Howard Fast tirelessly worked his way from poverty to become one of the most widely read writers of the twentieth century. He was already an acclaimed writer by the mid-1940s, when he decided to forma...
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Born in New York City, the son of Barney and Ida Miller Fast, Howard Melville Fast attended George Washington High School and the National Academy of Design. On 6 June 1937, he married Bette Cohen. Th...
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Critical Essay by The New York Times Book Review
The American Colonies during the days of the Revolution are the setting for [Two Valleys]….
Mr. Fast is unusually successful in conveying the mo...
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Critical Essay by Edward Weeks
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 th...
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Critical Essay by Hollis Alpert
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 wi...
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Critical Essay by Walter B. Rideout
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 h...
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Critical Essay by Bernard Levin
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 des...
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Critical Essay by Stanley Meisler
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...
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Critical Essay by Anthony Boucher
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 ...
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Critical Essay by Emile Capouya
The Spanish inquisition, and the Grand Inquisitor himself, are the subjects of Torquemada, a brief, intense, and thoroughly disappointing novel….
Mr. Fast is her...
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Critical Essay by Paul West
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...
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Critical Essay by William Du Bois
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 para...
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Critical Essay by Victor Howes
Howard Fast is a historical novelist known for "Spartacus," "Citizen Tom Paine," "Freedom Road," "The American." ...
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Critical Essay by Melody Hardy
Choose a well-worn homily ("God works in strange ways"); mix in a headline from the morning's newspaper ("Public Works Kickback Revealed, Fou...
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Critical Essay by Stephan Salisbury
[The Immigrants] slides down easily, like a friendly if unexceptional Napa wine. All the elements of popular American mythology are offered up for tasting….
...
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Critical Essay by Donald Newlove
Howard Fast's "The Immigrants" concerns French, Italian, Irish and Chinese immigrants in turn-of-the-century San Francisco…. Fast never par...
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Critical Essay by Newgate Callendar
[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 i...
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Critical Essay by Joanne Leedom-ackerman
[In "The Immigrants"] Fast charts the rise of a poor boy—in this case second generation Italian-French immigrant Dan Lavette—to the...
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Critical Essay by Newgate Callendar
[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 prede...
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Critical Essay by Robin Winks
Cunningham writes a lean prose—remarkably like Howard Fast's—and in The Case of the Russian Diplomat he … turns to kidnapping, hostages, and t...
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Critical Essay by Anthony Salamone
Lucid characterizations, with an enthralling, if somewhat imitative plot, describe Second Generation,… [which traces] the lives, loves and tragedies of variou...
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Critical Essay by Newgate Callendar
[E. V. Cunningham's] "The Case of the Poisoned Eclairs" presents Sergeant Masuto with a case in which somebody is handing out poison goodies&#x...
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Critical Essay by Publishers Weekly
"The Immigrants" and "Second Generation" were best sellers, and Fast hasn't changed his recipe for this latest volume ["Th...
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Critical Essay by John S. Phillipson
[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 ...
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Critical Essay by The Virginia Quarterly Review
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. ...
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Critical Essay by Denise P. Donavin
The entanglements of the Lavette family, which unfolded in three previous novels (The Immigrants, Second Generation, The Establishment), are subtly, neatly recalled...
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Critical Essay by Malcolm Cowley
[In "The Unvanquished" Mr. Fast makes George Washington's greatness] human and credible. Describing the retreat from New York in 1776—and d...
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Critical Essay by Elmer Rice
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 additi...
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Critical Essay by Clifton Fadiman
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 narrativ...
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Critical Essay by Allan Nevins
[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 traged...
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Critical Essay by George Mayberry
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 wri...
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In the following review, Mayberry offers positive assessment of Citizen Tom Paine, though notes the work's limitations.
To his growing portrait gallery of the American Revolution Howard Fast no...
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In the following interview, Fast discusses his life, political concerns, and The Dinner Party.
“It's been said,” Howard Fast remarked, “that I am the most widely read write...
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In the following review, Kilian discusses Fast's stage version of Citizen Tom Paine and actor Richard Thomas's lead performance as Paine.
Tom Paine lives.
He has been brought back to lif...
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In the following excerpted review, Cook praises the authenticity of The Pledge, though finds fault in Fast's literary ability.
To their everlasting discredit, American novelists, most of them, ...
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In the following review of Being Red, Koenig provides an overview of Fast's life and literary career.
Novelist, playwright, biographer, detective-story writer—Howard Fast has been all th...
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In the following review of Being Red, Hitchens praises Fast's engaging recollections, though he finds fault in his writing.
Murray Kempton once told me what he called the only really funny stor...
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In the following review of Being Red, Braudy commends Fast's insight into political history, though he finds fault in his reticence concerning his personal life and motivations.
Howard Fast pub...
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In the following negative review of Being Red, Kanfer condemns Fast's “disingenuous” account of his life and the Communist Party.
Thanks to such works as Lillian Hellman's ...
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In the following review of Being Red, Sigal commends Fast's accounts of his persecution, though finds fault in his sentimentality and lack of insight.
We American ex-Communists sometimes find i...
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In the following negative review of Being Red, Radosh criticizes Fast's involvement in the Communist Party and discrepancies in his recollection of such activities.
Howard Fast is best known as...
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In the following review, Meyer discusses Fast's political involvements and offers tempered assessment of Being Red, which he describes as “readable and useful” though “inac...
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In the following review, Howe objects to Fast's Communist loyalties and offers unfavorable analysis of The Naked God.
The first though not least important thing to be said about The Naked God i...
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In the following interview, Fast discusses his life, literary activities, the Communist Party and his involvement in that organization, and his memoirs The Naked God and Being Red.
[Alan Wald]: When w...
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In the following essay, Traister provides an overview of Fast's life, literary career, political consciousness, and popularity, drawing attention to the need for critical reevaluation of Fast&#...
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In the following essay, Macdonald provides an overview of Fast's life, literary career, and numerous published works, drawing attention to the recurring preoccupations and unifying themes that ...
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In the following review, Sheppard offers unenthusiastic assessment of The Immigrants. “Unfortunately,” writes Sheppard, “Fast's life contains more dramatic and moral confli...
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In the following review, Rubin offers a qualified endorsement of The Outsider.
In 1946, gentle, conscientious young David Hartman, formerly a U.S. Army chaplain, comes to a small Connecticut town to s...
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In the following review, Lehmann-Haupt offers positive evaluation of The Dinner Party, though he finds fault in Fast's lack of literary sophistication.
An old-fashioned Ibsenesque moral drama i...
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In the following review, McLellan offers unfavorable assessment of The Dinner Party.
Recently, an attractive woman told me of attending a Washington dinner party with a lobbyist beau. During the eveni...
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In the following review, Savage offers negative assessment of The Dinner Party.
A Washington dinner party could make for a good novel. Politicians are calculators, and the best of them know how the fi...
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In the following essay, Trescott provides an overview of Fast's life, literary career, and critical reception, including Fast's own comments on these subjects.
Howard Fast, one of the wo...
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Howard Fast
Howard (Melvin) Fast
