Jumping the Line: The Adventures and Misadventures of an American Radical (Wisconsin Studies in Autobiography) - Hardcover

Herrick, William

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0299157903 ISBN 13: 9780299157906

Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press, 1998

Synopsis

An eye-opening account of time served in the great battles of our century— for workers’ rights, against Fascism, Communism, and racism—Jumping the Line is the life story of an American original. William Herrick chronicles his adventures and misadventures on the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, in (and very much out of) the Communist Party, driving a tractor on a communal farm in Michigan, jumping the line as a hobo, organizing African American sharecroppers in Georgia, at work with Orson Welles, and immersed in his own writing.
     Herrick chronicles a life of great conviction and great disillusion. He went to Spain in 1936 to fight against the Fascists and there witnessed the horrifying acts that Fascists and Communists alike committed, before he was felled by a near-fatal wound. Here he tells about the life that led him, a working-class Jewish kid from New York, into the idealism and then the murky politics of this internecine conflict. From the bloody fight in Spain he takes us to the battlefields of the Communist movement in the U.S., where he found himself parading up and down the garment district of Manhattan, denouncing his former comrades.
     When Paul Berman interviewed Herrick in the Village Voice in 1986, for the fiftieth anniversary of the Spanish Civil War, Herrick’s remarks so incensed other veterans of the Abraham Lincoln battalion that they picketed the paper. What William Herrick has to say doesn’t always go down easily. But for those who like the truth, with a dash of wit and a healthy dose of history, it can be exhilarating.

About this title

Review

William Herrick provides an eye opening and fiery account of the Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939 in his powerful memoir Jumping the Line. Raised with Communism in his blood, it was inevitable that Herrick would volunteer to fight in Spain with the hope of quelling fascism and battling for the rights of workers. Young and idealistic, Herrick soon learned that both the fascists and Communists committed grotesque acts against humanity, and shame is etched in many of Herrick's accounts of the war. In the 1950s Herrick went on to testify against his former Communist comrades, and again a great sense of guilt pervades his account of this difficult decision.

Herrick's life is anything but dull. He has worked with Orson Welles, met Rita Hayworth, lived as a hobo, and almost died from a bullet wound during the Battle of Jarama. Herrick is a controversial figure who exposed Communist crimes to the media. At the same time he is honest--admitting he too would have done anything asked of him by the Communist party. This is a gutsy memoir told in plain prose, with enough wit to keep the subject from becoming overly dry.

From the Back Cover

Activist William Herrick chronicles his life of both conviction and disillusion-from the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, in and out of the Communist Party, to driving a tractor on a communal farm in Michigan, jumping the lines as a hobo, organizing African American sharecroppers in Georgia, at work with Orson Welles, and immersed in his own writing. For those who like the truth with a dash of wit, it's an exhilarating read.

In the 1930's, Herrick, like many American Communists, went to Spain to fight the Fascists. He writes about what he saw at the front lines in vivid, unsentimental prose. But there is much more to William Herrick than war stories. The childhood that sent him on the path to Spain, conflicts with those who continued to toe the Party line after Spain and the Hitler-Stalin pact, as well as his run in with the lackeys of the McCarthy Senate committee.

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 0299157903
• ISBN 13: 9780299157906
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 260