malabar
Homo Malabarus
Joined: 02 Jan 2006
Posts: 673
Location: Bristol, UK
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 Posted: Sun Dec 24, 2006 10:45 am Post subject: 240. A Fine Old Conflict, Jessica Mitford |
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What a joy Jessica Mitford was. Daughter of an upper-class British family, she broke with her parents' budding Fascist tendencies to support the socialists in the Spanish Civil War. She came to the US just before World War II broke out and stayed for the rest of her life, rising to prominence as a left-leaning, muckraking journalist.
This book neatly compresses her life story, basing it around her membership in the Communist Party in America in the 1940s and early 1950s. Fear of being ostracized for any seemingly leftist viewpoint hamstrung legions of would-be liberals; in those days, all the causes that would today be taken up by the liberal left and the ACLU ended up espoused by Communist and Communist-front organizations like the Civil Rights Coalition (where Mitford made her mark). The title comes from a mishearing of "final conflict" from the Communist anthem, Internationale.
What makes Mitford's story so enthralling is that she is constitutionally unable to take anything completely seriously; a highlight is her pamphlet, Lifeitselfmanship (reprinted herein), in which she pokes fun at Communist jargon. What could be a very dry book is instead a total joy. Of course, Mitford also wrote The American Way of Death, a blistering expose of the funeral industry, also known for its dark humor. I wish all nonfiction could be this much fun. |
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