Events and Victims (PM Pamphlet)

Vanzetti, Bartolomeo

ISBN 10: 1629635170 ISBN 13: 9781629635170

Publisher: PM Press, 2018

Synopsis

Edited and with a detailed introduction by Jon Curley, this work features a never-before-published short story by the famous anarchist and victim of legal persecution and xenophobia. That fact that Bartolomeo Vanzetti, an Italian immigrant, learned to write in English while jailed for a capital crime is remarkable enough. What is even more astonishing is that he chose to use his new language skills to write creatively, inventing a parable about worker exploitation and environmental disaster that is as relevant today as it was almost 100 years ago. In a time of assault on immigrants, dissidents, radicals, and the environment, Events and Victims is as timely as ever.

About this title

About the Author

Bartolomeo Vanzetti was born in Villafalletto, Italy in 1888. As an immigrant anarchist, he was at the center of one of the most notorious legal cases of the 20th century, along with Nicola Sacco, that highlighted American anti-immigrant and anti-radical sentiment during the Red Scare. Jon Curley is a poet and teacher, whose collections include Hybrid Moments and Scorch Marks. 

Review

"To encounter Vanzetti's Events and Victims—written in the 1920s while awaiting his own execution—is to return to that world of man vs. machine, to witness yet another wave of humanity uprooted from its commons and forced to live against the infernal clamor of mechanized death. Lovingly edited and introduced by Jon Curley, this reclamation from the archive is yet another reminder of just how far we have gone in the name of progress, and just how high the cost is." —Ammiel Alcalay, author, Memories of Our Future

"A mordant critique of modern industrial life told through the story of a workplace accident, an accident that is in fact the logical outcome of social and economic imperatives. Blind aspirational faith in the New Liberian Dream of individual gain leads laborers in a dye factory to grow ill from chemical exposure, while the young foreman confronts the calamitous solitude of crass ambition. Even the skeptics are unable to escape the demands of the new social order. Awaiting his own execution, Vanzetti takes aim at the burgeoning military industrial complex, environmental degradation, xenophobia fueled by global labor migration, stultifying popular culture, compromised press, and greed of industrial oligarchs in this unexpectedly timely short story.” —Judith Halasz, author, The Bohemian Ethos: Questioning Work and Making a Scene on the Lower East Side 

"After nearly a century of silence, thanks to the life raft thrown by poet Jon Curley, Bartolomeo Vanzetti’s Events and Victims has finally surfaced. This short story has intense echoes of Melville’s Moby Dick and Sinclair’s The Jungle.” —Marylou & Jerome Bongiorno, Emmy-nominated, award-winning, social justice filmmakers

“Bartolomeo Vanzetti lives in our memory largely as a symbol, martyr to the mob rule that poses as justice in the United States. Until now, the man himself was knowable primarily through his prison letters, but Jon Curley has added to Vanzetti’s legacy by springing Events and Victims, his sole known work of fiction, from its archival shackles. Published for the first time, the story contributes to the literary history of anarchism, prison writing, and the canon of resistance and refusal, composed even as the author himself was continuing to master English while facing his cruel and unjust death. This story adds greatly to our historical understanding of Vanzetti—and in its grim vision of a cruel society in which capital relentlessly harnesses war, media, and technology to expropriate value even from crushed human bodies, holds continued relevance even today.” —Whitney Strub, author, Perversion for Profit: The Politics of Pornography and the Rise of the New Right

Edition details

• Publisher: PM Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1629635170
• ISBN 13: 9781629635170
• Binding: Pamphlet
• Language: English
• Number of pages: 48
• Editor: Curley Jon