KR: I don't think there were very many people in the thirties. There were people in San Francisco who were writing and not publishing anything when I came. Most of those people became involved in red San Francisco. The interesting thing is that most of them became practical labor organizers, rather than Bohemians sitting around in Union Square arguing about proletarian literature.

There was a real pattern there, due to the fact that there were all sorts of things wrong with red literature in the thirties in New York. But when the Communist artist and writer's groups were formed, the John Reed Club the one in San Francisco, they put up some pretty stiff qualifications. The members were actually artists and writers. They stayed around.

What happened in New York was that the clubs became dominated by Bohemians who didn't do anything except argue about Marx, whom they had never read, and they would avoid the artists and writers. It's very hard to convey to the present generation what that was like. People talked about communism . in those days the way people talk about acid or smack. I mean, they bored you to death, and they didn't know anything about it.