Lost Culture

The Red Atlantis: Communist Culture in Absence of Communism
by J. Hoberman
Temple University Press, 1999, 304 pp., $34.95

Joe Wood had a voice as deep as a doublebass, and he spoke as he wrote: low, slowly, softly. He forced you to listen attentively to each of his words, pausing gravely as if to prepare you for the next one. When I first met Joe, I thought this was an affectation. Before long, however, I realized it was a style, the outward mark of a sensibility, artful but true. And with this style, Joe had a look, one that gave him away instantly. The big, bookish glasses. The Malcolm X cap, worn with urbane nonchalance. The knapsack filled to capacity with literature. The b...