Mainstream

mainstream

Music of or relating to the style of jazz that lies between the traditional and the modern

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Mainstream 

an American literary and sociopolitical magazine, published from 1911 to 1962. The magazine was called Masses in 1911–17, Liberator in 1918–24, New Masses in 1926–47, Masses and Mainstream in 1948–57, and Mainstream in 1957–62.

In the first decade of the 20th century, Mainstream attracted progressive writers, including J. Reed, W. O’Neill, and C. Sandburg. It printed a shortened translation of V. I. Lenin’s “Letters to American Workers” and M. Gorky’s memoirs about V. I. Lenin. In the fall of 1919, Mainstream became the organ of the Communist Party of the USA. In the 1930’s, after overcoming sectarian mistakes, Mainstream played an outstanding role in uniting American writers on a broad antifascist and general democratic platform. It printed works by T. Dreiser, E. Hemingway, T. Wolfe, E. Caldwell, and M. Gold.

Mainstream defended socialist realism and democratic and revolutionary national traditions and called for the assimilation of the methods of Soviet literature. In the late 1940’s and early 1950’s the magazine condemned decadent bourgeois art and McCarthyism and spoke out in favor of world peace. During those years, Mainstream printed P. Bonosky, J. H. Lawson, W. Du Bois, J. North, and S. Finkelstein.

REFERENCES

Gilenson, B. A. “la videl rozhdenie novogo mira: Publitsistika Dzhona Rida 1917–1920 gg.” Voprosy literatury, 1961, no. 11.
Echoes of Revolt: “The Masses” 1911–1917. Edited by W. O’Neill. Chicago, 1966.
“New Masses”: An Anthology of the Rebel Thirties. Edited by J. North. New York, 1969.

B. A. GILENSON