S.L. Stebel, Los Angeles Times, Nov. 6, 1977
"Contributing editor of New Masses, founding editor of Dynamo, anthologized amongst such writers as Conrad Aiken, Sherwood Anderson, Nathan Asch, Mark van Doren and William Carlos Williams, praised by Partisan Review, admired and published by Ezra Pound, searched out by the young Nelson Algren, Spector, after shinking briefly in the gloom of the Depression years, strangely, and quite suddently turned it all off. "What happened to doom him to obscurity? "...The best, as he perhaps suspected early on, never came for Spector himself. Written while at the top of his form, his poem "B.A. (Billiard Academy)" appeared in Anthology of Revolutionary Poetry in 1929 (later excerpted by Scientific American in 1963). It can be seen that even this early Spector was more interested in the artistic detail than the political judgment, and when the Communist Party lost interest in literature as a useful took, Spector himself, it can be surmised, lost that certainty which had given his work its reason for being... "This profusely illustrated collection is fascinating..."


Edouard Roditi, Midstream, August/September 1979
"Perhaps more than his poetry, Spector's prose pieces preserve the flavor of New York's low-life of four or five decades ago. In this respect, he remains a kind of bitter and proletarian Damon Runyon. Though much of Spector's poetry has an ephemeral and almost journalistic quality, he yet managed, at his best, to be published in the same anthologies as Sherwood Anderson, Kay Boyle, Hart Crane, Waldo Frank, Robert Frost, Katherine Anne Porter, Robert Penn Warren, and William Carlos Williams. His Harlem River, for instance, still deserves to be reprinted in anthologies."


American Library Association's Booklist, Feb. 15,1978
"Rough 'caesar of sad words,' Spector wrote for New Masses and founded a radical revolutionary poetry mag, Dynamo. Staccato blues talk and rhythms drive through his published work...Bastard bares the ideological rage and disillusion of his rowdy spirit in cutting criticisms and poems guaranteed to rouse the blood."


Milton Moskowitz, San Francisco Examiner & Chronicle, Nov. 6, 1977
"It's a lovely volume...Much of it stands up very well, especially his prose portraits of the New York hackie."


CHOICE, February 1978
"Herman Spector (1905-59), one of the more eloquently angry proletarian writers of the late 1920s and 1930s, described himself as 'the bastard in the ragged suit/who spits, with bitterness and malice to all.' Alfred Hayes recalls that Spector was poorer, more saturnine, thinner, and darker than any of his revolutionary colleagues and that he wrote 'thin, emaciated poetry.' As a writer for, and contributing editor of, radical magazines such as New Masses, Dynamo, and Blues, Spector inspired such fellow radicals as Nelson Algren. Eventually, Spector himself stopped publishing, turned to realistic drawings, and buried himself as a cab driver. But he was one of the few real artists writing for the radical left; and his work, collected here in a handsome edition complete with his drawings, vividly recreatives the embittered poverty of New York in the Depression...The volume is valuable for students of modern literature and American studies."


Book Description
This book tells the story--through his published work, selections fromunpublished manuscripts, 44 drawings not seen publicly prior to this publication and abiographical introduction by co-editor Bud Johns--of Herman Spector. This writer of the late Twenties and the Thirties, whose experimental work influenced then-radical poets who came out of that period, continued to write during the last two decades of his life in New York but never again submitted his talents to the opinion of editors, critics and the public.


From the Back Cover
" '1929 and a decade audible in these poems. The poetry tells this story, the tones of the poetry, even the borrowed tones, which are dreams, tell the story of a man who risked himself for the hope of a poetry that would isolate no man and no thing, that would seem to him in no way 'privileged' and he became perhaps the loneliest of the impoverished men of his time and I believe he must have become afraid. Before he died, fear had abolished his poetry.' "Pulitzer Prize-winning poet George Oppen never met Herman Spector but he knew his work and, as the lines above and those which follow establish, he also knew the man. " 'Yes, I think (he) stopped short, or was stopped...Yes, sure his spirit failed (but) he did a great deal more than most men have.' "Bastard in the Ragged Suit tells the story--through his published work, selections from unpublished manuscript fragments, his drawings and a biographical introduction--of Herman Spector. This writer of the late Twenties and the Thirties, whose experimental work influenced then-radical poets who came out of that period, continued to write during the last two decades of his life in New York but never again submitted his talents to the opinion of editors, critics and public. " 'A rare talent, a rare person,' recalls Albert Halper. 'His was an original talent and his work deserves to be known today.'"


About the Author
Herman Spector was born in New York City in 1905 and died there the day before his 54th birthday. The title to this book comes from his poem "Outcast", first published in 1929 in New Masses where he was a contributing editor and later included in the musch-praised collection We Gather Strength. He was a co-editor of the literary mag-azine Blues (until he rejected a role as a protege of Ezra Pound), a founding editor of theinfluential Dynamo and a member of the WPA Writers' Project before his withdrawal as an actively publishing writer.

SYNOPSIS