SOURCE: "Sexual Politics in Kay Boyle's Death of a Man," in Twentieth-Century Literature, Vol. 34, No. 3, Fall, 1988, pp. 347-62.

In the following essay, Hatlen reconsiders Death of a Man from a feminist perspective in an attempt to explain why the novel has been misinterpreted as Pro-Nazi.

When Kay Boyle's Death of a Man was first published in 1936, many reviewers, and even one member of Boyle's own family, read the novel as expressing pro-Nazi sympathies. Mark Van Doren, writing in the Nation, said that the book tries to "hypnotize the reader into a state of what may be called mystical fascism." In the New Republic, Otis Ferguson characterized "Miss Boyle's case for the Nazi spirit" as an instance of "special pleading." As Ferguson read the novel, "Those who plot in the wine cellars and keep the swastikas burning on the mountains at night are the outstanding characters; the author's sympathy...