Biography
Harry Crosby
by Allez33 on Wednesday, November 27, 2002 01:30 pmOn December 7, 1929 Hart Crane threw a grand party in his Brooklyn home near the great bridge of his most famous (at the time, unpublished) work. It was a farewell party for his publishers-to-be, Harry & Caresse Crosby of the Black Sun Press. The Crosbys were due to sail back to France on the 13th and Crane wanted to send them off with a lively & memorable event. By all accounts it was a terrific party and in attendance were William Carlos Williams, Malcolm Cowley, e.e. cummings, and Walker Evans. Toward dawn, as the Crosbys prepared to leave, someone proffered Harry a deck of cards and told him to choose one. He announced that he'd drawn the ace of hearts, crossed himself, and promptly drew that very card. Three days later, before sailing for France, Harry Crosby killed himself with his mistress in a borrowed hotel room in Manhattan.
Some 70+ years following his controversial death, the legacy of Harry Crosby remains unclear, his contributions to poetry, literature, and art still questioned by literary scholars and art historians. There are those writers on 1920s literary Paris who, when deigning to mention him at all, depict a "playboy", a dilettante, a spoiled expatriate dappling in "the arts" because they amused him. The eminent critic Malcolm Cowley has used Crosby as a symbol of the rise and fall of the Jazz Age itself (see "Exile's Return"), eagerly pointing out the many excesses of his short life as being indicative of the essential shallowness of the man, and by extension, the age. Others, however, see in the Crosby character a figure of great complexity, someone devoted to the arts, to poetry, to quality literature, and to the celebration of Creativity in all its guises. This brief article attempts to put down some of the facts of his life without joining too vehemently the debate on the literary merits of his written work or the sincerity of his character and enthusiasms. It will, however, place him squarely in the epicenter of 1920s Jazz Age Paris for that is where he lived from 1922 until his death in 1929.
Crosby was a native Bostonian, born into one of the city's prominent banking families on June 4, 1898, and raised with all the comforts and expectations of privilege that wealth brings. By most accounts he was an unremarkable young man, excelling neither in the arts nor academia and, much to his father's chagrin, demonstrating no interest in or penchant for business. Neither did he pursue sports with any fervor although he was a fine runner and participated in track at the St. Marks School. Like many of his equally well-off peers, his teenage years were basically carefree. With a good-natured personality and enthusiasm for hijinx, Harry could get away with such practices as hurling water balloons at pedestrians from the third floor windows of his home at 95 Beacon St.
Like tens of thousands of his generation, however, his life would be changed forever by participation in the single most devastating event the world had known to date, the Great War (World War I). With several of his close friends, Crosby joined the American Field Service Ambulance Corps and was sent to France as an ambulance driver. Though by no means as dangerous as the role of common trench soldier, being an ambulance driver was hazardous in its own right. The ambulances themselves were notoriously temperamental and slow-moving, and the roads to and from the front lines, in addition to being rutted, potholed tracks, were subject to artillery barrages on a frequent basis.
On November 22, 1917, one such barrage landed within yards of Crosby's ambulance, completely destroying it and gravely injuring one of Crosby's closest friends. Miraculously, Crosby himself was uninjured but the experience proved to be a turning point in his life. What had once been a great "adventure" had turned into something more of a nightmare and his inexplicable escape from death marked the moment when his inner world turned to the mystical and he began to chart a personal cosmology based upon sun worshiping and suicide. While the war in France had liberated him from the stuffy confines of Boston, surviving the destruction of his ambulance liberated him from a fear of death. From that time forward, Crosby would court death, almost taunting it, and extol the glories of suicide.
The boy who'd left Boston eager for experience, returned a man far older than his twenty-one years. Older, perhaps, yet no more responsible and even less inclined to settle into the role prescribed for him by his upbringing, that of a banker's son. Youthful mischief gave way to drunkenness, scandal and family outrage. Though he acceded to his father's demands that he enroll at Harvard and earn a degree, he didn't fit into Boston society and eventually would accept a bank position in Paris, arranged for him via connections with his uncle, J.P. Morgan. Not, however, before becoming infatuated with, and pursuing with dogged persistence, a married woman several years his elder, Mary "Polly" Peabody. In May of 1921 he threatened suicide if Polly did not break off her marriage. Shortly thereafter, she began a formal separation from her husband and, eventually, she would marry Crosby. As both of them hailed from prominent Boston families, the outrage their union caused was shrill and predictable, but it didn't bother Crosby in the least. Shocking the society mavens of Boston would become a sort of hobby of his.
In May, 1922 Crosby arrived back in France, in Paris, and took up his position with the Morgan, Harjes & Co. Bank. But, more importantly, he began the life that would ultimately place him firmly in the center of the extraordinary literary and artistic revolution that was unfolding in 1920s Paris. He quit the bank forever on December 31, 1923 and threw himself single-mindedly into the occupation of poet, reader, and, later, publisher. In the course of these new endeavors he came to know many of the artists and writers we associate most with that era, including, among many, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Kay Boyle, Archibald MacLeish, Hart Crane, Sylvia Beach, Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Crosby shared a number of similarities with the American expatriate community of France (similarities that Malcolm Cowley endeavors to exploit in constructing his theories of the age in his seminal early study of 'Lost Generation' writers "Exile's Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s" (1934)), among them WWI field service in the ambulance corps, a penchant for drink, a disdain for puritanical American values, and an appreciation of art & literature. However, Crosby differed from many of his comrades in at least two significant ways, differences not discussed by Cowley because, had he done so, Crosby would not have fit so neatly into his tidy symbolic package.
First of all, Crosby spoke and read French fluently. This alone sets him apart from nearly all the major American artists & writers of the time and it allowed Crosby to read Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and other giants of French literature in their original language. More importantly, it afforded him the opportunity to move in far wider circles than most of the American and Canadian expats, who by and large, socialized among themselves. Crosby's range of contacts, friends, and acquaintances exceeded that of most foreigners and extended beyond English-speaking Bohemian circles.
Secondly, Crosby came from money. Whereas many of the expats who flocked to Paris did so because the exchange rate allowed them to live relatively comfortable lives on a fraction of the money it would require to live in the States, Crosby had no such concern. Despite his avowed dislike of Boston society and the culture of privilege he came from, he had no compunction about exploiting his family's wealth to live a lavish, indulgent lifestyle and to pursue the artistic life he considered vastly superior to a life focused on the accumulation of money.
Many literary scholars portray Crosby as little more than a playboy on holiday but this is inaccurate. From 1925 on, he became an independent student of art, literature, and writing. Keeping disciplined working hours, he read widely and thoroughly, endeavoring to make up for all he'd missed in high school and at Harvard, and wrote with a singleness of purpose worthy of some of the more respected writers of the period. Weighing the literary value of his output is beyond the scope of this biographical essay but it is true that, in a short span of five years, he produced a considerable body of work consisting of poetry, journals, and essays, some of it published in various literary journals of the era (Transition, Hound & Horn), and much of it appearing under the imprint of the Black Sun Press. "Shadows of the Sun", his collected journals, remains one of the great published diaries of the 20th century.
Crosby, however, defies simple titles like 'poet' or 'publisher' or 'expat'. He was all of those things, of course, but moreover he was a character, one of those classic eccentrics whose charisma, charm, and audacity both attracted and repelled. As noted, Crosby emerged from WWI a changed man. Once he moved to Paris, he never looked back. And his companion, Polly, also once a staid practitioner of Boston social decorum, went along for the ride. At the end of 1924, the two of them, already committing themselves to the practice of writing and the exploration of art, decided that Polly needed a more literary name. They decided upon Caresse in part because, in conjunction with the name Harry, the two names formed a cross when joined (one vertical and one horizontal). This became their symbol and they would have the Crosby Cross stamped in gold on the leather spines of their hundreds of books. Naturally, the name change further scandalized their respective families but it also served notice that Caresse, too, had abandoned all pretext at Boston respectability. "'Yes' is my favorite word" she wrote in her autobiography "The Passionate Years" and it was this spirit of brash go-forwardness that served as the perfect catalyst for Crosby's unflagging enthusiasms.
Together they founded what would ultimately be regarded as one of the finest small press publishing houses of the 20th century. It began as something of a vanity press as both of them wanted to see their writings in print but were skeptical of the process of mainstream publishing as well as of what they saw as the indignity of submitting their words to others for approval. How much easier it would be, they thought, to print their own books in small editions and be able to control not only what was printed but also the appearance of the works themselves. In April of 1927 they established Editions Narcisse which, after several books, was renamed the Black Sun Press. By mere serendipity they happened upon a printer's shop not far from their apartment at 19 rue de Lille. The printer, Roger Lescaret, made his living printing wedding invitations & funeral notices and had never before produced an entire book. That didn't dissuade the Crosbys from striking a deal with him and Lescaret would be the Black Sun's master printer for the duration of the enterprise.
Whereas their initial thought was to publish their own work (which they did), it occurred to them as well to publish other writers that interested them, and they actively solicited work from their friends and from writers they admired. Their list, as it comes down to us today, is impressive by any standards. Over time the Black Sun Press would bring out works by James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Kay Boyle, Hart Crane, Rene Crevel, Archibald MacLeish, Marcel Proust, D.H. Lawrence, Henry James, Eugene Jolas, and Oscar Wilde. The books themselves are elegant yet understated and are marked by clean lines, sharp typeface, and fine inks and papers. Generally published in small editions (anywhere from 10 or 20 copies to several hundred copies), some works were published in both a "limited" edition (with more elaborate design and more expensive materials) and a "trade" edition, also limited in number but perhaps not signed by the author, or not numbered. Most were issued in slipcases.
The Crosbys life together in Paris was, by all accounts, hedonistic, indulgent, eccentric. It was not uncommon for them to host small dinner parties in their giant bed and for everyone to end up in their huge bathtub together, bottles of iced champagne near at hand. Harry was an enthusiastic user of hashish and opium (which he called "Black Idol"), and a profligate gambler. He loathed paper money and once paid D.H. Lawrence for a story in gold coins he had smuggled into France from the United States. He refused to wear a hat, often wore a black carnation in his lapel, and was known to lacquer his nails (fingers and toes). On a trip to North Africa in 1925, he had crosses tattooed on the soles of his feet. He loved books and had an extensive library, particularly following the death of the family friend Walter Berry who left his own library of 7000+ books to he & Caresse. However, at times feeling burdened by the excess of such holdings, he would amble through the used book stalls along the Seine and, when no one was looking, slip rare first editions of Rimbaud or Wilde into the stacks.
He also had numerous affairs and gave nicknames to the women in print - "The Lady of the Golden Horse", "The Fire Princess". It was a practice that was grudgingly accepted by Caresse and in time she would have her own lovers as well. He developed his own personal cosmology which revolved around the worship of the sun and he would spend hours sunbathing naked in the sun atop the turret at the estate they rented outside Paris. And finally, he extolled the idea of suicide, referring to it constantly in his diaries and even setting a date for a joint suicide with Caresse, October 31, 1942. He imagined his death occurring violently, an "explosion into sun". In 1929 he began flying lessons and dreamed of crashing his airplane, the bright rays of the sun full in his eyes as he plummeted to earth.
It was not Caresse, however, who would finally share Crosby's "sun death", but one of his mistresses, Josephine Rotch Bigelow, "the Fire Princess", and it would not come in the roaring descent of a plane but rather in the sharp crack of a pistol shot to the temple. The circumstances are disturbing and can be found in some detail in the one full-length biography of him, "Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby" by Geoffrey Wolff. The date was December 10, 1929.
Crosby's life and literary legacy defies easy dismissal, despite the unseemly nature of his suicide. The more one examines the details of his enthusiasms and the authenticity of his passions, the more one must devise a place for him in the literary and artistic canon of the 1920s. His most enduring contribution, most would say, was the Black Sun Press itself. With a list of authors representing the Crosbys' literary foresight, even the most ardent dismissers of Harry Crosby the man reluctantly grant credence to Harry Crosby the publisher. The books themselves continue to elicit praise for their fine craftsmanship and their elegant design, and, now exceedingly rare, are highly coveted and command significant prices on the rare book market.
Less agreement among literary historians can be found regarding his other major contribution, the remarkable journals he composed and published in three volumes, "Shadows of the Sun". The diaries date from January 1, 1922 to December 9, 1929 and are a compendium of Crosby's eccentricities, enthusiasms, obsessions, poetic inspirations, affairs, indulgences, friends, mystical ruminations, etc. In addition, they chart a course through that remarkable time and place, Paris in the 20s, and many recognizable artists & writers appear, from Joyce to Hemingway to Kay Boyle to Alistair. The journals are rich in his personal cosmology of sun worshiping and references to suicide abound.
The diaries have been criticized by some for what they lack: psychological profiling, tortured introspection, documentary-style recording of events, etc. But the criticism is founded on critics' expectations of what literary diaries SHOULD be. Read with an open mind, the diaries form an extraordinary narrative of vignettes and musings, written in a unique prose style that simulates Crosby's own personality. It is a style of clarity and energy, with long sentences stitched together by the use of "and" evoking an extended exhalation, a long clean sharp breath of words and imagery.
One final aspect of the Crosby life, one that has been academically & biographically overlooked, was his enthusiasm for photography. He was an eager experimental photographer and perceived the medium as a viable art form. One unsubstantiated rumor holds that Harry Crosby gave Henri Carter-Bresson his first camera. While such an assertion is unlikely, it is true, nonetheless, that Crosby knew the young Cartier-Bresson and that they spent some time together making photographs and talking photography at the Mill the Crosbys rented at Ermenonville, outside Paris. The visual record of Crosby's photographic output resides at the Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, in Carbondale, IL.
Anyone interested in learning more about Harry Crosby, Caresse Crosby, and the Black Sun Press is encouraged to consult Geoffrey Wolff's biography (noted above), or to seek out "Shadows of the Sun" (now out of print but once put out by Black Sparrow Press in the late 1970s).
Some 70+ years following his controversial death, the legacy of Harry Crosby remains unclear, his contributions to poetry, literature, and art still questioned by literary scholars and art historians. There are those writers on 1920s literary Paris who, when deigning to mention him at all, depict a "playboy", a dilettante, a spoiled expatriate dappling in "the arts" because they amused him. The eminent critic Malcolm Cowley has used Crosby as a symbol of the rise and fall of the Jazz Age itself (see "Exile's Return"), eagerly pointing out the many excesses of his short life as being indicative of the essential shallowness of the man, and by extension, the age. Others, however, see in the Crosby character a figure of great complexity, someone devoted to the arts, to poetry, to quality literature, and to the celebration of Creativity in all its guises. This brief article attempts to put down some of the facts of his life without joining too vehemently the debate on the literary merits of his written work or the sincerity of his character and enthusiasms. It will, however, place him squarely in the epicenter of 1920s Jazz Age Paris for that is where he lived from 1922 until his death in 1929.
Crosby was a native Bostonian, born into one of the city's prominent banking families on June 4, 1898, and raised with all the comforts and expectations of privilege that wealth brings. By most accounts he was an unremarkable young man, excelling neither in the arts nor academia and, much to his father's chagrin, demonstrating no interest in or penchant for business. Neither did he pursue sports with any fervor although he was a fine runner and participated in track at the St. Marks School. Like many of his equally well-off peers, his teenage years were basically carefree. With a good-natured personality and enthusiasm for hijinx, Harry could get away with such practices as hurling water balloons at pedestrians from the third floor windows of his home at 95 Beacon St.
Like tens of thousands of his generation, however, his life would be changed forever by participation in the single most devastating event the world had known to date, the Great War (World War I). With several of his close friends, Crosby joined the American Field Service Ambulance Corps and was sent to France as an ambulance driver. Though by no means as dangerous as the role of common trench soldier, being an ambulance driver was hazardous in its own right. The ambulances themselves were notoriously temperamental and slow-moving, and the roads to and from the front lines, in addition to being rutted, potholed tracks, were subject to artillery barrages on a frequent basis.
On November 22, 1917, one such barrage landed within yards of Crosby's ambulance, completely destroying it and gravely injuring one of Crosby's closest friends. Miraculously, Crosby himself was uninjured but the experience proved to be a turning point in his life. What had once been a great "adventure" had turned into something more of a nightmare and his inexplicable escape from death marked the moment when his inner world turned to the mystical and he began to chart a personal cosmology based upon sun worshiping and suicide. While the war in France had liberated him from the stuffy confines of Boston, surviving the destruction of his ambulance liberated him from a fear of death. From that time forward, Crosby would court death, almost taunting it, and extol the glories of suicide.
The boy who'd left Boston eager for experience, returned a man far older than his twenty-one years. Older, perhaps, yet no more responsible and even less inclined to settle into the role prescribed for him by his upbringing, that of a banker's son. Youthful mischief gave way to drunkenness, scandal and family outrage. Though he acceded to his father's demands that he enroll at Harvard and earn a degree, he didn't fit into Boston society and eventually would accept a bank position in Paris, arranged for him via connections with his uncle, J.P. Morgan. Not, however, before becoming infatuated with, and pursuing with dogged persistence, a married woman several years his elder, Mary "Polly" Peabody. In May of 1921 he threatened suicide if Polly did not break off her marriage. Shortly thereafter, she began a formal separation from her husband and, eventually, she would marry Crosby. As both of them hailed from prominent Boston families, the outrage their union caused was shrill and predictable, but it didn't bother Crosby in the least. Shocking the society mavens of Boston would become a sort of hobby of his.
In May, 1922 Crosby arrived back in France, in Paris, and took up his position with the Morgan, Harjes & Co. Bank. But, more importantly, he began the life that would ultimately place him firmly in the center of the extraordinary literary and artistic revolution that was unfolding in 1920s Paris. He quit the bank forever on December 31, 1923 and threw himself single-mindedly into the occupation of poet, reader, and, later, publisher. In the course of these new endeavors he came to know many of the artists and writers we associate most with that era, including, among many, James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Kay Boyle, Archibald MacLeish, Hart Crane, Sylvia Beach, Henri Cartier-Bresson.
Crosby shared a number of similarities with the American expatriate community of France (similarities that Malcolm Cowley endeavors to exploit in constructing his theories of the age in his seminal early study of 'Lost Generation' writers "Exile's Return: A Literary Odyssey of the 1920s" (1934)), among them WWI field service in the ambulance corps, a penchant for drink, a disdain for puritanical American values, and an appreciation of art & literature. However, Crosby differed from many of his comrades in at least two significant ways, differences not discussed by Cowley because, had he done so, Crosby would not have fit so neatly into his tidy symbolic package.
First of all, Crosby spoke and read French fluently. This alone sets him apart from nearly all the major American artists & writers of the time and it allowed Crosby to read Rimbaud, Baudelaire, and other giants of French literature in their original language. More importantly, it afforded him the opportunity to move in far wider circles than most of the American and Canadian expats, who by and large, socialized among themselves. Crosby's range of contacts, friends, and acquaintances exceeded that of most foreigners and extended beyond English-speaking Bohemian circles.
Secondly, Crosby came from money. Whereas many of the expats who flocked to Paris did so because the exchange rate allowed them to live relatively comfortable lives on a fraction of the money it would require to live in the States, Crosby had no such concern. Despite his avowed dislike of Boston society and the culture of privilege he came from, he had no compunction about exploiting his family's wealth to live a lavish, indulgent lifestyle and to pursue the artistic life he considered vastly superior to a life focused on the accumulation of money.
Many literary scholars portray Crosby as little more than a playboy on holiday but this is inaccurate. From 1925 on, he became an independent student of art, literature, and writing. Keeping disciplined working hours, he read widely and thoroughly, endeavoring to make up for all he'd missed in high school and at Harvard, and wrote with a singleness of purpose worthy of some of the more respected writers of the period. Weighing the literary value of his output is beyond the scope of this biographical essay but it is true that, in a short span of five years, he produced a considerable body of work consisting of poetry, journals, and essays, some of it published in various literary journals of the era (Transition, Hound & Horn), and much of it appearing under the imprint of the Black Sun Press. "Shadows of the Sun", his collected journals, remains one of the great published diaries of the 20th century.
Crosby, however, defies simple titles like 'poet' or 'publisher' or 'expat'. He was all of those things, of course, but moreover he was a character, one of those classic eccentrics whose charisma, charm, and audacity both attracted and repelled. As noted, Crosby emerged from WWI a changed man. Once he moved to Paris, he never looked back. And his companion, Polly, also once a staid practitioner of Boston social decorum, went along for the ride. At the end of 1924, the two of them, already committing themselves to the practice of writing and the exploration of art, decided that Polly needed a more literary name. They decided upon Caresse in part because, in conjunction with the name Harry, the two names formed a cross when joined (one vertical and one horizontal). This became their symbol and they would have the Crosby Cross stamped in gold on the leather spines of their hundreds of books. Naturally, the name change further scandalized their respective families but it also served notice that Caresse, too, had abandoned all pretext at Boston respectability. "'Yes' is my favorite word" she wrote in her autobiography "The Passionate Years" and it was this spirit of brash go-forwardness that served as the perfect catalyst for Crosby's unflagging enthusiasms.
Together they founded what would ultimately be regarded as one of the finest small press publishing houses of the 20th century. It began as something of a vanity press as both of them wanted to see their writings in print but were skeptical of the process of mainstream publishing as well as of what they saw as the indignity of submitting their words to others for approval. How much easier it would be, they thought, to print their own books in small editions and be able to control not only what was printed but also the appearance of the works themselves. In April of 1927 they established Editions Narcisse which, after several books, was renamed the Black Sun Press. By mere serendipity they happened upon a printer's shop not far from their apartment at 19 rue de Lille. The printer, Roger Lescaret, made his living printing wedding invitations & funeral notices and had never before produced an entire book. That didn't dissuade the Crosbys from striking a deal with him and Lescaret would be the Black Sun's master printer for the duration of the enterprise.
Whereas their initial thought was to publish their own work (which they did), it occurred to them as well to publish other writers that interested them, and they actively solicited work from their friends and from writers they admired. Their list, as it comes down to us today, is impressive by any standards. Over time the Black Sun Press would bring out works by James Joyce, Ernest Hemingway, Kay Boyle, Hart Crane, Rene Crevel, Archibald MacLeish, Marcel Proust, D.H. Lawrence, Henry James, Eugene Jolas, and Oscar Wilde. The books themselves are elegant yet understated and are marked by clean lines, sharp typeface, and fine inks and papers. Generally published in small editions (anywhere from 10 or 20 copies to several hundred copies), some works were published in both a "limited" edition (with more elaborate design and more expensive materials) and a "trade" edition, also limited in number but perhaps not signed by the author, or not numbered. Most were issued in slipcases.
The Crosbys life together in Paris was, by all accounts, hedonistic, indulgent, eccentric. It was not uncommon for them to host small dinner parties in their giant bed and for everyone to end up in their huge bathtub together, bottles of iced champagne near at hand. Harry was an enthusiastic user of hashish and opium (which he called "Black Idol"), and a profligate gambler. He loathed paper money and once paid D.H. Lawrence for a story in gold coins he had smuggled into France from the United States. He refused to wear a hat, often wore a black carnation in his lapel, and was known to lacquer his nails (fingers and toes). On a trip to North Africa in 1925, he had crosses tattooed on the soles of his feet. He loved books and had an extensive library, particularly following the death of the family friend Walter Berry who left his own library of 7000+ books to he & Caresse. However, at times feeling burdened by the excess of such holdings, he would amble through the used book stalls along the Seine and, when no one was looking, slip rare first editions of Rimbaud or Wilde into the stacks.
He also had numerous affairs and gave nicknames to the women in print - "The Lady of the Golden Horse", "The Fire Princess". It was a practice that was grudgingly accepted by Caresse and in time she would have her own lovers as well. He developed his own personal cosmology which revolved around the worship of the sun and he would spend hours sunbathing naked in the sun atop the turret at the estate they rented outside Paris. And finally, he extolled the idea of suicide, referring to it constantly in his diaries and even setting a date for a joint suicide with Caresse, October 31, 1942. He imagined his death occurring violently, an "explosion into sun". In 1929 he began flying lessons and dreamed of crashing his airplane, the bright rays of the sun full in his eyes as he plummeted to earth.
It was not Caresse, however, who would finally share Crosby's "sun death", but one of his mistresses, Josephine Rotch Bigelow, "the Fire Princess", and it would not come in the roaring descent of a plane but rather in the sharp crack of a pistol shot to the temple. The circumstances are disturbing and can be found in some detail in the one full-length biography of him, "Black Sun: The Brief Transit and Violent Eclipse of Harry Crosby" by Geoffrey Wolff. The date was December 10, 1929.
Crosby's life and literary legacy defies easy dismissal, despite the unseemly nature of his suicide. The more one examines the details of his enthusiasms and the authenticity of his passions, the more one must devise a place for him in the literary and artistic canon of the 1920s. His most enduring contribution, most would say, was the Black Sun Press itself. With a list of authors representing the Crosbys' literary foresight, even the most ardent dismissers of Harry Crosby the man reluctantly grant credence to Harry Crosby the publisher. The books themselves continue to elicit praise for their fine craftsmanship and their elegant design, and, now exceedingly rare, are highly coveted and command significant prices on the rare book market.
Less agreement among literary historians can be found regarding his other major contribution, the remarkable journals he composed and published in three volumes, "Shadows of the Sun". The diaries date from January 1, 1922 to December 9, 1929 and are a compendium of Crosby's eccentricities, enthusiasms, obsessions, poetic inspirations, affairs, indulgences, friends, mystical ruminations, etc. In addition, they chart a course through that remarkable time and place, Paris in the 20s, and many recognizable artists & writers appear, from Joyce to Hemingway to Kay Boyle to Alistair. The journals are rich in his personal cosmology of sun worshiping and references to suicide abound.
The diaries have been criticized by some for what they lack: psychological profiling, tortured introspection, documentary-style recording of events, etc. But the criticism is founded on critics' expectations of what literary diaries SHOULD be. Read with an open mind, the diaries form an extraordinary narrative of vignettes and musings, written in a unique prose style that simulates Crosby's own personality. It is a style of clarity and energy, with long sentences stitched together by the use of "and" evoking an extended exhalation, a long clean sharp breath of words and imagery.
One final aspect of the Crosby life, one that has been academically & biographically overlooked, was his enthusiasm for photography. He was an eager experimental photographer and perceived the medium as a viable art form. One unsubstantiated rumor holds that Harry Crosby gave Henri Carter-Bresson his first camera. While such an assertion is unlikely, it is true, nonetheless, that Crosby knew the young Cartier-Bresson and that they spent some time together making photographs and talking photography at the Mill the Crosbys rented at Ermenonville, outside Paris. The visual record of Crosby's photographic output resides at the Morris Library, Southern Illinois University, in Carbondale, IL.
Anyone interested in learning more about Harry Crosby, Caresse Crosby, and the Black Sun Press is encouraged to consult Geoffrey Wolff's biography (noted above), or to seek out "Shadows of the Sun" (now out of print but once put out by Black Sparrow Press in the late 1970s).
The Short Happy Death of Albert Camus
by Jay Meija on Saturday, November 16, 2002 06:08 pm
"I know nothing more stupid than to die in an automobile accident."--Albert Camus
The last thing in the world Albert Camus wanted was to win the Nobel Prize for Literature. "I'm castrated," the mortified Algerian-born French writer complained upon hearing that he'd won the greatest honor any writer could ever hope for. At that moment in his life, Camus was depressed, ill, and suffering from an enormous writer's block. Now he would be subject to the torture of public exposure, spectacle, and solemnities. Left-leaning Frenchmen led by Jean Paul Sartre had been publicly deriding Camus for being too conservative and for behaving as the high priest of Absolute Morality -- albeit one who carried his own portable pedestal. For conservative Frenchmen, Camus was no conservative at all but a militant radical at a time when the Arabs in Algeria were preparing for revolt. In the press Camus was treated more as a political than a literary figure and was often vilified as a mere writer of illusions. One critic dismissed his work as negative and jeered at the concept of the modern alienated outsider as nothing more than "the hero as vegetable." To his own regret, Camus could ill afford to turn down a Nobel Prize financially or morally, as Sartre later did. Trapped by fame, misunderstood even by his own admirers, and suffering the sting of his adversaries coolly mocking him in the press and in private, Camus wearily made the trip to Stockholm and accepted the award.
Paul Auster
by Levi Asher on Tuesday, October 15, 2002 07:01 pmPaul Auster was born in 1947 in Newark, New Jersey (home also to Philip Roth, who would also, later in his career, write novels full of tangled identities and secret subtexts).
It's hard to pin down straight biographical facts about Paul Auster, even though Auster writes about himself frequently in his novels and essays. In fact, Paul Auster turns up at least once in most Auster novels, usually popping his head and looking slightly out of place in the middle of his text, like a human being who pops up on the Muppet Show. But even though he writes about himself a lot, he seems to manage to do so in such a way as to obscure more than he reveals.
We can gather a few facts, though, from his various autobiographies and reflective writings:
There are more facts available, but when discussing Auster they all seem to hang meaninglessly in the breeze, because to apprehend Auster's writing is to come to a point where nothing can be considered true and nothing can be understood.
However, this is not why I like Paul Auster's writing. I can take metaphysical intertextual stuff or leave it. If you ask me if I want to read a novel that explores notions of identity, I am not exactly going to leap at the chance. The reason I like Auster's writing is that, somehow, he approaches this postmodern stuff with touches of realism and humanity and street smart humor. Somehow it doesn't come out all dry and thick. Instead it kind of jumps off the page and grabs you around the neck.
At least that's how I felt about his best work, the astounding "New York Trilogy". This consists of three short novels, "City of Glass" (1985), "Ghosts" (1986) and "The Locked Room" (1986). The first book, a pseudo-detective novel, throws us immediately into a scene of horrific remembered child abuse, as a frightened adult male babbles incoherently about the language experiments his cruel father subjected him to when he was a child. We then go looking for the father, find him, and start following him around upper Manhattan. By the end of this swirling, bizarre book, nobody knows what his name is anymore, including the reader.
The next two installments simply provide new layers on the cake: "Ghosts" presents a detective watching a writer through a window (and names all its characters after colors five years before "Reservoir Dogs"!); "The Locked Room" is about a man searching for a lost writer. The overall effect is something like the complete brain-circuit disconnect provided by a great David Lynch movie, minus the soft-core porn, with a few baseball scenes or poker games added.
Auster has written many books, including "Moon Palace" (identity dislocation in an olden-day New York setting, involving a chinese restaurant and a cubist painter), "Leviathan" (identity dislocation with a left-wing/anarchist political theme), "The Music of Chance" (identity dislocation at a poker tournament) and "Timbuktu" (something about a dog). He's also worked on a couple of well-known indie films, "Smoke" and "Blue in the Face". The latest novel is called "The Book of Illusion" (identity dislocation in 1930's Hollywood). I have to admit that at some point I stopped reading new Auster novels. Maybe this is my mistake. But getting your identity dislocated is kind of like getting your shoulder dislocated. It's interesting the first time, but you don't necessarily want to do it repeatedly.
It's hard to pin down straight biographical facts about Paul Auster, even though Auster writes about himself frequently in his novels and essays. In fact, Paul Auster turns up at least once in most Auster novels, usually popping his head and looking slightly out of place in the middle of his text, like a human being who pops up on the Muppet Show. But even though he writes about himself a lot, he seems to manage to do so in such a way as to obscure more than he reveals.
We can gather a few facts, though, from his various autobiographies and reflective writings:
- He had a remote and emotionally impenetrable father.
- He was once married to novelist Lydia Davis (another renowned postmodern author) and they had children together. The marriage apparently ended in such a way as to devastate Auster nearly beyond repair, and to this date many of the main characters in his novels are adult males living in catatonic states after the deaths of their wives and children).
- He and Davis worked as translators of modern French poetry, and were once so hungry that they baked an onion pie and then tragically overcooked it
- He used to live near Columbia University, and probably ate at the Chinese Restaurant known as the Moon Palace on 112th Street.
- He now lives in Brooklyn Heights and is married to Siri Hustvedt (yes, yet another renowned postmodern author).
- He is a Mets fan.
There are more facts available, but when discussing Auster they all seem to hang meaninglessly in the breeze, because to apprehend Auster's writing is to come to a point where nothing can be considered true and nothing can be understood.
However, this is not why I like Paul Auster's writing. I can take metaphysical intertextual stuff or leave it. If you ask me if I want to read a novel that explores notions of identity, I am not exactly going to leap at the chance. The reason I like Auster's writing is that, somehow, he approaches this postmodern stuff with touches of realism and humanity and street smart humor. Somehow it doesn't come out all dry and thick. Instead it kind of jumps off the page and grabs you around the neck.
At least that's how I felt about his best work, the astounding "New York Trilogy". This consists of three short novels, "City of Glass" (1985), "Ghosts" (1986) and "The Locked Room" (1986). The first book, a pseudo-detective novel, throws us immediately into a scene of horrific remembered child abuse, as a frightened adult male babbles incoherently about the language experiments his cruel father subjected him to when he was a child. We then go looking for the father, find him, and start following him around upper Manhattan. By the end of this swirling, bizarre book, nobody knows what his name is anymore, including the reader.
The next two installments simply provide new layers on the cake: "Ghosts" presents a detective watching a writer through a window (and names all its characters after colors five years before "Reservoir Dogs"!); "The Locked Room" is about a man searching for a lost writer. The overall effect is something like the complete brain-circuit disconnect provided by a great David Lynch movie, minus the soft-core porn, with a few baseball scenes or poker games added.
Auster has written many books, including "Moon Palace" (identity dislocation in an olden-day New York setting, involving a chinese restaurant and a cubist painter), "Leviathan" (identity dislocation with a left-wing/anarchist political theme), "The Music of Chance" (identity dislocation at a poker tournament) and "Timbuktu" (something about a dog). He's also worked on a couple of well-known indie films, "Smoke" and "Blue in the Face". The latest novel is called "The Book of Illusion" (identity dislocation in 1930's Hollywood). I have to admit that at some point I stopped reading new Auster novels. Maybe this is my mistake. But getting your identity dislocated is kind of like getting your shoulder dislocated. It's interesting the first time, but you don't necessarily want to do it repeatedly.
Terry Nation
by slurpy on Wednesday, August 21, 2002 02:31 am"They talk of democracy, freedom, fairness. Those are the words of cowards. The ones who will listen to a thousand viewpoints and try to satisfy them all. Victory comes through absolute power and power through strength. They have lost!
Davros in The Genesis of the Daleks
Born on the 5th of November, 1930, Terrence Nation is still waiting for his 'big break' so to speak. Although he has achieved minor cult status in his native England, a reputation of any sort in America remains more or less invisible.
Belonging to a respectable but hard working East Sussex family, attendance in college (as well as high marks in A-level classes) was demanded of him by the parental units. As he was, to put it mildly, a school nerd, Terry was all too happy to oblige. At this point, he'd written many short stories in the science fiction genre, heavily influenced by the arrival of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, J.R.R. Tolkein and Edgar Rice Burroughs, his favorite. He mapped cleaverly drawn out, slow moving suspenseful tales in both novels and screenplays, emulating Burroughs' Martian Chronicles and The Stories of Tarzan. Though he felt perfectly at home in a schooling environment, many have often speculated as to whether or not his ulterior motive was to find recognition through the walls of the university. In either case, it was not to be.
He did, however, acquaint himself with fellow student Angela Berring, a soon-to-be wife. They would marry years after graduation in 1957. Leaving his short stories by the wayside (many of them would not become available until after 1993) he began to formulate an idea for a novel. A story of radioactively altered creatures dwelling inside travel machines which are, in effect, their bodies. They administer a "Hitler-esque" way of dealing with enemies (in fact all creatures who aren't part of their own species are the enemy) and have destroyed their own world through radioactive decay. The moral implications of their actions on the planet they live in, as well as the history of said planet, were (are) explored in a series of novels.
This career was not a lucrative one. Angela supported the couple as a common day secretary. This went on until one fateful morning at the tail end of 1963 when Terry was commissioned to write a script for the TV program Doctor Who. Rather then forcing him into their pre-ready material, a story built around "his own alien species" was broadcast.
Originally to be called The Mutants, the story was eventually renamed The Daleks. These creatures re-appeared on no less then 13 occasions in the program. Nation penned most of these Dalek episodes.
Terry had been writing adventurous tales of those in the clutch of merciless Daleks. Now he began to develop a mythology (Where the Daleks came from, where they were going, where he was going with the story and so on and so on). An idea involving the Daleks' violent based take over of earth was conceived into an actual Doctor Who episode (The Dalek Invasion of Earth) in September, 1964.
These provided a meager pittance of cash yet Angela did not waver in her fiscal or emotional support and they remain close to this very day. Nation carried on, creating without appreciation. Two of his other scripts for Doctor Who were transmitted on the BBC in 1965 (Mission to the Unknown, The Chase). As Doctor Who slowly became a mainstay of English television, public demand for Nations stories had risen. Three tales of the Daleks were published in 1966 along with another commissioned script for Doctor Who, The Power of the Daleks. The novel paired to it was available in England by 1969. Doctor Who was practically a household name in England by now. Influence in America would come later. Exhausted with writing the Dalek tales, Terry finally moved on. New fictions began to take shape. Single minded yet very adaptable machines enslave the planet earth with rudimentary force, totalitarianism, and brain washing. They can also modify their shape, turning into any object. Like the Dalek scribblings, it was a lesson in morality but now the themes had developed a higher level of sophistication. The Androids, a finished book in 1971, received not a hint of interest from either a publishing company or Doctor Who.
Out of work, weaving menacing yarns of Dalek swashbuckling (while Angela paid the bills), Terry's Planet of the Daleks aired on Doctor Who in 1973, earning him a modestly sized royalty check. The novelisation along with a condensed version of The Androids were both released in 1974. Terry earned fame in America with the help of Tom Baker's reign as Doctor, popularizing the show in that country. Genesis of The Daleks, written by Terry, was broadcast in 1975. In the next season, The Androids morphed into The Android Invasion, first aired on the BBC in 1976. Two companion novels released in 1977 sold better then any had previously.
This would be Nation's last effort in the Doctor Who format as a scriptwriter. Detaching himself from the program was not hard. Nation was ready to move on and create the television show Blake's 7: The story of Roj Blake, a political dissident in a 22nd century earth. He is brainwashed and reconditioned as a model citizen. But memories of the stultified past haunt him endlessly. Going back to his deviant ways, he finds most of his fellow protesters have been "eliminated" by the powers holding earth in captivation. Recruiting another barrage of rag tag rebels, Blake is imprisoned and sent to a far off alien political prison on the other side of the galaxy with a trumped up charge of child molestation. Nation uses social criticism instead of inter-galactic adventure.
In the third episode, Blake frees himself and the other rebels, commandeering an abandoned ship of unknown origin. Christening it The Liberator (appropriate, don't you think?), Blake and company devote the rest of the series to crushing the Federation. It was a tremendously profitable show, earning steady pay for Nation. Something Doctor Who never did for Terry. The program ran for four years and was cancelled in 1982.
Unlike Doctor Who, Blake's 7 was Terry's own masterpiece. He only created the Daleks, not their show. Omitting the Doctor from his Dalek novelizations (written during 1984, then ongoing several years henceforth) allowed him to create independently. First Published by Virgin Books in 1987, they sold moderately well both in America and England. Seven were written in all.
On the eve of Doctor Who's thirtieth anniversary in 1993, Terry published The Doctors: Thirty Years of Time Travel and Beyond. It is Terry's longest work, breaking the 300 page barrier (most of his stories are fairly condensed). Every single Doctor appears (it seems now he felt comfortable enough to include the beloved time lord in his stories!) and the book was made into a film. You'll be hard pressed to find a copy in America. Many of Terry's early short story efforts were published at this time.
Not long after, film adaptations of The Daleks and The Dalek Invasion of Earth were finally distributed after years on the shelf. Terry then began working on Blake 7 novelisations building the mythos of the original show's canon and stark (often terrifying) commentary on modern society. "It was something I had been meaning to do for a long time", Nation said.
Documenting Blake's political activism before his re-conditioning, The tales of Roj is so far the only Blake novel. Terry is most likely still working on the other. It is, as with many writers, hard to say due to his introversion from publicity. By all accounts, he still lives with Angela somewhere in Debbenshire, creating tales of rebellion, adventure, mystery and horror. He's been cited as inspirational by none other then Paul Andersen (Author of Event Horizon), and the late great Phillip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Overcast, Perversions of Science, Logan's Run, Minority Report etc.).
Davros in The Genesis of the Daleks
Born on the 5th of November, 1930, Terrence Nation is still waiting for his 'big break' so to speak. Although he has achieved minor cult status in his native England, a reputation of any sort in America remains more or less invisible.
Belonging to a respectable but hard working East Sussex family, attendance in college (as well as high marks in A-level classes) was demanded of him by the parental units. As he was, to put it mildly, a school nerd, Terry was all too happy to oblige. At this point, he'd written many short stories in the science fiction genre, heavily influenced by the arrival of Jules Verne, H.G. Wells, Arthur C. Clarke, J.R.R. Tolkein and Edgar Rice Burroughs, his favorite. He mapped cleaverly drawn out, slow moving suspenseful tales in both novels and screenplays, emulating Burroughs' Martian Chronicles and The Stories of Tarzan. Though he felt perfectly at home in a schooling environment, many have often speculated as to whether or not his ulterior motive was to find recognition through the walls of the university. In either case, it was not to be.
He did, however, acquaint himself with fellow student Angela Berring, a soon-to-be wife. They would marry years after graduation in 1957. Leaving his short stories by the wayside (many of them would not become available until after 1993) he began to formulate an idea for a novel. A story of radioactively altered creatures dwelling inside travel machines which are, in effect, their bodies. They administer a "Hitler-esque" way of dealing with enemies (in fact all creatures who aren't part of their own species are the enemy) and have destroyed their own world through radioactive decay. The moral implications of their actions on the planet they live in, as well as the history of said planet, were (are) explored in a series of novels.
This career was not a lucrative one. Angela supported the couple as a common day secretary. This went on until one fateful morning at the tail end of 1963 when Terry was commissioned to write a script for the TV program Doctor Who. Rather then forcing him into their pre-ready material, a story built around "his own alien species" was broadcast.
Originally to be called The Mutants, the story was eventually renamed The Daleks. These creatures re-appeared on no less then 13 occasions in the program. Nation penned most of these Dalek episodes.
Terry had been writing adventurous tales of those in the clutch of merciless Daleks. Now he began to develop a mythology (Where the Daleks came from, where they were going, where he was going with the story and so on and so on). An idea involving the Daleks' violent based take over of earth was conceived into an actual Doctor Who episode (The Dalek Invasion of Earth) in September, 1964.
These provided a meager pittance of cash yet Angela did not waver in her fiscal or emotional support and they remain close to this very day. Nation carried on, creating without appreciation. Two of his other scripts for Doctor Who were transmitted on the BBC in 1965 (Mission to the Unknown, The Chase). As Doctor Who slowly became a mainstay of English television, public demand for Nations stories had risen. Three tales of the Daleks were published in 1966 along with another commissioned script for Doctor Who, The Power of the Daleks. The novel paired to it was available in England by 1969. Doctor Who was practically a household name in England by now. Influence in America would come later. Exhausted with writing the Dalek tales, Terry finally moved on. New fictions began to take shape. Single minded yet very adaptable machines enslave the planet earth with rudimentary force, totalitarianism, and brain washing. They can also modify their shape, turning into any object. Like the Dalek scribblings, it was a lesson in morality but now the themes had developed a higher level of sophistication. The Androids, a finished book in 1971, received not a hint of interest from either a publishing company or Doctor Who.
Out of work, weaving menacing yarns of Dalek swashbuckling (while Angela paid the bills), Terry's Planet of the Daleks aired on Doctor Who in 1973, earning him a modestly sized royalty check. The novelisation along with a condensed version of The Androids were both released in 1974. Terry earned fame in America with the help of Tom Baker's reign as Doctor, popularizing the show in that country. Genesis of The Daleks, written by Terry, was broadcast in 1975. In the next season, The Androids morphed into The Android Invasion, first aired on the BBC in 1976. Two companion novels released in 1977 sold better then any had previously.
This would be Nation's last effort in the Doctor Who format as a scriptwriter. Detaching himself from the program was not hard. Nation was ready to move on and create the television show Blake's 7: The story of Roj Blake, a political dissident in a 22nd century earth. He is brainwashed and reconditioned as a model citizen. But memories of the stultified past haunt him endlessly. Going back to his deviant ways, he finds most of his fellow protesters have been "eliminated" by the powers holding earth in captivation. Recruiting another barrage of rag tag rebels, Blake is imprisoned and sent to a far off alien political prison on the other side of the galaxy with a trumped up charge of child molestation. Nation uses social criticism instead of inter-galactic adventure.
In the third episode, Blake frees himself and the other rebels, commandeering an abandoned ship of unknown origin. Christening it The Liberator (appropriate, don't you think?), Blake and company devote the rest of the series to crushing the Federation. It was a tremendously profitable show, earning steady pay for Nation. Something Doctor Who never did for Terry. The program ran for four years and was cancelled in 1982.
Unlike Doctor Who, Blake's 7 was Terry's own masterpiece. He only created the Daleks, not their show. Omitting the Doctor from his Dalek novelizations (written during 1984, then ongoing several years henceforth) allowed him to create independently. First Published by Virgin Books in 1987, they sold moderately well both in America and England. Seven were written in all.
On the eve of Doctor Who's thirtieth anniversary in 1993, Terry published The Doctors: Thirty Years of Time Travel and Beyond. It is Terry's longest work, breaking the 300 page barrier (most of his stories are fairly condensed). Every single Doctor appears (it seems now he felt comfortable enough to include the beloved time lord in his stories!) and the book was made into a film. You'll be hard pressed to find a copy in America. Many of Terry's early short story efforts were published at this time.
Not long after, film adaptations of The Daleks and The Dalek Invasion of Earth were finally distributed after years on the shelf. Terry then began working on Blake 7 novelisations building the mythos of the original show's canon and stark (often terrifying) commentary on modern society. "It was something I had been meaning to do for a long time", Nation said.
Documenting Blake's political activism before his re-conditioning, The tales of Roj is so far the only Blake novel. Terry is most likely still working on the other. It is, as with many writers, hard to say due to his introversion from publicity. By all accounts, he still lives with Angela somewhere in Debbenshire, creating tales of rebellion, adventure, mystery and horror. He's been cited as inspirational by none other then Paul Andersen (Author of Event Horizon), and the late great Phillip K. Dick (Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?, Overcast, Perversions of Science, Logan's Run, Minority Report etc.).
Nathaniel Hawthorne
by slurpy on Friday, July 19, 2002 09:50 pmRalph Waldo Emerson, Henry David Thoreau, and Walt Whitman (the chairmen of Transcendentalism) wrote from personal insights gained through direct experience. Nathaniel Hawthorne painted portraits of America's colonial past. Dissatisfied with the stagnating, etiquette-ridden culture of his time, he wrote of the plight of the Native American, the state of the environment, and the need for human individuality amidst the stifling demands of society.
Born in Salem, Mass. on the 4th of July, 1804, Hawthorne was a gifted storyteller, though he didn't learn to read until 1815. Developing into a young renaissance-man, Hawthorne left Salem and studied at Bowdoin College in Maine, where he became friends with other promising young men such as the future poet Longfellow and the future President Franklin Pierce. After college, Hawthorne spent years writing and wandering throughout the Massachusetts countryside. Settling in Waymouth, he self-published his first novel, Fanshawe, in 1828.
With no assistance of any kind, Hawthorne lived in poverty; the book went unnoticed. His short stories had more success, and the publication of Twice Told Tales launched him into the ranks of "miniature celebrity", validating his all too recently unknown writings.
Critical and popular acclaim was no longer an obstacle, but Hawthorne concluded that fame did not suit him. Moving to the Brook Farm Transcendentalist commune in 1841, Hawthorne developed "The Essayist within", as he once put it, meeting and collaborating with Ralph Waldo Emerson on "The Dial" magazine.
Hawthorne left the commune and took residence in Concord in 1942. It is here that he completed and published The Scarlet Letter (1850), easily his pies de resistance.
Hawthorne maintained a life-long friendship with Franklin Pierce, who shared his charitable consience. Pierce offered Hawthorne a diplomatic position in Europe in 1853, days after being sworn into office.
Traveling the continent, promoting peace, understanding and non-violence, Hawthorne wrote a new novel that dealt with war's atrocities. Entitled War of the Roses, it would not be published until years after his death, alongside a second unpublished work composed mostly of essays written during a varying span.
During his autumn years, Hawthorne began writing memoirs. He died of causes which remain unknown to this very day, at the age of 59. By the end of the 1860s, War of the Roses, Articles, Additional Articles and Memoirs had all been published.
Hawthorne's polite cynicism has become a valuable litmus test for critical authors of all shapes and sizes, up to and including the modern age.
Born in Salem, Mass. on the 4th of July, 1804, Hawthorne was a gifted storyteller, though he didn't learn to read until 1815. Developing into a young renaissance-man, Hawthorne left Salem and studied at Bowdoin College in Maine, where he became friends with other promising young men such as the future poet Longfellow and the future President Franklin Pierce. After college, Hawthorne spent years writing and wandering throughout the Massachusetts countryside. Settling in Waymouth, he self-published his first novel, Fanshawe, in 1828.
With no assistance of any kind, Hawthorne lived in poverty; the book went unnoticed. His short stories had more success, and the publication of Twice Told Tales launched him into the ranks of "miniature celebrity", validating his all too recently unknown writings.
Critical and popular acclaim was no longer an obstacle, but Hawthorne concluded that fame did not suit him. Moving to the Brook Farm Transcendentalist commune in 1841, Hawthorne developed "The Essayist within", as he once put it, meeting and collaborating with Ralph Waldo Emerson on "The Dial" magazine.
Hawthorne left the commune and took residence in Concord in 1942. It is here that he completed and published The Scarlet Letter (1850), easily his pies de resistance.
Hawthorne maintained a life-long friendship with Franklin Pierce, who shared his charitable consience. Pierce offered Hawthorne a diplomatic position in Europe in 1853, days after being sworn into office.
Traveling the continent, promoting peace, understanding and non-violence, Hawthorne wrote a new novel that dealt with war's atrocities. Entitled War of the Roses, it would not be published until years after his death, alongside a second unpublished work composed mostly of essays written during a varying span.
During his autumn years, Hawthorne began writing memoirs. He died of causes which remain unknown to this very day, at the age of 59. By the end of the 1860s, War of the Roses, Articles, Additional Articles and Memoirs had all been published.
Hawthorne's polite cynicism has become a valuable litmus test for critical authors of all shapes and sizes, up to and including the modern age.
Ted Hughes
by slurpy on Tuesday, July 16, 2002 12:44 amBorn Edward J. Hughes near Mytholmroyd, Yorkshire on August 16, 1930, Ted Hughes is perhaps most widely known for having married the tragic and iconic poet Sylvia Plath. However, Hughes is an important poet in his own right. His dynamic realism and almost childlike honesty reveres innocence, individual expression and above all else, nature.
His childhood years in Yorkshire were certainly an important influence on his literary sensibility. He studied English literature and ancient civilizations at Cambridge University, and in 1956 married the up-and-coming American poet Sylvia Plath. They began their marriage as a team of striving young writers, and enthusiastically supported each other's growing careers. Hughes first book of poetry, 'The Hawk and the Rain', was published in 1956.
The next several years were colored with remorse. The marriage to Plath grew increasingly difficult and surreal as Hughes came to learn the depths of his charismatic wife's mental illness and self-hatred. She finally killed herself, after previous attempts, in 1963. Ted Hughes stopped writing poetry for three years after this.
Later publications include 'The Iron Man', 'Remains of Elmet', 'River' and 'The Crow', all of them treating themes of nature.
Hughes was named Britian's Poet Laureate in 1984, which actually probably didn't help his image as a patriarchal stiff among the growing legions of Sylvia Plath fans. He had kept silent about his legacy as the ill-fated Sylvia Plath's husband for decades, and had often been unfairly blamed for her downfall (the truth is that she had deep emotional problems that were beyond the grasp of her husband, who was a nature poet and not a psychologist). Ted Hughes finally told his side of the story in 1998 in 'The Birthday Letters'. This would turn out to be his last book.
His childhood years in Yorkshire were certainly an important influence on his literary sensibility. He studied English literature and ancient civilizations at Cambridge University, and in 1956 married the up-and-coming American poet Sylvia Plath. They began their marriage as a team of striving young writers, and enthusiastically supported each other's growing careers. Hughes first book of poetry, 'The Hawk and the Rain', was published in 1956.
The next several years were colored with remorse. The marriage to Plath grew increasingly difficult and surreal as Hughes came to learn the depths of his charismatic wife's mental illness and self-hatred. She finally killed herself, after previous attempts, in 1963. Ted Hughes stopped writing poetry for three years after this.
Later publications include 'The Iron Man', 'Remains of Elmet', 'River' and 'The Crow', all of them treating themes of nature.
Hughes was named Britian's Poet Laureate in 1984, which actually probably didn't help his image as a patriarchal stiff among the growing legions of Sylvia Plath fans. He had kept silent about his legacy as the ill-fated Sylvia Plath's husband for decades, and had often been unfairly blamed for her downfall (the truth is that she had deep emotional problems that were beyond the grasp of her husband, who was a nature poet and not a psychologist). Ted Hughes finally told his side of the story in 1998 in 'The Birthday Letters'. This would turn out to be his last book.
Rudyard Kipling
by slurpy on Thursday, July 11, 2002 03:46 amBorn in Bombay, India to John and Alice Kipling on the 30th of December, 1865, Rudyard Kipling had a luminescent early childhood and benefited greatly from his parents' love of foreign cultures and arts. However, the young boy became unhappy when forced to leave the fascinating land of India and live in England from the age of five.
After attending the strangely-named United Services College at Westward Ho! in England, he wrote a short novel, Stalky and Co., about life as a schoolboy. He returned to India at the age of sixteen, where he continued his writing career by working on publications like "The Civil and Military Gazette" and "The Pioneer"
Fame found Kipling at the end of the decade with Barrack Room Ballads. He married Carrie Balestier, the sister of his deceased literary companion Wolcott Balestier, in 1892.
Not long after this Kipling tried for a time to calm his wandering spirit, living with Carrie's parents in Brattleboro, Vermont. The swashbuckling Captains Courageous and the environmentally conscious Jungle Book were written during this time period. These works were popular and he enjoyed the fortunate life of a renowned author.
Kipling and Carrie had three children, Josephine, Elsie and John, the first two born in Vermont and the last in England, where the Kipling family resettled after leaving America. A sad period followed Carrie's premature death in 1901. Kipling continued to write but much of his tireless exuberance was gone.
The delightful Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies was published in 1902. At the request of long time associate Alfred Harmsworth, Kipling then wrote the poem The Absent Minded Beggar, donating the proceeds to aid Britian's Boer War soldiers. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907
The death of Kipling's youngest son, John, at the Battle of Loos in the "war to end all wars" (World War I), proved a source of tragic inspiration. Postwar thoughts and preceding publications were all embraced as part of the massive 1916 Debits and Credits.
As the world changed following the devastation of the Great War, Kipling became increasingly identified with an archaic notion of colonialism and British superiority. He socialized with King George V of England and continued to write reports of imperial matters with a strong bias towards colonialism and the empire's privileged "officer class". These views have caused Kipling to fall strongly out of favor in the more globally aware decades of the 20th Century.
In fact, much of Kipling's writings were meant to express sympathy and respect for the impoverished and suffering masses of Britian's colonial outposts, as well as a love of wilderness. Rudyard Kipling passed away at the age of 70 on Jan 12, 1936.
Written in the last five years of Kipling's life, the autobiography Something of Myself, was published posthumously in 1937. His "Gunga Din" was expanded into a popular movie, "The Jungle Book" became the basis of a beloved Disney movie in the 1960's, and novels like "Kim" continue to be seen as valuable and important documents of a bygone age, despite the fact that Kipling remains strongly out of fashion in our time. Perhaps the words of his simple poem "If" are his most memorable:
If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
After attending the strangely-named United Services College at Westward Ho! in England, he wrote a short novel, Stalky and Co., about life as a schoolboy. He returned to India at the age of sixteen, where he continued his writing career by working on publications like "The Civil and Military Gazette" and "The Pioneer"
Fame found Kipling at the end of the decade with Barrack Room Ballads. He married Carrie Balestier, the sister of his deceased literary companion Wolcott Balestier, in 1892.
Not long after this Kipling tried for a time to calm his wandering spirit, living with Carrie's parents in Brattleboro, Vermont. The swashbuckling Captains Courageous and the environmentally conscious Jungle Book were written during this time period. These works were popular and he enjoyed the fortunate life of a renowned author.
Kipling and Carrie had three children, Josephine, Elsie and John, the first two born in Vermont and the last in England, where the Kipling family resettled after leaving America. A sad period followed Carrie's premature death in 1901. Kipling continued to write but much of his tireless exuberance was gone.
The delightful Puck of Pook's Hill and Rewards and Fairies was published in 1902. At the request of long time associate Alfred Harmsworth, Kipling then wrote the poem The Absent Minded Beggar, donating the proceeds to aid Britian's Boer War soldiers. He won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1907
The death of Kipling's youngest son, John, at the Battle of Loos in the "war to end all wars" (World War I), proved a source of tragic inspiration. Postwar thoughts and preceding publications were all embraced as part of the massive 1916 Debits and Credits.
As the world changed following the devastation of the Great War, Kipling became increasingly identified with an archaic notion of colonialism and British superiority. He socialized with King George V of England and continued to write reports of imperial matters with a strong bias towards colonialism and the empire's privileged "officer class". These views have caused Kipling to fall strongly out of favor in the more globally aware decades of the 20th Century.
In fact, much of Kipling's writings were meant to express sympathy and respect for the impoverished and suffering masses of Britian's colonial outposts, as well as a love of wilderness. Rudyard Kipling passed away at the age of 70 on Jan 12, 1936.
Written in the last five years of Kipling's life, the autobiography Something of Myself, was published posthumously in 1937. His "Gunga Din" was expanded into a popular movie, "The Jungle Book" became the basis of a beloved Disney movie in the 1960's, and novels like "Kim" continue to be seen as valuable and important documents of a bygone age, despite the fact that Kipling remains strongly out of fashion in our time. Perhaps the words of his simple poem "If" are his most memorable:
Or walk with Kings - nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you,
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man, my son!
Lewis Carroll
by novalark on Wednesday, June 19, 2002 12:15 amCharles Lutwidge Dodgson - 'Lewis Carroll' as he was to become known - was born into a comfortable middle class family, on January 27 1832, the son of the Rev. Charles Dodgson, of Daresbury, Cheshire, England, and his wife Frances Jane. He was the third child, and first son of a family of eleven children.
At the age of 14 he was sent to Rugby School, where he was evidently unhappy. He made reference years later to the 'annoyance' he had suffered there 'at night' The nature of this nocturnal 'annoyance' will probably never now be fully understood, but it may be that he is delicately referring to some form of sexual abuse. Scholastically, though, he excelled with apparent ease. He left Rugby at the end of 1849 and a little more than 12 months later, went on to Oxford: to his father's old college, Christ Church. The following year he achieved a first in Honour Moderations, and shortly after he was nominated to a Studentship (the Christ Church equivalent of a fellowship), by his father's old friend Canon Edward Pusey.
At the age of 23, his clear brilliance as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship, which he continued to hold for the next 26 years. The income was good, but the work bored him. Many of his pupils were stupid, older than him, richer than him, and almost all of them were uninterested. They didn't want to be taught, he didn't want to teach them. Mutual apathy ruled.
In appearance Dodgson was about six foot tall, slender and handsome in a soft-focused dreamy sort of way, with curling brown hair and blue eyes. The only overt defect he carried into adulthood was what he referred to as his 'hesitation'; a stammer he had acquired in early childhood and which was to plague him throughout his entire life. But, although it troubled him - even obsessed him sometimes - it was never bad enough to stop him using his other qualities to do well in society. He was a highly socially competent man; persuasive, manipulative and attractive to women.
Although he spent so much of his life in the academic environment, Dodgson's real passions were always artistic. He loved the theatre and the company of 'theatricals'. He loved artists and their work. He courted the bohemian life in a way that sometimes compromised the required dignity of his position as an Oxford don. His scholastic career was only a stop-gap to other more exciting attainments that he wanted hungrily. In 1856 he took up photography and very soon became an acknowledged master of the art, making portraits of some of the greatest celebrities of his day. His passionate admiration of the naked human form, and his desire to celebrate this in his work was one of several aspects of his life that brought him into conflict with the 'decent' middle class morality of his day.
In 1861 he became a deacon of the Anglican church, but, despite his religious background, and in direct defiance of the laws of his college, he refused to become a priest. The reason for this is one of the several enigmas that still surround his life.
At the time that he was supposed to take his vows, he was in a turmoil of sexual guilt, resulting, it would appear, from a tormenting love affair, although evidence is fragmentary since his family destroyed the relevant portions of his diaries. Whether this guilt was behind his decision to abandon the priesthood we simply do not know, although the extant evidence suggests a connection.
Dodgson was writing from his earliest youth. First for family magazines, then as he matured, his poetry and short stories began appearing in various magazines like The Comic Times and The Train. Most of his output was funny, sometimes very sharply satirical. He specialised in a kind of anarchic mockery of hypocrisy and authority, which has its most famous example in his 'Alice' books.
In the same year that he became a photographer he published his first piece of work under the name that would make him famous. A very predictable little romantic poem called 'Solitude' appeared in the The Train under the authorship of 'Lewis Carroll'.
Also in the same year, a new Dean arrived at Christ Church, Henry Liddell, bringing with him a young wife and children, all of whom would figure largely and sometimes rather mysteriously, in Dodgson's life over the following years.
He became close friends with the mother and the children, particularly the three sisters - Ina, Alice and Edith. It seems there became something of a tradition of his taking the girls out on the river for picnics at Godstow or Nuneham.
It was on one such expedition, in 1862, that Dodgson invented the outline of the story that eventually became his first and largest commercial success - the first 'Alice' book.
Having told the story and been begged by Alice Liddell to write it down, Dodgson was evidently struck by its potential to 'sell well'. He took the MS to Macmillan, the publisher, who liked it immediately.
'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' was published in 1865, under the pen-name Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier - Lewis Carroll.
With the launch and immediately phenomenal success of 'Alice', the story of the author's life becomes effectively divided in two: the continuing story of Dodgson's real life and the evolving myth surrounding 'Lewis Carroll'.
Throughout his growing wealth and fame, Dodgson continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881, and he remained in residence there until his death. He published 'Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There' in 1872, and his last novel, 'Sylvie and Bruno', in two volumes in 1889 and 1893. He also published many mathematical papers under his own name and toured Russia and Europe in an extended visit in 1867.
He never married, though there is evidence of at least one traumatic sexual relationship during the 1860s. In later years he enjoyed increasingly open and intimate friendships with numbers of women, married and single. He died suddenly of violent pneumonia on January 14 1898.
At the age of 14 he was sent to Rugby School, where he was evidently unhappy. He made reference years later to the 'annoyance' he had suffered there 'at night' The nature of this nocturnal 'annoyance' will probably never now be fully understood, but it may be that he is delicately referring to some form of sexual abuse. Scholastically, though, he excelled with apparent ease. He left Rugby at the end of 1849 and a little more than 12 months later, went on to Oxford: to his father's old college, Christ Church. The following year he achieved a first in Honour Moderations, and shortly after he was nominated to a Studentship (the Christ Church equivalent of a fellowship), by his father's old friend Canon Edward Pusey.
At the age of 23, his clear brilliance as a mathematician won him the Christ Church Mathematical Lectureship, which he continued to hold for the next 26 years. The income was good, but the work bored him. Many of his pupils were stupid, older than him, richer than him, and almost all of them were uninterested. They didn't want to be taught, he didn't want to teach them. Mutual apathy ruled.
In appearance Dodgson was about six foot tall, slender and handsome in a soft-focused dreamy sort of way, with curling brown hair and blue eyes. The only overt defect he carried into adulthood was what he referred to as his 'hesitation'; a stammer he had acquired in early childhood and which was to plague him throughout his entire life. But, although it troubled him - even obsessed him sometimes - it was never bad enough to stop him using his other qualities to do well in society. He was a highly socially competent man; persuasive, manipulative and attractive to women.
Although he spent so much of his life in the academic environment, Dodgson's real passions were always artistic. He loved the theatre and the company of 'theatricals'. He loved artists and their work. He courted the bohemian life in a way that sometimes compromised the required dignity of his position as an Oxford don. His scholastic career was only a stop-gap to other more exciting attainments that he wanted hungrily. In 1856 he took up photography and very soon became an acknowledged master of the art, making portraits of some of the greatest celebrities of his day. His passionate admiration of the naked human form, and his desire to celebrate this in his work was one of several aspects of his life that brought him into conflict with the 'decent' middle class morality of his day.
In 1861 he became a deacon of the Anglican church, but, despite his religious background, and in direct defiance of the laws of his college, he refused to become a priest. The reason for this is one of the several enigmas that still surround his life.
At the time that he was supposed to take his vows, he was in a turmoil of sexual guilt, resulting, it would appear, from a tormenting love affair, although evidence is fragmentary since his family destroyed the relevant portions of his diaries. Whether this guilt was behind his decision to abandon the priesthood we simply do not know, although the extant evidence suggests a connection.
Dodgson was writing from his earliest youth. First for family magazines, then as he matured, his poetry and short stories began appearing in various magazines like The Comic Times and The Train. Most of his output was funny, sometimes very sharply satirical. He specialised in a kind of anarchic mockery of hypocrisy and authority, which has its most famous example in his 'Alice' books.
In the same year that he became a photographer he published his first piece of work under the name that would make him famous. A very predictable little romantic poem called 'Solitude' appeared in the The Train under the authorship of 'Lewis Carroll'.
Also in the same year, a new Dean arrived at Christ Church, Henry Liddell, bringing with him a young wife and children, all of whom would figure largely and sometimes rather mysteriously, in Dodgson's life over the following years.
He became close friends with the mother and the children, particularly the three sisters - Ina, Alice and Edith. It seems there became something of a tradition of his taking the girls out on the river for picnics at Godstow or Nuneham.
It was on one such expedition, in 1862, that Dodgson invented the outline of the story that eventually became his first and largest commercial success - the first 'Alice' book.
Having told the story and been begged by Alice Liddell to write it down, Dodgson was evidently struck by its potential to 'sell well'. He took the MS to Macmillan, the publisher, who liked it immediately.
'Alice's Adventures in Wonderland' was published in 1865, under the pen-name Dodgson had first used some nine years earlier - Lewis Carroll.
With the launch and immediately phenomenal success of 'Alice', the story of the author's life becomes effectively divided in two: the continuing story of Dodgson's real life and the evolving myth surrounding 'Lewis Carroll'.
Throughout his growing wealth and fame, Dodgson continued to teach at Christ Church until 1881, and he remained in residence there until his death. He published 'Through the Looking-Glass and What Alice Found There' in 1872, and his last novel, 'Sylvie and Bruno', in two volumes in 1889 and 1893. He also published many mathematical papers under his own name and toured Russia and Europe in an extended visit in 1867.
He never married, though there is evidence of at least one traumatic sexual relationship during the 1860s. In later years he enjoyed increasingly open and intimate friendships with numbers of women, married and single. He died suddenly of violent pneumonia on January 14 1898.
Jean Cocteau
by novalark on Tuesday, June 18, 2002 05:15 pmJean Cocteau was born in Maisons-Lafitte into a wealthy Parisian family. His father was a lawyer and amateur painter who committed suicide when Cocteau was nine. Cocteau's father had a lasting influence on his son. According to psychoanalytical critics this tragic event also created his awareness of human weakness which he compensated by putting himself in the service of the performing arts and the mysterious forces in the universe. Poetry was for Cocteau the basis of all art, a "religion without hope." In the secondary school Cocteau was only a mediocre student who was unsuccessful after repeated attempts to pass the graduation examination. He published his first volume of poems, 'Aladdin's Lamp', at the age of 19.
Soon Cocteau became known as 'The Frivolous Prince' -- the title of a volume of poems he published at twenty-one. In 1915 he met Pablo Picasso and fell under his spell. "I admired his intelligence, and clung to everything he said, for he spoke little; I kept still so as not to miss a word. There were long silences and Varese could not understand why we stared wordlessly at each other. In talking, Picasso used a visual syntax, and you could immediately see what he was saying. He liked formulas and summoned himself up in his statements as he summoned himself up and sculptured himself in objects that he immediately made tangible."
In 1918, Cocteau formed an intimate friendship with a 15 year old novelist, Raymond Radiguet. Radiguet strongly influenced Cocteau's art and life. The young writer would die from typhoid fever in 1923. His death was a severe blow to Cocteau and drove him to use opium. During Cocteau's recovery from his opium addiction, the artist created some of his most important works including the stage play 'Orphee', the novel, 'Les Enfants terribles', and many long poems.
In 1954, on the death of his novelist friend Collette, Cocteau took her place in the Belgian Academy. In 1955, he was elected to the French Academy.
In 1959, Cocteau made his last film as a director, 'The Testament of Orpheus'. The elaborate home movie stars Cocteau and also features cameos from many celebrities including Pablo Picasso, Yul Brynner and Jean-Pierre Leaud.
The artist died of a heart attack at age 74 at his chateau in Milly-la-Foret, France on October 11, 1963 after hearing the news of the death of another friend, the singer Edith Piaf.
Soon Cocteau became known as 'The Frivolous Prince' -- the title of a volume of poems he published at twenty-one. In 1915 he met Pablo Picasso and fell under his spell. "I admired his intelligence, and clung to everything he said, for he spoke little; I kept still so as not to miss a word. There were long silences and Varese could not understand why we stared wordlessly at each other. In talking, Picasso used a visual syntax, and you could immediately see what he was saying. He liked formulas and summoned himself up in his statements as he summoned himself up and sculptured himself in objects that he immediately made tangible."
In 1918, Cocteau formed an intimate friendship with a 15 year old novelist, Raymond Radiguet. Radiguet strongly influenced Cocteau's art and life. The young writer would die from typhoid fever in 1923. His death was a severe blow to Cocteau and drove him to use opium. During Cocteau's recovery from his opium addiction, the artist created some of his most important works including the stage play 'Orphee', the novel, 'Les Enfants terribles', and many long poems.
In 1954, on the death of his novelist friend Collette, Cocteau took her place in the Belgian Academy. In 1955, he was elected to the French Academy.
In 1959, Cocteau made his last film as a director, 'The Testament of Orpheus'. The elaborate home movie stars Cocteau and also features cameos from many celebrities including Pablo Picasso, Yul Brynner and Jean-Pierre Leaud.
The artist died of a heart attack at age 74 at his chateau in Milly-la-Foret, France on October 11, 1963 after hearing the news of the death of another friend, the singer Edith Piaf.
Ron Whitehead
by David Minton on Sunday, March 17, 2002 10:32 pmRon Whitehead is a poet with a mission. There aren't enough of those around.
He's been described by Allen Ginsberg as an "energetic Bodhisattvic poetic spirit," by Lawrence Ferlinghetti as "un brave type!," by Douglas Brinkley as "one of the remarkable poets of his generation" (Ron was born in 1950), by Hunter Thompson as "crazy as ten loons."
No doubt about it, Whitehead is a charged and driven charismatic person. His aura of positivity and his Never Give Up attitude --- which the Dalai Lama supernaturally sensed when he imparted the poem of that title Whitehead transcribed and made verse --- are not just perceived but are felt as an irresistible force.
He's a humanist tapped into the Ground Source, a man with a conscience and indomitable spirit, a voice from beyond in the here and now, learning as well as teaching as he travels his path, using poetry as his chosen vehicle. It could have been music, it could have been visual art, but those medium's didn't & don't suit his purpose, which is to rouse as many people as possible -- especially Americans -- out of the big sleep.
Though much of Whitehead's early poetry was designed to tell you about himself as a way of letting you know it's alright to be yourself, he has, since about 1992, decided to become more than an individual beacon of light putting words into books that ultimately languish on library shelves. He's decided to become a visible, helpful, loud-and-clear instigator who is at once actively inspiring and at the same time recruiting already-awake enlightened souls to action against repressive forces of darkness that seek to put the proverbial Orwellian boot on a person's back when that person is down. That person is only down because he or she allows himself or herself to be down and devoid of hope, devoid of The Self. And that person represents the collective person, represents all of us in this world.
Whitehead's call to arms sounds at first revolutionary, but it is essentially basic, heartfelt and intelligent: It's about not conforming to the nationalistic, racist, sexist, evil consumer-producer culture that international governments of the 19 th and 20 th centuries have sent down to us as our legacy and our collective fate.
The only way to fight those in control, at any given time, is to remain an open, caring and aware individual with a humanist conscience. That's more than just a personal belief --- which becomes poetry ---on Whitehead's part; it is the only effective resistance against what used to be called "the tide of conformity." What Whitehead does in not rabble-rousing; it is the same
thing Emerson stood up for, Walt Whitman stood up for, the same thing Gandhi stood up for --- and one telling fact about post-modern world-civilization is clearly seen in the way these people automatically become lightning rods.
Whitehead has come under fire for being anti-American over his 'I Will Not Bow Down' (Hozomeen Press, 1996) and 'Declaration of Independence This Time' (Hozomeen Press, 2001), two savvy works that are as American as apple pie before the apples & grains were mixed with toxic ingredients and baked into a force-fed pastry of imperialist fascism and closed-mindedness by self-serving smug moronic politicians and Puritanical charlatan embeciles rich enough to advertise themselves as guardians of an inherently detrimental, even deadly, status quo.
Whitehead's agenda is not entirely individualistic, not in the negative sense anyway. He has shaped his persona in such a way as to make of himself an example, James Joyce's "universal in the particular," and the ramifications cause his stance to become political in contemporary society and partly due to the way contemporary governments operate.
Whitehead is decidedly and consciously an Emersonian Kentuckian, a Walt Whitman with a political agenda, philosophizing and yet merely describing the current circumstances, but also offering indispensable pragmatic advice rooted in his own experience of surviving these years since Ronald Reagan and his cronies effectively killed the so-called counter culture of the 1960s.
What Reagan and company didn't count on was that there were true believers among those now derisively called "baby boomers."
Yes, Whitehead was over there in Washington D.C. turning over trash cans on the street in protest of the Vietnam Conflict, dodging tear gas canisters, at the behest of the likes of Jerry Rubin. But Whitehead (and others of his generation) realized that social revolution had already been won by 1973. The Republicans also realized they'd lost that battle for the American conscience by then, and many on both sides of the cultural revolution thought the war was over during the 1970s. The sheep retired, at that time, to New York and Paris discos, with their vials of cocaine, ridiculous clothes, and other leftover surface trappings of "the second revolution." Whitehead himself had found his soul-mate, Nancye, and retired (ca. 1974-78) to his native Beaver Dam, Kentucky, to sell Nissans for an Owensboro dealership and raise a family.
But the post-Nixon governmental backlash was still in the works, and when it hit full-force with Reagan leading the charge, Whitehead was one who decided not to sit around and be discredited for having been a part of the 1960s. He was too much a man to deny that part of himself and retreat to a cloister, a la his much-admired Thomas Merton, and, anyway, Whithead had snake-handling holy-rollers in his ancestry. Total defeat is inadmissible to him; self-emasculation is not in his nature.
His option, he felt, was academia, and he enrolled at the University of Louisville around 1980, finding a mentor in Dr. Donald Slavin. Slavin encouraged him not only to consider teaching as a profession, but also to write, something Whitehead had had in the back of his own mind since childhood but had, like many writers, only trifled with and not considered seriously as a profession. He was instantaneously sparked by his studies and Slavin's suggestion, and ended up taking over editorship of Thinker Review, the university's student publication. Using his car-salesman skills, he talked U of L out of a previously unheard-of $15,000 budget, and he modeled the resulting publication on The Chicago Review and Triquarterly. The book was a resounding success, and his tenure as editor was extended. For the second Thinker Review, he contacted a multitude of nationals and internationals, and scored a huge coup: he got Seamus Heaney to contribute a pre-Nobel Prize poem, along with contributions from Diane di Prima, Lucien Stryk and Eithne Strong. He also made a contact with Allen Ginsberg, and ended up bringing Ginsberg to Louisville for a reading.
Ginsberg proved ultimately to be a lifelong ally and friend. And it was not a matter of Whitehead riding on the famous author's coat tails.
Ginsberg had, by 1979, been reduced to getting himself featured in People magazine sitting on railroad tracks blocking trains from delivering nuclear wastes here and there.
Once the Whitehead-Ginsberg contact was made, it morphed into a friendly symbiotic relationship. Ginsberg lent his name and his then-shrinking credibility to Whitehead's efforts at organizing readings and his inroads into publishing. Ginsberg also turned Whitehead on to his insider list of contacts. Whitehead jumped waist-deep into the reviving of Ginsberg's lagging career as a poet, though at the time it seemed a daunting task for a complete unknown like himself, but he did manage to inspire Ginsberg to start howling at pulpits and lecturns again instead of spending so much of his time on photography and on getting himself arrested for belated ineffectual protests and playing the victim.
Whitehead's causes and plans of action were unformulated at the time, but he was soon finding his feet, after much soul-searching and a lot of knocking on doors he had been pointed to by Ginsberg.
Whitehead's personal ideology, rooted in much-maligned teachings of Ram Dass, in literary treatises found in novels such as Knut Hamsun's Hunger, in Edvard Munch's profoundly expressionist paintings and prints, in music from Bill Monroe to the Grateful Dead and Sonic Youth, soon became fully integrated with a crystal-clear understanding of what Abbie Hoffman had tried to accomplish; with an intimation of what past sages (from prophets to our own Thomas Jefferson) had been up against; with what documents such as the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights stand for in real time as applicable declarations and not just as a hopeful but to-be-disregarded ideals.
Everything Whitehead had ever learned or had intuitively known fell into place by the mid-1990s. He was inevitably moved to take action --- not only to write books, but also to tie himself to a socially submerged upheaval that he was surprised to find was happening all over the United States and Europe. He has emerged, subsequently, as a leader in that underground, though it is not his intention to be a leader. His intention is only to instigate awakening among those who wish to awaken, to kick in the ass or tweak the cheeks of those who would have others sleepwalk through lifetimes:
That such a writing would be considered dangerous or threatening, and could potentially draw down the wrath of American elected officials, speaks for itself and shows us how drastically and dramatically America, in particular and as an entity, has been circumvented and perverted. Whitehead is keenly aware that basic American freedoms are disappearing rapidly as we enter the 21st century.
'Blood Filled Vessels Racing To The Heart' (Hozomeen Press, 1997) was an attempt to explain the Ocean of Consciousness in apolitical terms. Unfortunately, it fails as a manifesto because it speaks academically instead of pragmatically. There is much finger-pointing toward as-yet unrealized historical ideas of merit, and the implication that these ideas can be realized partially redeems the text.
'The Beaver Dam Rocking Chair Marathon' (unfinished as of this February 2002 writing, except for volume one, issued by Tilt-A-Whirl Press, 1998) goes further toward articulating this Ocean of Consciousness, to which we all belong but are taught by social institutions and governments to deny in order to perpetuate feelings of hopelessness and alienation that keep a galvanized and earth-shaking irrevocable spiritual and political revolution from occurring.
Whitehead finds himself, in 2002, as a link between the Beats, Scandinavian expressionists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, European poets in the tradition of Yeats to Heaney, modernist writers such as James Joyce and Ezra Pound, and so-called Generation Xers and now Generation Post-Xers, whom he has been professor to during the 1980s and 1990s and is still teaching in the first decade of century 21. Along the way, he's linked arms with other inter-generational luminaries (and I use the term "luminaries" not in the sense of celebrity, but instead in its literal sense) such as Casey Cyr and Bob Holman.
"Many times I've thought I needed to move to New York or San Francisco to make myself heard," Whitehead said to me once, "but Ferlinghetti told me there was no need for that, that I was already making myself heard based right here in Louisville [Kentucky]. And I have a love-hate relationship with Kentucky, but it was no different when I lived in Rekjavik [Iceland] for two years. I still had to travel to Netherlands and read in Amsterdam, still had to travel to Wisconsin and New York and New Orleans to read. So no matter where I live, I'd still have to travel, just like the Rolling Stones have to travel, which I don't mind at all. I'm a restless spirit anyway."
The books are out there. They're on the shelves at City Lights, on the shelves in Chicago, on the shelves in Portugal and India. So are the books of others he's published since founding the Kentucky-based Literary Renaissance in 1992.
Literary Renaissance has imported writers, artists and musicians to Kentucky, and has exported Midwestern Americans to points all over the globe. The idea is to pinpoint individuals and groups with something to transmit and help them make themselves heard --- on a stage, in bars and cafes, in auditoriums at universities, on the radio, through CD releases as well as books. He finds the avenues, and he speaks and he brings others along with him to speak and play music and otherwise communicate worthy ideas or statements.
A subsidiary of Literary Renaissance is Published In Heaven, an outfit that has published and continues to publish a series of chapbooks as well as poems and visuals on posters and including material by everyone from Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter to Yoko Ono to former American president Jimmy Carter.
Whitehead has also been a tireless organizer of reading and music events since the 1980s. His "insomniacathons," which sometimes go for three or four days nonstop, are now legendary.
These events and CDs take the word off the page and make them real, while leaving the pages and CDs for history, in case history's interested.
Lots of writers don't know how to get out of their own vacuums. They're not fit for society or society rejects them for one reason or another. Society puts them in this quandary and the result is a standoff: They want to deal with everything second-hand, through their writings. They can't or don't know how to deal with the reality of what's happening. Again, this is something the so-called Status Quo requires of all citizens, all who would fit into the "normal scheme of things."
Whitehead doesn't fit into that normal scheme of things, and he's not willing to retreat and forget it, because he knows that "normalcy," as it is generally conceived of, is a political and social ploy that keeps individuals from being shining examples of humanity in the Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu or even Agnostic reality.
He writes his blasts against dangerous political idiocy, he writes his contagious love poems, he co-opts what makes sense to him and passes it on in the same way those before him have, like shamans, passed on what is valuable -- then he bothers to hit the road and read it to people, face to face, to meet his audience and other poets on similar quests, instead of just tapping it into a computer file and letting a newspaper or book publisher send out sanitized reviews which either fall upon deaf ears or circumvent the real message. He interacts with people, is a citizen diplomat, finds some who are in common cause with him, ends up arguing wrestling with others who aren't.
But he's unstoppable now that he knows what his mission is:
Copyright by David Minton
To learn more about Ron Whitehead, check out TappingMyOwnPhone.com.
He's been described by Allen Ginsberg as an "energetic Bodhisattvic poetic spirit," by Lawrence Ferlinghetti as "un brave type!," by Douglas Brinkley as "one of the remarkable poets of his generation" (Ron was born in 1950), by Hunter Thompson as "crazy as ten loons."
No doubt about it, Whitehead is a charged and driven charismatic person. His aura of positivity and his Never Give Up attitude --- which the Dalai Lama supernaturally sensed when he imparted the poem of that title Whitehead transcribed and made verse --- are not just perceived but are felt as an irresistible force.
He's a humanist tapped into the Ground Source, a man with a conscience and indomitable spirit, a voice from beyond in the here and now, learning as well as teaching as he travels his path, using poetry as his chosen vehicle. It could have been music, it could have been visual art, but those medium's didn't & don't suit his purpose, which is to rouse as many people as possible -- especially Americans -- out of the big sleep.
Though much of Whitehead's early poetry was designed to tell you about himself as a way of letting you know it's alright to be yourself, he has, since about 1992, decided to become more than an individual beacon of light putting words into books that ultimately languish on library shelves. He's decided to become a visible, helpful, loud-and-clear instigator who is at once actively inspiring and at the same time recruiting already-awake enlightened souls to action against repressive forces of darkness that seek to put the proverbial Orwellian boot on a person's back when that person is down. That person is only down because he or she allows himself or herself to be down and devoid of hope, devoid of The Self. And that person represents the collective person, represents all of us in this world.
Whitehead's call to arms sounds at first revolutionary, but it is essentially basic, heartfelt and intelligent: It's about not conforming to the nationalistic, racist, sexist, evil consumer-producer culture that international governments of the 19 th and 20 th centuries have sent down to us as our legacy and our collective fate.
The only way to fight those in control, at any given time, is to remain an open, caring and aware individual with a humanist conscience. That's more than just a personal belief --- which becomes poetry ---on Whitehead's part; it is the only effective resistance against what used to be called "the tide of conformity." What Whitehead does in not rabble-rousing; it is the same
thing Emerson stood up for, Walt Whitman stood up for, the same thing Gandhi stood up for --- and one telling fact about post-modern world-civilization is clearly seen in the way these people automatically become lightning rods.
Whitehead has come under fire for being anti-American over his 'I Will Not Bow Down' (Hozomeen Press, 1996) and 'Declaration of Independence This Time' (Hozomeen Press, 2001), two savvy works that are as American as apple pie before the apples & grains were mixed with toxic ingredients and baked into a force-fed pastry of imperialist fascism and closed-mindedness by self-serving smug moronic politicians and Puritanical charlatan embeciles rich enough to advertise themselves as guardians of an inherently detrimental, even deadly, status quo.
Whitehead's agenda is not entirely individualistic, not in the negative sense anyway. He has shaped his persona in such a way as to make of himself an example, James Joyce's "universal in the particular," and the ramifications cause his stance to become political in contemporary society and partly due to the way contemporary governments operate.
Whitehead is decidedly and consciously an Emersonian Kentuckian, a Walt Whitman with a political agenda, philosophizing and yet merely describing the current circumstances, but also offering indispensable pragmatic advice rooted in his own experience of surviving these years since Ronald Reagan and his cronies effectively killed the so-called counter culture of the 1960s.
What Reagan and company didn't count on was that there were true believers among those now derisively called "baby boomers."
Yes, Whitehead was over there in Washington D.C. turning over trash cans on the street in protest of the Vietnam Conflict, dodging tear gas canisters, at the behest of the likes of Jerry Rubin. But Whitehead (and others of his generation) realized that social revolution had already been won by 1973. The Republicans also realized they'd lost that battle for the American conscience by then, and many on both sides of the cultural revolution thought the war was over during the 1970s. The sheep retired, at that time, to New York and Paris discos, with their vials of cocaine, ridiculous clothes, and other leftover surface trappings of "the second revolution." Whitehead himself had found his soul-mate, Nancye, and retired (ca. 1974-78) to his native Beaver Dam, Kentucky, to sell Nissans for an Owensboro dealership and raise a family.
But the post-Nixon governmental backlash was still in the works, and when it hit full-force with Reagan leading the charge, Whitehead was one who decided not to sit around and be discredited for having been a part of the 1960s. He was too much a man to deny that part of himself and retreat to a cloister, a la his much-admired Thomas Merton, and, anyway, Whithead had snake-handling holy-rollers in his ancestry. Total defeat is inadmissible to him; self-emasculation is not in his nature.
His option, he felt, was academia, and he enrolled at the University of Louisville around 1980, finding a mentor in Dr. Donald Slavin. Slavin encouraged him not only to consider teaching as a profession, but also to write, something Whitehead had had in the back of his own mind since childhood but had, like many writers, only trifled with and not considered seriously as a profession. He was instantaneously sparked by his studies and Slavin's suggestion, and ended up taking over editorship of Thinker Review, the university's student publication. Using his car-salesman skills, he talked U of L out of a previously unheard-of $15,000 budget, and he modeled the resulting publication on The Chicago Review and Triquarterly. The book was a resounding success, and his tenure as editor was extended. For the second Thinker Review, he contacted a multitude of nationals and internationals, and scored a huge coup: he got Seamus Heaney to contribute a pre-Nobel Prize poem, along with contributions from Diane di Prima, Lucien Stryk and Eithne Strong. He also made a contact with Allen Ginsberg, and ended up bringing Ginsberg to Louisville for a reading.
Ginsberg proved ultimately to be a lifelong ally and friend. And it was not a matter of Whitehead riding on the famous author's coat tails.
Ginsberg had, by 1979, been reduced to getting himself featured in People magazine sitting on railroad tracks blocking trains from delivering nuclear wastes here and there.
Once the Whitehead-Ginsberg contact was made, it morphed into a friendly symbiotic relationship. Ginsberg lent his name and his then-shrinking credibility to Whitehead's efforts at organizing readings and his inroads into publishing. Ginsberg also turned Whitehead on to his insider list of contacts. Whitehead jumped waist-deep into the reviving of Ginsberg's lagging career as a poet, though at the time it seemed a daunting task for a complete unknown like himself, but he did manage to inspire Ginsberg to start howling at pulpits and lecturns again instead of spending so much of his time on photography and on getting himself arrested for belated ineffectual protests and playing the victim.
Whitehead's causes and plans of action were unformulated at the time, but he was soon finding his feet, after much soul-searching and a lot of knocking on doors he had been pointed to by Ginsberg.
Whitehead's personal ideology, rooted in much-maligned teachings of Ram Dass, in literary treatises found in novels such as Knut Hamsun's Hunger, in Edvard Munch's profoundly expressionist paintings and prints, in music from Bill Monroe to the Grateful Dead and Sonic Youth, soon became fully integrated with a crystal-clear understanding of what Abbie Hoffman had tried to accomplish; with an intimation of what past sages (from prophets to our own Thomas Jefferson) had been up against; with what documents such as the United Nations' Declaration of Human Rights stand for in real time as applicable declarations and not just as a hopeful but to-be-disregarded ideals.
Everything Whitehead had ever learned or had intuitively known fell into place by the mid-1990s. He was inevitably moved to take action --- not only to write books, but also to tie himself to a socially submerged upheaval that he was surprised to find was happening all over the United States and Europe. He has emerged, subsequently, as a leader in that underground, though it is not his intention to be a leader. His intention is only to instigate awakening among those who wish to awaken, to kick in the ass or tweak the cheeks of those who would have others sleepwalk through lifetimes:
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;These words are partly appropriated from William Butler Yeats, doctored of course, and Whitehead "dedicates" his co-opted rendering to "The Fathers Who Art Round(Heads)" -- by name: Rush Limbaugh, George Bush, Pat Robertson, Kenneth Starr.
Things fall apart; the centre will not hold;
The power-mongers are loosed upon the world;
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
are full of passionate intensity.
-- from The Reformation
That such a writing would be considered dangerous or threatening, and could potentially draw down the wrath of American elected officials, speaks for itself and shows us how drastically and dramatically America, in particular and as an entity, has been circumvented and perverted. Whitehead is keenly aware that basic American freedoms are disappearing rapidly as we enter the 21st century.
"She is cast from the garden into what she thinks are dreams, nightmares. She attempted to accelerate the qualitative growth of the animal race. She slept with one who was superior to the rest. Centuries of teaching had gotten nowhere, but with Canto's admixture she could change that. Did she deceive herself? Had she been deceived? Nothing is clear..."One of Whitehead's quests involves an articulation of 'The Ocean of Consciousness', in order to tap mankind into "the qualitative growth" that will make us truly civilized.
-- from 'White Horses'
'Blood Filled Vessels Racing To The Heart' (Hozomeen Press, 1997) was an attempt to explain the Ocean of Consciousness in apolitical terms. Unfortunately, it fails as a manifesto because it speaks academically instead of pragmatically. There is much finger-pointing toward as-yet unrealized historical ideas of merit, and the implication that these ideas can be realized partially redeems the text.
'The Beaver Dam Rocking Chair Marathon' (unfinished as of this February 2002 writing, except for volume one, issued by Tilt-A-Whirl Press, 1998) goes further toward articulating this Ocean of Consciousness, to which we all belong but are taught by social institutions and governments to deny in order to perpetuate feelings of hopelessness and alienation that keep a galvanized and earth-shaking irrevocable spiritual and political revolution from occurring.
Whitehead finds himself, in 2002, as a link between the Beats, Scandinavian expressionists of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, European poets in the tradition of Yeats to Heaney, modernist writers such as James Joyce and Ezra Pound, and so-called Generation Xers and now Generation Post-Xers, whom he has been professor to during the 1980s and 1990s and is still teaching in the first decade of century 21. Along the way, he's linked arms with other inter-generational luminaries (and I use the term "luminaries" not in the sense of celebrity, but instead in its literal sense) such as Casey Cyr and Bob Holman.
"Many times I've thought I needed to move to New York or San Francisco to make myself heard," Whitehead said to me once, "but Ferlinghetti told me there was no need for that, that I was already making myself heard based right here in Louisville [Kentucky]. And I have a love-hate relationship with Kentucky, but it was no different when I lived in Rekjavik [Iceland] for two years. I still had to travel to Netherlands and read in Amsterdam, still had to travel to Wisconsin and New York and New Orleans to read. So no matter where I live, I'd still have to travel, just like the Rolling Stones have to travel, which I don't mind at all. I'm a restless spirit anyway."
The books are out there. They're on the shelves at City Lights, on the shelves in Chicago, on the shelves in Portugal and India. So are the books of others he's published since founding the Kentucky-based Literary Renaissance in 1992.
Literary Renaissance has imported writers, artists and musicians to Kentucky, and has exported Midwestern Americans to points all over the globe. The idea is to pinpoint individuals and groups with something to transmit and help them make themselves heard --- on a stage, in bars and cafes, in auditoriums at universities, on the radio, through CD releases as well as books. He finds the avenues, and he speaks and he brings others along with him to speak and play music and otherwise communicate worthy ideas or statements.
A subsidiary of Literary Renaissance is Published In Heaven, an outfit that has published and continues to publish a series of chapbooks as well as poems and visuals on posters and including material by everyone from Grateful Dead lyricist Robert Hunter to Yoko Ono to former American president Jimmy Carter.
Whitehead has also been a tireless organizer of reading and music events since the 1980s. His "insomniacathons," which sometimes go for three or four days nonstop, are now legendary.
These events and CDs take the word off the page and make them real, while leaving the pages and CDs for history, in case history's interested.
Lots of writers don't know how to get out of their own vacuums. They're not fit for society or society rejects them for one reason or another. Society puts them in this quandary and the result is a standoff: They want to deal with everything second-hand, through their writings. They can't or don't know how to deal with the reality of what's happening. Again, this is something the so-called Status Quo requires of all citizens, all who would fit into the "normal scheme of things."
Whitehead doesn't fit into that normal scheme of things, and he's not willing to retreat and forget it, because he knows that "normalcy," as it is generally conceived of, is a political and social ploy that keeps individuals from being shining examples of humanity in the Christian, Buddhist, Taoist, Hindu or even Agnostic reality.
He writes his blasts against dangerous political idiocy, he writes his contagious love poems, he co-opts what makes sense to him and passes it on in the same way those before him have, like shamans, passed on what is valuable -- then he bothers to hit the road and read it to people, face to face, to meet his audience and other poets on similar quests, instead of just tapping it into a computer file and letting a newspaper or book publisher send out sanitized reviews which either fall upon deaf ears or circumvent the real message. He interacts with people, is a citizen diplomat, finds some who are in common cause with him, ends up arguing wrestling with others who aren't.
But he's unstoppable now that he knows what his mission is:
What world have we born ourselves into?
Do we have a wrestling, not against blood and
flesh but against governments, against authorities,
against world rulers, rulers of darkness, against wicked spirit forces in heavenly places?
What world have we born ourselves into?
Should we put on the suit of armor from God?
Stand firm with out loins girded with truth?
Is this where the intelligence that is wisdom comes in? Seven heads mean seven mountains?
What world have we born ourselves into?
-- from 'What World Have We Born Ourselves Into: The Apocalypse Rag'
Copyright by David Minton
To learn more about Ron Whitehead, check out TappingMyOwnPhone.com.
