ancient struggles, gave Fast only a sense of aimlessness. He could not borrow fervor from foreign sources. (p. 499)

Since his break with the party, the 44-year-old Fast has published a book about his Communist experiences and a novel. The Naked God, his confession, is extremely disappointing, failing to explain adequately either his reasons for remaining in the party so long or the inner turmoil that led to his disillusion. Much of the book sounds like the musings of a patient as he wanders over his confused past for an analyst. Perhaps the book came too soon after the event. Moses, Prince of Egypt (1958), has some characteristics of his other explorations into ancient struggles for freedom, although, since it treats of the young Moses, there is no struggle, but only the knowledge that it will come.

This novel is perhaps evidence that Fast, the ex-Communist, will continue to study freedom, again seeing it as no more than an exciting, bitter struggle containing the seeds of some vague, utopian peace. It may also be evidence that Fast is fashioning a new dream in which the Jewish people lead the world, as he once though America and communism did. (pp. 499-500)

But, whether or not he rushes on a new path to utopia, his older writings must not be ignored. They document a unique political record, a depressing American waste. They describe a man who distorted his vision of America to fit a vision of communism, and then lost both. (p. 500)

Stanley Meisler, "The Lost Dreams of Howard Fast," in The Nation (copyright 1959 The Nation magazine, The Nation Associates, Inc.), Vol. 188, No. 22, May 30, 1959, pp. 498-500.

E. V. Cunningham tackles a world-shaking theme in the manner of a slick romance in Phyllis…. Why is Sgt. Tom Clancy, N.Y.P.D. posing as an assistant professor of physics at Knickerbocker University? The answer, gradually revealed, is startling, and the ensuing action effective. There are the ingredients of a superior (if hardly credible) thriller here—if only so much of the dialogue did not seem to have escaped from a women's magazine or even from daytime television. (p. 22)

Anthony Boucher, "Criminals at Large," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1962 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), March 4, 1962, pp. 20, 22.∗

The Spanish inquisition, and the Grand Inquisitor himself, are the subjects of Torquemada, a brief, intense, and thoroughly disappointing novel….

Mr. Fast is here confronting powerful themes: the passions that lead men to do evil in the name of God and the Good, the meaning of freedom of conscience. But the treatment is heavy-handed, rigid, portentous, abstract. Mr. Fast does not appear to be at home in the Spanish milieu…. In art, impossibilities that are made to seem likely are much more effective than anomalous truths…. In the case of Torquemada, Mr. Fast may have no more than the facts on his side.

Emile Capouya, "Evil in the Name of Good," in Saturday Review (copyright © 1966 by Saturday Review; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission), Vol. XLIX, No. 4, January 22, 1966, p. 43.

To be effective, Torquemada would have to do either (preferably both) of two things: document in full the spiritual shame and social inanition of late 15th-century Spain or guess its way into the mind of Thomas the Grand Inquisitor himself. Unaccountably, it does neither, and the resulting narrative—thin without austerity, superficial without even the pomp of surfaces—is curiously flavorless.

Perhaps Mr. Fast is trying for a bleak epitome, a skeletal slap in the face. His plot suggests as much….

The whole thing—subsidiary characters who are mere props, timeless and insipid conversations, hackneyed ironies with pigeons and unclad children—reads as if Mr. Fast were bored before he began…. Mr. Fast seems little involved, little tempted to be bold. No doubt his aloofness is supposed to connote ineffable ironies, but it doesn't for me. At the end I felt about Torquemada as, at one point, Mendoza the rabbi does: "I don't know who he is or what he is."

Paul West, "Uninquisitive," in Book Week—The Sunday Herald Tribune (© 1966, The Washington Post), January 23, 1966, p. 18.

Before I reached the midpoint of Howard Fast's new novel [Torquemada] I was prepared to subhead this review "For Ages 12 to 16." Most of the paragraphs could be used verbatim as captions in a children's encyclopedia. The excursion into Spain, when the Dominican prior Tomás de Torquemada (1420–1498) served as generalissimo of the Inquisition, the cardboard cutouts used as "set pieces," the grimly-telegraphed story-line, seemed parts of the same pattern, illustrating the eternal theme that Man plays God at his peril.

Later, of course, it is apparent that this book is a tract for our times, for all ages. "He is a righteous man, your Torquemada," says the wise Rabbi Mendoza. "Out of his righteousness, he states what God wills. This is the curse of all righteous men." It would be pleasant to report that Mr. Fast has dramatized this truism, within his self-imposed framework, in terms that would stir the average reader. Unfortunately, once the truism is stated, his short novel does no more than double on its tracks.

William Du Bois, "The Grand Inquisitor," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1966 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), February 6, 1966, p. 42.

Howard Fast is a historical novelist known for "Spartacus," "Citizen Tom Paine," "Freedom Road," "The American." If he is a chronicler of some of mankind's most glorious moments, he is also a register of some of our more senseless deeds.

His newest novel, "The Hessian," is a hard flint chip of a story, a shard preserved from the American Revolution. Mr. Fast holds up his flint to the present and says, in effect, this is what war does to men, this is the insane inflexiblity that war induces, that induces war.

As a result of a chain of singularly pigheaded circumstances, a Hessian boy is wounded and pursued into the swamps of colonial Connecticut. He is found and given shelter by a Quaker family living in a small Connecticut community, a society composed mainly of Puritans….

The Puritans who move against the boy are not evil. Mr. Fast makes that plain. They are simply implacable….

"There are times," Dr. Feversham comments, "when the circumstances of life become implacable, and when you have the feeling that no force or argument or plea can alter them, one event moving in the tracks of another with the mindless plodding of a great ox." That, I suggest, is the weakness of "The Hessian" as a story. It simply records the plodding implacability of that ox. Yet there are men who oppose the times they live in, but they are outnumbered, outgunned by history.

There is conflict, there is also authentic regional and temporal atmosphere, and dialogue as tight as a soldier's drum, in "The Hessian," but the forces of love and kindness never have a chance…. As it is, "The Hessian" mirrors not life as we know it in its fullest complexity, but life in "special circumstances, a grimmer-than-usual moment in time.

One steps back into history to look for a parable, an analogy to the present, but our colonial past was a simpler time; its simplicities are not ours. And the parable remains a hard flint chip from another age.

Victor Howes, "A Hard Flint Chip of a Story," in The Christian Science Monitor (reprinted by permission from The Christian Science Monitor; © 1972 The Christian Science Publishing Society; all rights reserved), August 23, 1972, p. 11.

Choose a well-worn homily ("God works in strange ways"); mix in a headline from the morning's newspaper ("Public Works Kickback Revealed, Four City Councilmen Implicated"); add a twist of the fantastic ("I propose to buy off God"); and blend carefully into a light, tasty dish; alter the ingredients slightly and blend again; repeat eleven more times and serve. The result is a thirteen-course dinner, each course a dessert—Howard Fast's "A Touch Of Infinity: Thirteen New Stories of Fantasy and Science Fiction."

More fantasy than hard-core science fiction, Fast's short stories cleverly detail one man's sadly ironic view of the twentieth-century world…. Fast's men and women, each caught in some dilemma of a tragic, misguided world, reach for escape through fantastic means; but the extra-terrestrial dimension usually offers no salvation. The level of ingenuity of each escape determines whether or not the story succeeds. (pp. 239-40)

It is a familiar world in which Fast's people live, but their familiar predicaments are resolved in unusual ways. When the unusual is also ingenious, Fast casts delightful spells. But, when the unusual lacks intrinsic charm, Fast often tells little more than a tired moralistic tale. "A Touch of Infinity" is a meal without a main course, but some of the desserts are delicious enough to satisfy most appetites. (p. 240)

Melody Hardy, "Fiction: 'A Touch of Infinity'," in Best Sellers (copyright 1973, by the University of Scranton), Vol. 33, No. 11, September 1, 1973, pp. 239-40.

[The Immigrants] slides down easily, like a friendly if unexceptional Napa wine. All the elements of popular American mythology are offered up for tasting….

The characters of this novel are doers, as Fast never tires of pointing out, and are little given to introspection. The mildly annoying conceit that people "do what they do" because they "are what they are" serves ultimately as a rationalization for the fact that the first generation parvenus are wrecked financially, while the entrenched class of Seldons survives….

This is almost a nineteenth-century European vision of America: Lavette sought to rise above his economically and ancestrally determined place. He had neither religion, past, nor, indeed, a whole self to justify the repudiation of his origins. Fast does a yeomanlike if predictable job of tracing the arc of this iron determinism.

Stephan Salisbury, "Books in Brief: 'The Immigrants'," in Saturday Review (copyright © 1977 by Saturday Review; all rights reserved; reprinted by permission), Vol. 4, No. 24, September 17, 1977, p. 41.

Howard Fast's "The Immigrants" concerns French, Italian, Irish and Chinese immigrants in turn-of-the-century San Francisco…. Fast never parades his research, but each scene stands on firm detail. One of his best novels (he's produced about 60 books), it spans 40 years. It's also the opener of a [series] that is likely to be Fast's big bid for recognition as an artist. He does a lot of things right in this novel…. I always fear that a Fast novel is proving a thesis, even though his deep story-hooks keep me reading. And "The Immigrants," I'm sure, has some overriding social purpose, but happily it never gets in front of the relentless pace of events. In short, you can enjoy this book without a thought in your head….

I began to sense real experiences leaping full-bodied from Fast's imagination as rapidly as they could be thought up, as if his brain had an amazing ability to seize mental building-stuff and instantly shape it into anything.

The love story is the novel's strongest force…. Fast triumphs over two left feet in creating a believable interracial love story between a feminist Chinese heroine and a macho French-Italian giant.

Donald Newlove, "Three Novels: 'The Immigrants'," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1977 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), October 2, 1977, p. 24.

[E. V. Cunningham's "The Case of the One-Penny Orange"] is the first of a series with a Nisei detective…. [An] investigation takes him into the world of rare stamps…. The trail leads back to World War II and the Gestapo, and there is plenty of excitement before Masuto wraps everything up.

Masuto is an interesting addition to the current crop of detectives. He is a very modern Oriental, generations removed from Charlie Chan (though he does murmur "Ah, so" at frequent intervals). Smart, intuitive, mixing well with his American colleagues, Masuto is a well-conceived character whose further exploits should gain him a wide audience.

Newgate Callendar, "Crime: 'The Case of the One-Penny Orange'," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1977 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), October 30, 1977, p. 30.

[In "The Immigrants"] Fast charts the rise of a poor boy—in this case second generation Italian-French immigrant Dan Lavette—to the top of corporate power and money and back down again….

"The Immigrants" moves fast. Several of the characters are stock and predictable, such as Dan's wife, the wealthy, beautiful, but frigid Jean. Yet the action drives along at such a pace that the reader is entertained by events, if not always by the characters involved in them:

Fast's novel is set in San Francisco during the first three decades of this century. It traces the lives of four families—Protestant, Catholic, Jewish, and Chinese—and shows how the lives of these families are shaped by both their immigrant pasts and the values of the new land.

Dan himself is an American innocent—basically a good man who, only at the end, begins to understand himself and the game he has been caught in….

The most interesting character in the book is Dan's Chinese mistress May Ling, who does understand him and herself and the complex forces of Californian (and American) society in the booming years of the early 1900s….

Fast is a facile writer. He writes in short scenes which rarely run more than half a dozen pages, and out of these hundreds of quick scenes, he compiles his book.

His novel is entertainment fiction—not profound or artistically remarkable, but a good, easy read. Fast is at his best as a storyteller. When he tries to make his story stand for more than it is, when he tries to generalize and call for emotions and significance he hasn't built in, he becomes banal. Fortunately, however, the storyteller usually wins out.

Joanne Leedom-Ackerman, "Fast's Quick-Scene Novel: Grist for TV Drama Mill?" in The Christian Science Monitor (reprinted by permission from The Christian Science Monitor; © 1977 The Christian Science Publishing Society; all rights reserved), November 7, 1977, p. 18.

[Detective Masao Masuto is back again in E. V. Cunningham's "The Case of the Russian Diplomat"] and this book is every bit as good as its predecessor.

The case involves a dead man in the swimming pool of a posh Beverly Hills hotel…. Masuto, a Zen Buddhist and karate expert, a super-efficient cop, can be as tough as they come. Mr. Cunningham wastes no time with extraneous materials. He sticks close to the plot, builds up the action suspensefully and gleefully knocks down a clay pigeon in the form of a pompous F.B.I. man. This is a smart, exciting, rather original procedural.

Newgate Callendar, "Crime: 'The Case of the Russian Diplomat'," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1978 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), May 14, 1978, p. 34.

Cunningham writes a lean prose—remarkably like Howard Fast's—and in The Case of the Russian Diplomat he … turns to kidnapping, hostages, and the way in which irrational acts can be seen to be utterly rational. Masao Masuto, another of the growing ranks of ethnically-identified detectives, is highly competent, and Cunningham uses him well to make several muted points about racism in America. (pp. 54-5)

Robin Winks, "Mysteries: 'The Case of the Russian Diplomat'," in The New Republic (reprinted by permission of The New Republic; © 1978 The New Republic, Inc.), Vol. 179, No. 19, November 4, 1978, pp. 53-5.∗

Lucid characterizations, with an enthralling, if somewhat imitative plot, describe Second Generation,… [which traces] the lives, loves and tragedies of various California families in this century. A sequel to The Immigrants, the years comprising this novel—1934–46—lend to the direct and indirect hardships suffered among the Lavettes, the Levys, the Casalas, and their kin….

What makes this book enjoyable is Fast's development of the supporting characters while keeping Barbara as the main protagonist. A confused girl who is initially incapable of loving anyone, Barbara discovers herself in womanhood through others.

Anthony Salamone, "Fiction: 'Second Generation'," in Best Sellers (copyright © 1979 Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation), Vol. 38, No. 10, January, 1979, p. 297.

[E. V. Cunningham's] "The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs" presents Sergeant Masuto with a case in which somebody is handing out poison goodies…. Masuto solves this case as he has solved the others in the past—through footwork, intuition, Zen philosophy and meditation. It also helps that he has Japanese friends and relatives all over the place, all of them wise, subtle and as intuitive as Masuto himself. Masuto gets into his usual trouble with his superiors and with the Los Angeles Police Department. Can he help it if he is smarter than they are? As before, Masuto's wife is a member of the cast, and there are some delightful asides about her and her investigations into the women's liberation movement.

Newgate Callendar, "Crime: 'The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs'," in The New York Times Book Review (© 1979 by The New York Times Company; reprinted by permission), June 10, 1979, p. 31.

"The Immigrants" and "Second Generation" were best sellers, and Fast hasn't changed his recipe for this latest volume ["The Establishment"] in the chronicle of the San Francisco Lavettes. There's the same smooth blending of individual and socio-political history, the same firm story line with crises neatly spaced along it, almost the same cast of characters…. The story lacks real punch, but it will certainly entertain those who are entertained by its two predecessors.

"Fiction: 'The Establishment'," in Publishers Weekly (reprinted from the August 6, 1979 issue of Publishers Weekly, published by R. R. Bowker Company, a Xerox company; copyright © 1979 by Xerox Corporation), Vol. 216, No. 6, August 6, 1979, p. 86.

[Ultimately, The Establishment] seems to be a story about values and about the way people function in the modern world. At one point Barbara reflects that she has "done her share to make this snake pit men call civilization a little more tolerable." In various ways this is what the people of good will in this book seek to do. Against them we have the Establishment, "those who are so enormously rich and powerful that they control the state." A politician named Drake and a group of wealthy businessmen are among these.

Mr. Fast has written a readable book that holds the interest. He suggests that being part of the human race—in the best and truest sense—is important.

John S. Phillipson, "Fiction: 'The Establishment'," in Best Sellers (copyright © 1979 Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation), Vol. 39, No. 8, November, 1979, p. 277.

A Nisei detective in his oriental inscrutability miraculously solves four related murders the day after they are committed in this dull novel [by E. V. Cunningham, The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs,] whose only redeeming social value is its brevity. No wonder that the author, who is an asserted distinguished writer, has used a pseudonym in penning this dreary mystery story which purports to have been written as a suspense thriller.

"Notes on Current Books: 'The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs'," in The Virginia Quarterly Review (copyright, 1980, by The Virginia Quarterly Review, The University of Virginia), Vol. 56, No. 1 (Winter, 1980), p. 14.

The entanglements of the Lavette family, which unfolded in three previous novels (The Immigrants, Second Generation, The Establishment), are subtly, neatly recalled throughout [The Legacy]. As in the past two novels, Fast focuses on Dan Lavette's dynamic daughter, Barbara, whose amorous, feminist, and antiwar ("Mothers for Peace") activities form the central action of the novel. The novelist also gives prominent attention to the third generation of Lavettes…. As usual the clan members are in on history-making events while dealing with a fair share of romantic and financial concerns. Light, engrossing fiction.

Denise P. Donavin, "Upfront, Advance Reviews—Adult Fiction: 'The Legacy'," in Booklist (reprinted by permission of the American Library Association; copyright © 1981 by the American Library Association), Vol. 77, Nos. 22/23, July 15/August, 1981, p. 1417.