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One of the common misconceptions on the 1930's radical literature of the US has been caused by the general assumption that its political radicalism had a tendency of neglecting aesthetic formalism, thereby deforming literary works into manifestoes of the left-wing propaganda. However, a significant portion of the radical writers in the 1930s robustly disapproved the partisan distortion of literature. Rather, it is fair to say that, far from the negligence and deformation of artistic values in favor of political agendas and party propaganda, they recognized the inevitable and productive interaction between political radicalism and aesthetic formalism in creating literary text. In consequence, influential writers of the 1930s attempted to combine their spirit of American radicalism with the styles and techniques of modernist arts, such as imagism, cubism and modern cinematography, in their literary works. Moreover, by means of the creative fusion
between radicalism and modernism, they were inspired to produce radical literature by which political messages can be disseminated to a broad-based audience while maintaining the aesthetic value and formalistic sophistication of the literature itself.
Michael Gold’s Jews Without Money and Henry Roth’s Call It Sleep, the masterpieces of the Depression era, should be appreciated as two prominent specimens of the creative fusion between modernism and radicalism. Using the aesthetic languages and devices of modernism, Gold and Roth portrayed the modern landscapes of American capitalism in an effort to accuse them of the absurd contradictions and monstrous inhumanity. As a main narrative device of combining modernism and radicalism, both Gold and Roth used the childhood narrative in which two young boys, Mikey of Jews Without Money and David of Call It Sleep, are not only heroes but also omniscient narrators of the novels. The childhood narrative is also a very effective style for drawing the novels’ popularity and wide-circulation, since the enhanced readability can
help the reader overcome the linguistic complexity and formal sophistication risen from the modernist styles and techniques. Consequently, as the novels of radical modernism, Jews Without Money and Call It Sleep succeed in sending their radical accusations against the capitalist society by portraying the monstrous hardships of back-street lives in New York, without sacrificing their aesthetic quality.