An account of the subversive acts of literary revenge performed during the Red Scare hearings of the 1950s, and the voices that rose in opposition to the House Un-American Activities Committee.
Enlightening ... Nuanced ... Garber is confident that literature continues to lie in wait for demagogues and authoritarians ... Much as I admire this sentiment, I also fear that it arises from nostalgia for a culture that, however divided it may have been in other ways, held literature in common as a source of value and an object of reverence.
Garber makes the broad claim that literature 'will always undermine power with truth' and that it played the role of 'a treacherous secret agent' during the Red Scare. She likens those years to the current state of repression, censorship, and assault on freedoms, reminding us that literary voices still have potent force. A new light on dark times.
