MAN ON A ROAD AND OTHER STORIES

By Albert Maltz

Alma Books. 340 pages. £9.99. ISBN 978-0-7145-5098-5 

Reviewed by Jim Burns

Many years ago I acquired a copy of Albert Maltz’s The Way Things Are and Other Stories, published in 1938 by International Publishers, New York. It had an introduction by the leading left-wing critic Michael Gold, some of the stories had previously been published in New Masses, and “Man on a Road” had been included in the influential 1935 anthology, Proletarian Literature in the United States.  I mention these facts because they indicate where Maltz’s political sympathies lay, i.e. with the American Communist Party. They were later to land him in trouble when, as a screenwriter in Hollywood, he was questioned by the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), refused to co-operate, and was imprisoned and blacklisted.

 As well as the 1938 collection, Maltz published one other book of stories, Afternoon in the Jungle (Liveright, 1974). The contents of the two books, together with four previously-uncollected stories, are to be found in the volume under review. And it’s easy to see why “Man on a Road” has been chosen as its title. It is his best-known story and, in more ways than one, speaks for the period when Maltz was politically committed and determined to use art as a weapon in the way that the Communist Party expected of its writers. Patrick Chura, in a perceptive introduction to the stories, tells how Maltz, who came from an affluent middle-class family, decided to embark on a journey into Depression-era America: “On his down-classing journey, Maltz intended not just to observe how the ‘other half’ lives, but to suffer alongside it in the factories, mines and coal camps”. 

Driving in West Virginia, Maltz picked up a hitchhiker, an unemployed miner “whose lungs are ravaged by silicosis and who takes to the road because he’d rather die alone than be a burden on his family”. The miner told him about Hawk’s Nest tunnel where 2,000 men were employed on “an engineering marvel three miles long, one mile of it through solid rock that was ninety percent silica”.  According to Chura, “Almost as soon as the digging started, men began dying. Unaware of any danger, they’d been blasting into the rock without masks or respirators, inhaling with every breath a massive dose of  deadly silica dust….In the end every man who worked on the tunnel for a significant time developed lung disease….Company contractors denied the hazard and conspired to subvert inspections”.

It was from his encounter with the miner, and listening to his story, that Maltz wrote “Man on a Road”. When they arrive at the place where the man was heading, the narrator buys him a meal and writes a letter for him to send to his wife. And Maltz closes the story : “That was all. We sat together. In me there was only mute emotion – pity and love for him, and a cold, deep hatred for what had killed him. Presently he arose. He did not speak. Nor did I. I saw his thick, broad back in the blue work shirt as he stood by the door. Then he moved out into the darkness and rain”.

In another story, the long “Season of Celebration”, set in a flop-house (doss-house, in British parlance), and with a gallery of characters, a young man enters: “Under his arm he carried a brown paper parcel – the suitcase and wardrobe trunk of a stiff on the bum”.  Chura, in some useful notes, says that it was first published in Story in 1937, and was dramatized by Philip Stevenson. I can see how it would work on stage. It’s an ensemble piece, with individuals played off against each other, while one of the “bums”, as the night manager refers to them, lies ill in bed, more sick than is realised and with tragic results. It’s a story that looks at the “bottom dogs” of society, those with little hope for the future and likely to end up in a similar state to the alcoholic cynic Benson, or the slightly crazed old man, Knox, who fantasises about what he claims to know. And with them arguing about who should have the sick man’s coat when he dies.

It's a harsh world that Maltz is looking at. In “Goodbye”, a young girl, in a steel town hit by the Depression, weighs up her prospects and decides it’s time to leave. Her brother, his hearing damaged by working in a noisy mill, says she’ll come to a bad end. It can’t be any worse than staying here, she implies. An unemployed man in “The Happiest Man On Earth” applies for a job transporting nitro-glycerine. It’s highly dangerous, he’s informed, and several drivers have been killed. But it’s well-paid and the man is desperate to get some money for his family. We’re not told if he survives. In “Incident on a Street Corner”, a couple of policemen are having problems with a drunk young man while a watching crowd, angered by their unnecessary violence, starts to become hostile.

Maltz had driven into the Southern states and observed the situation there, with separate entrances and drinking fountains for blacks. His story, “With Laughter”, concerns a coloured couple on their way to a hospital when the wife begins to give birth. They detour to another hospital, which is nearer, but it’s for whites only and they’re turned away. The baby is born outside with the assistance of a “young, blonde white nurse”, who has bucked the system and come out of the hospital to help them. Another story, “The Piece of Paper”, also touches on the colour question, but in historical terms. A wounded Confederate officer returns home to his plantation and astounds everyone by declaring that he’s going to free his slaves. His reasoning is simple. He’s seen blacks fighting in the Union army and it has convinced him that the South will lose the war and slavery will be abolished. For me, it wasn’t as convincing a story as “With Laughter”, but it pointed to Maltz’s commitment to commenting on controversial matters in his writing.

 “Husband and Wife”, a previously unpublished story, does move away from the political. The couple in question are circus performers, the man is a tightrope (highwire) specialist, the woman his assistant. They’re internationally known, but people have begun to observe that the man is no longer as agile as he used to be. The manager of the circus tells the woman that he’s reducing their salary and removing top billing for the man. The woman wonders about their future. They had always lived well, spending most of what they earned as they went along, and she, unknown to her husband, needs an expensive operation. Chura says it’s a “candid study of ageing and intimacy”, and that it meant a lot to Maltz, who wrote in his notebook, “True love does not depend on the worldly achievements of one or another partner”. The story was adapted for television in 1961 under the title, “The Great Alberti”.

I’ve focused on a handful of stories, but there are others worth reading.  ”A Letter From the Country” is about union organising in Dakota and how vigilantes from the American Legion had broken up a meeting and injured a number of people. “The Cop” is a wartime story, set in Italy after the fall of Mussolini and involves foiling a planned German attack on a group of partisans. “To Climb the Pyrenees” also has a wartime link, though the setting is postwar. A French businessman visits Germany and discovers that his host had been stationed in Paris as a German officer and owns some paintings that had been looted from the businessman’s family apartment. Even when one or two other stories seem slight in comparison, Maltz’s skill as a storyteller, and his deft handling of dialogue, are never in any doubt. I can see why he was successful in Hollywood before he was blacklisted.  

Man on a Road is a welcome addition to the list of Maltz’s books that Alma Books are publishing. His The Eyewitness Report appeared earlier this year (see my review in The Northern Review of Books, July 2025), and another previously unpublished work, Bel Canto, is due next year. It’s heartening to see a fine writer being remembered. Earlier Maltz novels, such as The Journey of Simon McKeever, A Tale of One January, A Long Day in a Short Life, and The Cross and the Arrow are also in print from Alma Books. There is an interesting history behind them. They were mostly originally published in Britain in the 1950s and 1960s by John Calder, along with books by other blacklisted American writers like Alvan Bessie and Philip Stevenson (under the name Lars Lawrence). This was at a time when they, like Maltz, were experiencing difficulty having their work published in the United States. Calder deserves a great deal of credit for providing an outlet for their books.