The Later Career of Folksinger Woody Guthrie (1912-1967)

FAIN: FB-58298-15

Gustavus Stadler
Haverford College (Haverford, PA 19041-1392)

A critical-biographical study of the singer's later career that draws chiefly on unpublished and recently published materials. By recovering an overlooked set of chapters in the singer's life, the book uncovers a lost history of the American left. As the anti-fascist popular front crumbled after the Second World War, and as his body and mind began to feel the encroaching burden of Huntington's Disease, Guthrie became increasingly convinced that progressives should think seriously about the political stakes of love, sex, and relationships. Given its due, Guthrie's work during this period--roughly the decade between the end of the war and his permanent hospitalization--resonates as a harbinger of a new left to come.