ABSTRACT
My first impression was of hot yellow light, noise, excitement, and clutter. Coats lay in heaps on kitchen chairs. Young men, mostly in cotton- flannel shirts, stood arguing in groups, or leaned over chessboards, or sat in corners reading the New Masses. There were a few older men, a few Negroes, but no women—and where, I wondered were the representatives of that oppressed majority? If women had been there, they might have insisted on sweeping the floor, which was deep in dust and calico-patterned with cigarette stubs and torn paper. As I stood watching, still more young men came tramping up the stairs, some of them looking like Russian workers with caps perched back over shocks of hair. They glanced around for friends, and either found them or tramped down again. Though nobody was drinking anything stronger than coffee, always in paper cups, I could not help thinking of the Café du Dôme in 1923. For the men of a new generation, the John Reed Club had become “the place.”
