Howard Melvin Fast was born in
New York City. In 1943, he joined the American Communist Party. In
1950 Fast was ordered to appear before the House of Un-American
Activities Committee. Fast refused to name fellow members of the
American Communist Party, claiming that the 1st Amendment of the
United States Constitution gave him the right to do this. Despite
this he was sentenced to three months in prison. Fast was blacklisted
but after forming his own publishing company, the Blue Heron Press,
he continued write and publish books that reflected his left-wing
views. This included Spartacus (1951), an account of the 71
B.C. slave revolt, Silas Timberman (1954), a novel about a
victim of McCarthyism and The Story of Lola Gregg (1956),
describing the FBI pursuit and capture of a communist trade unionist.
Fast also worked as a staff writer for the Daily Worker. Fast
remained loyal to the Communist Party until 1956. The two main
reasons for this were the speech made by Nikita Khrushchev exposing
the crimes of Joseph Stalin and the decision by the Soviet government
to put down the Hungarian Uprising. Fast, like three-quarters of the
membership now left the party. The following year he published The
Naked God: The Writer and the Communist Party (1957). The
Hollywood Blacklist was ended in 1960 when Dalton Trumbo wrote the
screenplay for Fast's novel, Spartacus. Fast himself moved to
Hollywood where he wrote several screenplays. However, he continued
to write political novels and had considerable commercial success
with The Immigrants (1977), Second Generation (1978),
The Establishment (1979), The Outsider (1984) and the
Immigrant's Daughter (1985). His autobiography, Being
Red, was published in 1990. Howard Fast died in Old Greenwich,
Connecticut, on 12th March, 2003. His brother, Julius Fast, was also a writer. He is the creator of:
1. 'John Gomaday and Larry Cohen', Police Commissioner and Assistant District Attorney in New York (under the pseudonym E.V. Cunningham).
2. 'Harvey Krim', detective for the NYPD (under the pseudonym E.V. Cunningham).
3. 'Masao Masuto', private investigator (under the pseudonym E.V. Cunningham).
He also wrote under the pseudonym 'Walter Ericson'.