SOURCE: “Howard Fast: An American Leftist Reinterprets His Life,” in Science & Society, Vol. 57, No. 1, Spring, 1993, pp. 86-91.

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 “inaccurate” and evasive.

The publication of Being Red, Howard Fast's account of his association with the Communist Party, should be a valuable addition to the growing list of memoirs and historical studies about the CPUSA. Unfortunately, Fast is unable to separate his primary role as a novelist from his less familiar role as memoirist.

Fast is an unusually prolific writer: his corpus includes more than 80 books, including 50 novels, ten plays, and 20 books of nonfiction. Worldwide sales of his novels have exceeded 80 million. His writings have been translated into 82 languages and many observes—including Fast—insist that he may be the most widely read writer of the 20th...