Jumping the line
Subtitle: the adventures and misadventures of an American radical
By: William Herrick ; with an introduction by Paul Berman.
Series: Wisconsin studies in American autobiography
Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press
Published: 1998
Place of publication: Madison
Language: eng
Number of pages: 283
Subjects: Herrick, William, 1915-; Novelists, American -- 20th century -- Biography.; Radicalism -- United States -- History -- 20th century.; Radicals -- United States -- Biography.; Radicalism in literature.
Description: An eye-opening account of time served in the great battles of our century - for workers' rights, against Fascism, Communism, and racism - Jumping the Line is the life story of an American original.

William Herrick relates his adventures and misadventures on the front lines of the Spanish Civil War, in (and very much out of) the Communist Party, driving a tractor on a communal farm in Michigan, jumping the line as a hobo, organizing African American sharecroppers in Georgia, at work with Orson Welles, and immersed in his own writing.

When Paul Berman interviewed Herrick in the Village Voice in 1986, for the fiftieth anniversary of the Spanish Civil War, Herrick's remarks so incensed other veterans of the Abraham Lincoln battalion that they picketed the paper. What William Herrick has to say doesn't always go down easily. But for those who like the truth, with a dash of wit and a healthy dose of history, it can be exhilarating.