Brecht and America

Brecht andAmerica James K.Lyon.Bertolt Brecht in America. Princeton:Princeton UniversityPress. 1980. 408+ xivpp. Patty LeeParmalee. Brecht's America. !ColumbusJ: Miami/Ohio State University Press, 1981.306 + xixpp. Gordon Tracy Thesetwowell-researched books treat quite differentdimensionsofBrecht's relationshipswith the U.S.Parmalee considers the early influenceon Brecht ofAmericanwritersand the booksfromwhichhe adopted ideasand material, thentraces, against the background of Brecht's continuing interest in and changingview of America, his study of Marx and his total "conversion" to Marxism.She terminates her study in 1931,the year in which St. Joan of the Stockyardswas finished. Lyon,after a lengthyprologue whichhas to do with Brecht'svisit to New York in 1935and his years in Denmark, Sweden and Finland,concentrates on his exile in America, 1941-47. He focusesfirst on Brecht'srelationships with film and theater people in Hollywood and his attemptto make a livingthere. Lyon'sfinal sections deal withBrecht's antifascistactivities , his firm belief in the strong democratic potential of the Germanpeople, his relations with the American left, and his appearance beforethe House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). The approaches of the two writers are quite different. Parmalee engages ina good deal of literary criticism and analysisand reproduces many notes andoutlinesfromtheBrechtArchivein EastBerlin.Shewritesveryknowledgeablyabout Brecht's study of Marxist economic theory and of the gradual deepeningand hardeningofhisMarxiststance.Shemakesfrequentreferences toEast German critics, and her whole study resounds with Marxist fervor. ' Lyon basis his reports on interviewswith friends, relatives and collaborators Canadian Review of American Studies. Volume 14,Number 4, Winter 1983,489-96 490 Gordon Tracy ofBrecht, on unpublishedletters and documents, including Brecht's FBIfile. The names of his interviewees are to be found, with dates, in an appendix. Lyonwrites in a "non-psychological, descriptive" way, as he puts it (p. xii), and an interesting story and a revealing character-study result. I propose to synopsize Parmalee's more literary chapters, then the strong politicalcomponent ofher study; subsequently I shall surveythe focusesand highlights of Lyon's book. I shall adopt throughout a descriptive, nonjudgmental approach. * * * Parmalee's book opens with a laudatory foreword by John Willett, in which he says that her book is "exceptionally well written" and that it is "the sole source outside the Brecht Archive in East Berlin" of extracts from previouslyunpublished poems (p. xiv).He goes on to say,somewhat extravagantly , that he hopes German critics, who have ignored the non-German dimensions of Brecht and his work and have elevated him "to some higher and windier cloud in the eternal sky," will read Parmalee's book "and feel ashamed" (p. xvi). In her first twochapters Parmalee looks at works by the American writers Upton Sinclair, Ida Tarbell, Frank Norris, Bouck White, Frank Harris, SherwoodAnderson,GustavusMyers and severalGerman writers whowrote about America, and traces the influence they had on Brecht's writing and thought, particularly on In the Jungle of the Cities and the fragment Joe Fleischhacker. Most of the works she discusses deal with the stock market, the workings of the speculator's mind, exploitation, the Chicago Wheat Exchange, problems of urbanization and industrialization, and the connections between financial interests and government policy. In Myers' Histo,:ii of'the Great America Fortunes, an early example of what might be called "powerstructure research" (p.79),he found detailed accounts of the capitalists he wrote about in the dramatic fragment Dan Drew: Vanderbilt, Drew, Fisk, Gould; and J.P. Morgan, who served asmodel for Mauler in St. Joan. The dramatic swing in Brecht's attitude to art and politics in the years 1926-29and hisespousal of Marxism in the wake of what Parmalee callshis "creative crisis"is well presented. Parmalee tells of Brecht's feeling of uselessnessand dilettantism in 1925and his growing awareness that the proper themes for literature were not individual emotions but social struggles.In thisconnection Parmalee discusses, among other works, two American fragments , Dan Drew and Joe Fleischhacker. The Wheat Exchange is seen in Fleischhacker as a powerfulfactor in the economic life of the U.S. and the world;itrepresentsan "artificialand unnecessary injectionof speculationinto the normalmechanismofproduction and consumption ... and ... this speculationdirectlyaffectsfarmersand consumers through the wholeworld" (p. 128). Brechtand America 491 In 1926Brecht began to read political economy and to believe firmly in hisrevolutionary role as dramatist. Parmalee writesthat...