Literature and Revolution

"Re-reading Trotsky on literature forty years later is a delight. Literary critics of every persuasion could learn a great deal from this book. His defense of the classics and criticism of the avant-garde will surprise some, but when he mocks narcissism and says of writer that he “is always preoccupied with his own self, tells stories about his own self, walks around his own self, sniffs at his own self, and licks his own self,” many contemporary writers and columnists come to mind."
--Tariq Ali, author of Clash of Fundamentalisms

"Roll over Derrida: Literature and Revolution is back in print. Nothing in the postmodern canon comes close to the intellectual grandeur of Trotsky's vision of art and literature in an age of revolution, or his extraordinary meditations on the popular ownership of culture."
--Mike Davis, author of Dead Cities and City of Quartz

"It is splendid to have this magnificent classic of Marxist criticism available once more, and in so helpful and informative a version. Trotsky's rare combination of literary sensitivity and historical understanding gives the lie to all those for whom Marxist criticism can deal with modes of production but not with metaphors.”"
--Terry Eagleton, author of After Theory

"A masterpiece in the great tradition of the statesman/man of letters. Readers for whom “revolution” has become an archaic metaphor, and even an irritating one, will get a jolt from contemplating the passionate defense of cultural continuity and the equally passionate critique of “proletarian” literature articulated by a figure for whom total transformation was what he woke up to every morning."
--Bruce Robbins, professor of English, Columbia University