SOURCE: Fredrickson, Robert S. “Robert Stone's Decadent Leftists.” Papers on Language and Literature 32, no. 3 (summer 1996): 315-34.

In the following essay, Fredrickson examines Stone's presentation of cynical, disillusioned left-wing sympathizers and amoral leftist revolutionaries in his novels, particularly Dog Soldiers and A Flag for Sunrise.

That “the best lack all conviction while the worst are filled with passionate intensity”¹—Yeats's conclusion early in this century—continues to apply, although now the best are bigger wimps, and the worst are more murderous. To Robert Stone, the disintegration of a viable left apparently figures in this decline. Standing at the center of nearly every Stone novel is a marginalized character who may once have identified with the left but then lost faith, turned cynical, yet remains conversant with left-wing issues. These characters are political junkies, often literally, who have become dysfunctional, perhaps because Stone places them in an intellectual and spiritual...