Bernard Wolfe

Born in New Haven, Connecticut, on August 28, 1915, Bernard Wolfe studied psychology at Yale, entering the university at a notably young age. In the late 1930s he was active in Trotskyist circles and spent time in Mexico working as Leon Trotsky’s secretary and bodyguard, an experience that gave his later writing an unusually sharp political edge.

Back in New York, he worked across journalism and magazine publishing, wrote for political journals, and later collaborated with jazz musician Mezz Mezzrow on the memoir Really the Blues, which became widely known. He also edited popular science magazines and developed a reputation for fast, disciplined prose shaped by years of deadline writing.

Wolfe’s fiction is remembered for being bold, strange, and intellectually restless. His best-known novel, Limbo (1952), imagines a future shaped by war, technology, and extreme ideas about the body, and it has remained his signature work. He died in Calabasas, California, on October 27, 1985.