The Hanging on Union Square
Page 19
10. Letter from Tsiang to Kent, 17 Jan. 1941. I have preserved most of Tsiang’s idiosyncratic capitalizations and grammar in my quotations from his letters.
11. Letter from Tsiang to Stephen Early, 30 May 1941, Rockwell Kent Papers.
12. Jiang, Songzhen. “Meiyou wangji de qinren [An Unforgettable Relative].” Dushu [Reading] 12 (1983): 142. I am indebted to Lu Li for translation assistance.
13. Of course, Sun’s biographers differ on the degree to which such communist collaboration was strategic.
14. In his preface to Tsiang’s Poems, Upton Sinclair described Tsiang as “a young Chinese student whom the American authorities sought to deport and deliver to the executioner’s axe at home.”
15. “Chinese Meet Peacefully,” Los Angeles Times 27 Feb. 1928: A9. ProQuest Historical Newspapers.
16. Thanks to Columbia University archivist Jocelyn Wilk for her assistance in confirming that Tsiang took Thorndike’s English 241: The Life and Work of Shakespeare. Tsiang acknowledges Van Doren and Thorndike in his foreword to his Poems.
17. Cary Nelson, “Poetry Chorus: Dialogic Politics in 1930s Poetry” in Radical Revisions: Rereading 1930s Culture, ed., Bill Mullen and Sherry Lee Linkon (Urbana: U of Illinois P, 1996), 32.
18. Aaron Lecklider, “H. T. Tsiang’s Proletarian Burlesque: Performance and Perversion in The Hanging on Union Square,” MELUS 36.4 (2011): 87–113. See also, George Chauncey, Gay New York: Gender, Urban Culture, and the Making of the Gay Male World 1890–1940 (New York: Basic, 1994).
19. He listed Box 66 in Station D, New York City as his mailing address at this time. Station D was located at the corner of 4th Avenue and East 13th Street, according to the New York City directory.
20. Sam Bluefarb, “Notes from a Memoir,” New English Review (Sep. 2011),
21. “Between Ourselves,” New Masses, 27 Aug. 1935: 30.
22. See “Howdy Club,” Lost Womyn’s Space,
23. Letter from Tsiang to Shirley Johnstone, 7 Sep. 1941, Rockwell Kent Papers.
24. He later went on to adapt the novel for the stage while studying at Erwin Piscator’s Dramatic Workshop at the New School for Social Research in New York City and later in Los Angeles. Theatre critic Katherine Von Blon reported on Tsiang’s production of Hanging twice in Los Angeles. In 1944, she raved that the one-act version of the play was “lit by the passion of genuine poetry.” Von Blon also understood Tsiang’s “mingled technique of the Chinese and American, with a touch of Stanislavsky.” In 1948, Von Blon praised Tsiang as an actor, who by this time was “well known for his Oriental characterizations in films” such as The Purple Heart (1944), The Keys of the Kingdom (1944), and Black Gold (1947). She wrote that Hanging “still remains a gleaming satire, lit by the lamp of rich philosophy,” and “Tsiang again scored as the hapless little Mr. Nut.”
25. From 1926 to 1931, he published the Chinese Guide and wrote about Chinese political turmoil; he had just escaped being assassinated and sought to continue his advocacy from his new base in America.
26. Floyd Cheung, “Tsiang’s ‘Chinaman, Laundryman,’” Explicator 61.4 (2003): 226–29.
27. See Joanna Merwood-Salisbury, “Patriotism and Protest: Union Square as Public Space, 1832–1932,” Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians 68.4 (2009): 540–59.
28. The 1934 Union of Soviet Writers, led by Maxim Gorky, discussed the role of Socialist Realism in the ideological shaping of the Soviet state, and agreed upon the following: “Active participation of Soviet writers, by means of their artistic writing, in building socialism, defense of the interests of the working class, and securing the role of Soviets through true representations of the class struggle and socialist construction in our country, and through the education of the working class in the spirit of socialism.” “Soviet Literature” in Problems of Soviet Literature: Reports and Speeches at the First Soviet Writers’ Congress, H. G. Scott, ed. (London: M. Lawrence, 1935), 42.
29. Piotr Fast, Ideology, Aesthetics, Literary History: Socialist Realism and Its Others (Frankfurt: Peter Lang, 1999), 40.
30. “A Pageant of Soviet Literature,” New Masses (Oct. 1934): 17–18.
31. Barbara Foley, Radical Representations: Politics and Form in U.S. Proletarian Fiction, 1929–1941 (Durham: Duke UP, 1993), 400–2.
32. Ibid., 400.
33. Regine Robin, Socialist Realism: An Impossible Aesthetic, trans. Catherine Porter (Stanford: Stanford UP, 1992), 93.
34. Translated into English from the Russian by F. Polianovska and Barbara Nixon, Roar China recounts the oppression of the Chinese by Western imperial powers who exploit, abuse, and eventually kill those who stand in the way of their profit and control. At the conclusion of the play, a British naval officer orders the hanging of two Chinese boatmen, after which a crowd of angry Chinese “roar” their disapproval. Tsiang played the 2nd Boatman out of four. This theatrical hanging may thus have inspired the hanging at the end of his novel.
Tsiang would eventually go on to write, produce, and act in his own agitprop-influenced plays including China Marches On, Canton Rickshaw, and Wedding at a Nudist Colony. In the 1940s, he studied with Erwin Piscator, who along with Bertholt Brecht, theorized and popularized agitprop theatre.
35. Robin, 89.
36. On January 6, 1935, the New York Civic Theater’s production of Waiting for Lefty by Clifford Odets famously succeeded in inciting a protest. According to Colette Hyman, the play stirred its audience to such an extent that they “jumped onto the stage[,] poured into the street,” and began a labor demonstration. See Colette Hyman, Staging Strikes: Workers’ Theatre and the American Labor Movement (Philadelphia: Temple UP, 1997), 1.
37. The idea of a reconceived or rewritten epic must have resonated with Tsiang in more ways than one: Tsiang writes in his author’s note to Hanging that he is in the process of writing a book called “Shanghai-New York-Moscow: An Odyssey of a Chinese Coolie,” and his professor at Columbia, Ashley Thorndike, believed that writers of every generation ought to adapt established models to suit their specific situations, each one creating “a new Odyssey.” See Ashley Thorndike, The Outlook for Literature (New York: Macmillan, 1931), 69.
38. Katerina Clark, The Soviet Novel: History as Ritual, 3rd ed. (Bloomington: Indiana UP, 2000), 167.
39. Like Hamlet, Mr. Nut considers whether “To be? Or not to be?” Like Christ’s second coming, Mr. Nut’s arrival is prefigured with biblical language: “‘For it is said that He will come.’ Now He was coming.”
40. For a general introduction to Tsiang’s literary methods, see my essay, “H. T. Tsiang: Literary Innovator and Activist,” in Asian American Literature: Discourses & Pedagogies 2 (2011),
Appendix
Since H. T. Tsiang self-published most of his works, including this novel, he did not have access to the design and marketing resources of a typical publishing house. This practical deprivation fostered, however, creative independence. Hence the paratexts that follow contain traces of eccentricity and genius. They are also the work of a supreme hustler who bent rules of style and propriety. The skeptical might consider these efforts merely self-promotional. The sympathetic would consider them necessary in the face of a system designed to filter out radical visions.
The following paratexts to The Hanging on Union Square include:
the first edition’s cover
the original front matter, including
excerpts from letters to Tsiang that he repurposed into blurbs
excerpts from rejection letters to Tsiang from various publishers
a foreword by Waldo Frank
Tsiang’s note of thanks to readers
and
a final appeal from Tsiang to his readers that appeared in the original back matter.
“I am a good deal interested in what you have tried to do, though I do not feel that the attempt has been wholly successful. As I understand it, your aim is to write a kind of Communist Pilgrim’s Progress. This seems to me a rather surprising aim, but what you have done shows that the idea has possibilities.”*
GRANVILLE HICKS
“I read your book with very great interest and wish you the best of luck with it.”
LOUIS ADAMIC
“The note of defiance, the revolutionary spirit in this interest me; it is an interesting experiment.”
THOMAS H. UZZELL
“I have read The Hanging on Union Square (which, by the way, seems to me a wonderful title) and I believe that the book, although perhaps not likely to be widely read, is original and amusing.”
CARL VAN DOREN
“We have not been able to convince ourselves that we could secure for the material a sufficiently extended sale to render the publication remunerative.”
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS, MINTON, BALCH & CO.
“We have decided against making you an offer of publication inasmuch as we do not believe we can sell it successfully.”
LITTLE, BROWN & COMPANY
“Though we find it both entertaining and original we do not feel that its sales would justify publication.”
COWARD, MCCANN, Inc.
“It seems to us an interesting work for which there is at best only a very small public. However, we hope, for your sake, that we are mistaken in the latter point.”
THE VANGUARD PRESS
“Several of us have read the manuscript carefully, and have enjoyed doing so. Unfortunately, no one of us feels sufficiently enthusiastic about this allegory to recommend that we publish it.”
HARCOURT, BRACE AND COMPANY
“The idea of the book is an interesting one but we are afraid you are never going to be able to get it published as long as it remains in its present form. . . . We suggest that you re-write the story in straight-forward terms as a realistic novel.”
COVICI, FRIEDE. Publishers
Foreword
H. T. TSIANG is a young proletarian Chinese writer of authentic value. His “Poems of the Chinese Revolution” contain verses that sing from the deep heart of the folk and that convey the passion of the world conflict. His short novel “China Red” is distinguished by its poignant, accurate lyricism and by a humor at once terrible and tender. Now Mr. Tsiang has written a satiric allegory, a potpourri of narrative and song, entitled “The Hanging on Union Square.” As a whole, I should not say that this ambitious work is a success; and it contains passages that may offend by their crudity and by the naiveté of their presentation. But the book is original in form without being labored; and it is remarkable for its whimsical insights into various strata of society and for its flashing counterpoint of almost savage sensuality and delicate pity. Throughout, it is alive and evocative. And it is a harbinger of the unguessed treasures of imagination which will be released by our proletarian writers when they are freed as Mr. Tsiang is freed, of the straight-jacket of what calls itself “Marxist realism” and of what is truly a stereotype alien to both Marx and literature, and as deadening as any other dogma. Mr. Tsiang’s fanciful and often fantastic visions of the workers on Union Square and of the parasites in neighboring night clubs and office buildings—while too simplistic to become high art—nevertheless convey more truth than a shelf of reportorial novels.*
WALDO FRANK
The writer takes this opportunity of conveying his deep appreciation of the kindness of the various critics and publishers who have read his manuscript and have given their valuable opinions of it—though these opinions may differ, more or less, here and there, now and then, from his own; and the writer is taking the liberty of asserting his own viewpoint by publishing The Hanging on Union Square himself—i.e., stubbornly or nuttily—as he did his other two books; and the writer is willing to be judged by the text of his book, with which he has experimented, and the writer is convinced that the reaction of the masses can’t be wrong.
H.T.
While getting subscriptions in preparing for the publication of The Hanging on Union Square, the author received many inquiries about his previous two books, Poems of the Chinese Revolution, published in 1929, of which only 7,000 copies have been printed, and the novel, China Red, published in 1931, of which only 7,100 copies have been printed; and, therefore, the author takes the present opportunity of stating that both these books are out of print now, owing to lack of funds needed for retaining type and making new plates, and that those readers who are interested in these two past works, if they send in their names and addresses, will be notified when new editions are brought out; moreover, the writer would highly appreciate any assistance given towards the circulation of the present book, so that he would be provided with the time to complete his fourth work, Shanghai Newyork Moscow—An Odyssey of a Chinese Coolie; for it took him only two months to write his first book but two years to distribute it; four months to write his second book, but two years also to distribute it; two months to write his third book, now in the reader’s hands, but two years in preparing its publication (the process of circulating his books has been very educational although it has consumed the author’s time luxuriously); furthermore, it has often been said that books, like umbrellas, when loaned, seldom come back, so let your friend spend something for something, if it is something, and automatically the writer will be benefited in paying the printer’s bills sooner, and you will naturally keep your copy as you want to do—not with the intention of selling that copy for many hundreds or thousands of dollars in some time to come; but as an evidence of the realization that publishers, too, are capitalists and that proletarian literature can be produced without them, and without being straight-jacketed by them; and since the first Five Year Plan was a success, the second one can’t be otherwise.
H.T.
March 1st, 1935
Box 66, Station D, N. Y. City.
Notes
ACT I
1. John D. Rockefeller (1839–1937), U.S. industrialist and philanthropist, founded Standard Oil Company. At the peak of his fortunes in 1912, Rockefeller held $900,000,000 in assets, most of which he had given away by the time he died.
2. The Young Communist League, which was established in 1921, recruited youths for ultimate participation in the Communist Party.
3. Miss Stubborn probably belonged to the Local 22 Dressmakers Union of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU), which was initially founded by Jewish, Italian, and Irish immigrants. Many Jews came to the United States to escape pogroms in Russia. While Miss Stubborn may or may not be Russian or Jewish, Mr. Nut believes that she has associated herself with them via her politics. The successful strike mentioned in the novel may have occurred in New York on August 16, 1933.
4. Grover Whalen (1886–1962) served as New York City’s Police Commissioner from 1928 until 1930. He established a police academy and used undercover agents to break up communist groups in the city. Whalen also prospered as the general manager of Wanamaker’s Department Store.
5. These men make an unlikely trio, since Norman Thomas (1884–1968)—called “Mister” on p. 42—was a socialist and pacifist; J. P. Morgan, Jr. (1867–1943) was a financier, like his father; and John J. Pershing (1860–1948) was military commander of U.S. forces in Europe during World War I. Thomas did, however, meet with Morgan’s partner, Thomas W. Lamont, in 1931 to discuss how the business community could address the plight of the poor (W. A. Swanberg, Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist [New York: Scribners, 1976], p. 124). John J. Pershing’s tenuous connection to Thomas involves his minor role in sponsoring a controversial event in 1934 featuring the latter as the speaker (�
��U.S. Chamber Bars Town Hall Forum,” New York Times, December 5, 1934, p. 25). Tsiang may have perceived all three as public figures standing in the way of his political goals: Thomas’s socialism opposed Tsiang’s more radical aims; Morgan both opposed communism and financed the Japanese government; and Pershing led a military whose actions Tsiang seldom approved.
6. These terms—“strenuous competition” and “adapting herself to her environment”—are drawn from the theory of social Darwinism, popular in America during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which held that the laws of natural selection developed by Charles Darwin to describe the evolution of species applied also to individuals and social groups.
7. The New Pioneer was the official organ of the Young Pioneers of America, a group for communists aged 8 to 15 (Elizabeth Kirpatrick Dilling, The Red Network [1934. New York: Arno, 1977], pp. 249–250).
8. A reference to the Soviet practice, first introduced in 1928, of planning change in five-year increments.
9. Franklin Delano Roosevelt (1882–1945) served as president of the United States of America from 1933 until 1945. Norman Thomas (1884–1968) was a prominent socialist and founder of the organization that would become the American Civil Liberties Union; Leon Trotsky (1879–1940), a leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, was exiled from the Soviet Union in 1929 by Joseph Stalin, who headed that country from 1924 until 1953. Jay Lovestone (1897–1990) briefly led the Communist Party of the USA but was ousted in 1929 and ultimately led anti-communist organizations.
10. For $2, Tsiang peddled copies of his first novel, China Red (1931), at various cafeterias and other gathering places in New York City.
11. The Trade Union Unity League founded the National Unemployed Council in 1930.