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Lonely Crusade, by Chester Himes
- Abstract
The terminal moraine of socially conscious novels, comic strips, movies, pulp fiction, etc. left behind by the Popular Front icecap of the 30′s has, for better or for worse, permanently changed the American cultural landscape. Novels like Lonely Crusade, which deal with racial prejudice from the point of view of the insulted and injured themselves, are now common. What sets them apart from the muckraking books of the Upton Sinclair era is that they do not present any news to anyone (although they are equally sensational), and the isues involved, which were once considered so ugly and obscene that they had to be discussed in whispers like a dirty joke, are now frankly presented for mass entertainment as well as uplift. There is a financial profit in moral indignation.
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