Hollywood. In The Immigrants, that soulnis bared for the world to see.nXhe novel opens with the arrivalnin America of an Italian couple, who, inna few opening pages, are cheated, subjectednto brutal conditions and movednthrough a number of years to SannFrancisco. The husband eventually becomesna fisherman and wants his son tonfollow his trade. His wife objects. “Thisnis America,” she says, “It’s not Italy. Thisnis San Francisco. Italians are not peasantsnhere; they are lawyers and doctors andnstorekeepers.” This notion that Italy, withnits treasures and genius, is a land ofnpeasants is barely noticeable amid a junglenof brutal illiteracies that stud every page.nFrom the start descriptions and dialoguenis truncated, shorn of depth, unreal andnhateful. By page thirty the San Francisconearthquake has erupted, and the citynenjoys, amid the disaster, “a brief respitenfrom the peculiar racial hatreds” thenauthor describes.nAction swallows reason and eventsntumble as Howard Fast’s Americanemerges in all its evil. A Chinesenaccountant is introduced, who lives undernsuch prejudice that “there is not anmoment in his life when he was not alertnand wary.” By page forty the hero isninvited, on brief acquaintance, to thenhome of a Nob Hill banker who discussesnbusiness at the table, in 1910. Furthernimprobabilities pile to mountainous proportions.nWithin a few more pages thenbanker’s daughter has stripped naked,ndemanded sexual intercourse and “. . .nwashed away all that separated her fromnthe whores in the Tenderloin.”nBy then it is appallingly clear that thenmind of the famous Howard Fast isnvulgar, and that he regards the humannrace through a prism of racial and religiousnstereotypes. His turns of plot andnhis people are alike mindless, barren ofnlearning or deep emotion: they reflectnthe views of the basest elements ofnsociety, with their projections of limitlessngreed and brutal couplings.nAnomalies abound. Men on the waterfrontnin 1910 are quoted using the horriblenobscenity m f r, at a timenwhen such a word was not only unheard,nbut unthought. The hero’s daughter, inn1928, repulsing the ardent advances ofna suitor, pleads that she has herpes—anvenereal disease unknown till the 1970’s.nA Chinese girl in 1910 terms herself anfeminist—and so on. Fortunately for Fastnhe need not worry that his readers willnfind such illiteracies bothersome; anyonenwho can voluntarily read his novel allnthe way through is dead to nuance andnbarren of judgment.nWhat is far worse than the errorsnof time, place and dialogue, however, isnthe persistent venom; the darkened andneven malign view of the human race thatndrips from every page. In 1928 even thenmemory of Alfred E. Smith is traduced,nand he is supposed to appeal to the heronfor campaign funds on the basis of theirnshared Catholicism, and to say, “We’re andifferent breed from these cold Protestantnbastards who own this country.” Thatnbias is attributed first to one character,nand then to another. A Hollywoodncharacter, scornful of the concept ofnfemale virginity, says, “that whole notionnis a con invented by some white Protestant-god-merchant.”nThe hero’s wife, being both white andnProtestant, is, of course, unfaithful—andnis the only unfaithful wife in a collectionnthat includes, as Fast never tires of tellingnus, Italian, Jewish and Chinese families.nThe hero is eventually divorced butnhis Protestant nemesis, having inheritednthe control of a large San Francisco bank,nstrips him of his remaining possessionsnafter the market crash of 1929. The pointnthat honest immigrants have no chancenagainst the entrenched Protestants is,nthroughout, crudely and repeatedlynstressed.nOnce returned to poverty, however,nthe hero struggles with new and deepernthoughts. “I never really worked out,” hensays of his days of illusion, “what it meansnin this country to be Jewish or Italian ornChinese or Negro or Mexican…” Finallynhe returns to being a fisherman, becomesnlean, bronzed and—once again—pure,nand marries his long-suffering Chinesenmistress. The saga, or at least this firstnnnthird of a threatened trilogy, ends withnsome lines attributed to the Natural Waynof Lao Tzu: “… he who does not desirento be ahead of the world becomes thenleader of the world.” Never has a book ofnless than 400 pages seemed so long.nNevertheless The Immigrants isnuseful, for it bares Howard Fast. He hasnsaid he has broken with communism andnnow follows Zen—but that is unimportant.nWhat is important is that his opinionnof this nation and the majority of itsnpeople remains, as it has always been,nprejudiced and unfriendly. That isnimportant because his reappearance onnthe best-seller lists occurs at the samentime as the resurgence of LilliannHellman—after a long, not dissimilarnhiatus from success. Fast also emergesnat a time when other names, once nearlynforgotten, that were held aloft duringnthe Thirties, are again in lights. Thendrums are rolling for Fast, and for Hellman,nand for Jessica Mitford, and othersnwho have always been and some whonhave recently joined their special coterie.nIt is plain that a circle of sorts is beingnrounded. The propaganda machinenthat once provided Fast a Stalin PeacenPrize for his denigrations of Americanand his service to the sowers of hate, isnonce again at work. Readers, beware.nThere is more than entertainmentnbeing offered. Dn”Fast never parades his research, butneach scene stands on firm detail. Onenof his best novels . . .[it’s] the openernof a trilogy that is likely to be Fast’snbig bid for recognition as an artist.nHe does a lot of things right in thisnnovel …”n—New York Times Book ReviewnChronicles of Culturen