Friday, April 18, 2025

Notes For April 18th, 2025


This Day In Literary History

On April 18th, 1958, a federal court ruled that the famous American poet Ezra Pound be released from a hospital for the criminally insane in Washington, DC. It would mark the third act in a life drama of genius tempered by insanity - and ignorance.

Pound had been committed to the psychiatric hospital in 1946 after doctors found him not competent to stand trial for treason. During the war, Pound, who had lived in Italy for twenty years, had recorded propaganda radio broadcasts for the Mussolini regime.

After his arrest, Pound was sent to a brutal military prison where he was put in one of its "death cells" - a 6x6 foot cage perpetually lit by floodlights.

There, he spent three weeks in isolation, denied a bed, reading material, physical exercise, and communication with everyone but the chaplain. To prevent him from killing himself, his belt and shoelaces were confiscated.

Pound lost what little sanity he had left. Diagnosed as a schizophrenic with narcissistic personality disorder, he was sent back to the United States and committed to the St. Elizabeth hospital for the criminally insane, where he would languish for over a decade.

Ezra Pound was born in Idaho in 1885, but grew up in Pennsylvania. He came from a fiercely conservative Protestant family whose religion was steeped deep in anti-Semitism. His grandfather was a powerful Republican congressman.

As a boy, Pound attended military school, where he learned the importance of discipline and submission to authority for the greater good, and the erratic, self-destructive pattern of behavior that ruled his life took root.

And yet, he was also an intelligent, conceited, and independent young man who believed that discipline and submission were tools with which to shape the unwashed, barely literate masses into a decent orderly society - not for superior people like him. He wanted to be a poet.

When it came to his own liberty, the young fascist in training took great pleasure in challenging authority. In 1907, after graduating from the University of Pennsylvania, he taught Romance languages at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana.

Although fiercely conservative himself and teaching at a conservative college, Pound described the conservative town of Crawfordsville as "the sixth circle of Hell" - he loathed conservative small towns.

Pound's landladies caught him in flagrante delicto with a stranded chorus girl he'd invited to stay in his apartment and kicked him out. When word of this scandalous act got back to the college, he was fired.

Finding his own country hopelessly provincial, Pound went to Europe, which he loved. When he was thirteen, he'd gone on a European tour with his mother and aunt. On his return, he settled in London, where he struck up friendships with the great poets of the day.

Pound also burst onto the literary scene himself. Along with his old girlfriend, the famous poet Hilda Dolittle, he founded the Imagism movement, the opposite of Romantic poetry. He aimed for verse with clear imagery and devoid of unnecessary wordiness.

During the first world war, Pound championed the works of James Joyce, T.S. Eliot, and other authors whose works were considered too experimental for publication. He helped get Joyce's classic debut novel Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man published.

Pound also began writing his most famous work - an unfinished epic poem called The Cantos, the first volume of which was published in 1924. It's rightfully considered one of the most important works of 20th century modernist poetry - and one of the most controversial.

The horrors of the Great War led Pound, who was already an anti-Semite, to believe in the anti-Semitic mythology spawned by the conflict. He believed that the war had been engineered and manipulated - on both sides - by Jewish bankers for their own profit.

Regarding the English as the willing slaves of the Jews, he moved to Paris in 1921. There, he connected with the great writers of the Lost Generation, including Tristan Tzara and Ernest Hemingway. Hemingway and Pound became good friends.

Like most of Ezra Pound's literary friends, Hemingway admired his talent and liked him as a friend, but had no use for his politics. Another of Pound's friends, the famous poet Marianne Moore - who was herself conservative - also deplored his fascism.

After living in Paris for three years, Pound's physical health was deteriorating, and he had suffered what Hemingway called "a small nervous breakdown." He moved to the warmer climate of Italy, where he became enamored with dictator Benito Mussolini.

In 1927, Pound launched his own literary magazine, which would feature the works of his friends, including Hemingway, E.E. Cummings, William Carlos Williams, and William Butler Yeats. Yet, the magazine ultimately flopped because of Pound's own writings.

As his mental state worsened, so did his writing. His editorials were often rambling, incoherent, and just plain bizarre. The man who championed fascism also praised Lenin and Confucius in his editorials!

When war came to Europe again, Ezra Pound, now totally demented and paranoid, believed that if the Allies won, the world would be enslaved by the Jews. So, he wrote and recorded propaganda radio broadcasts for which he was paid well.

These ten-minute broadcasts, filled with anti-Semitism and paranoid rants, aired on English language radio stations in Italy and Germany. After Mussolini was overthrown and executed, Pound and his mistress were seized by armed partisans, but later released.

Fearing for their lives, they turned themselves in at a nearby U.S. military post. While Pound awaited trial in a military prison, a reporter for the Philadelphia Record managed to get an interview with him.

He described Mussolini as an "imperfect character who lost his head" and Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, who had just committed suicide following Germany's defeat, as a modern day male Joan of Arc - "a saint."

Ezra Pound would spend more than ten years in a psychiatric hospital for the criminally insane. His release in 1958 came about mostly due to letter writing campaigns launched by his friends, including Ernest Hemingway, who used his clout as a Nobel Prize winner.

Pound's friends all agreed that he was just a poor, sick, nasty yet harmless old man who should be pitied. The psychiatrists agreed that he was no longer a danger to himself or others. After his release, he moved to Naples. When he arrived, he gave the press the fascist salute.

Prior to his release, Pound publicly claimed to have renounced his anti-Semitism, but privately, he had corresponded with John Kasper, a prominent Ku Klux Klan leader who was later jailed for bombing a school because it allowed a black girl to attend.

In his later years, Pound tried to finish his magnum opus, The Cantos, but found that his talent had dried up. He couldn't write anymore. One of the finest poets of his time, and his talent was gone, his legacy forever tarnished.

Ezra Pound finally found clarity of thought and genuine repentance in his old age. In 1967, at the age of 82, he met legendary poet Allen Ginsberg in Venice. During their talk, Pound summed up his personal and artistic failings:

My own work does not make sense. A mess... my writing, stupidity and ignorance all the way through... the intention was bad, anything I've done has been an accident, in spite of my spoiled intentions the preoccupation with stupid and irrelevant matters... but my worst mistake was the stupid suburban anti-Semitic prejudice, all along that spoiled everything... I found after 70 years that I was not a lunatic but a moron. I should have been able to do better... it’s all doubletalk... it’s all tags and patches... a mess.


Quote Of The Day

"Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree."

- Ezra Pound


Vanguard Video

Today's video features a rare recording of Ezra Pound reading from his classic epic poem, The Cantos. Enjoy!

Thursday, April 17, 2025

Notes For April 17th, 2025


This Day In Literary History

On April 17th, 1981, the original, unexpurgated version of Sister Carrie, the classic, controversial novel by the famous American writer Theodore Dreiser, was published by the University of Pennsylvania Press.

Dreiser, then 28 years old, wrote the original manuscript of Sister Carrie in eight months, between 1899 and 1900. The first publisher he approached found his writing "[Not] sufficiently delicate to depict without offense to the reader the continued illicit relations of the heroine."

Fearing the novel would never be published in its original version, Dreiser began work on a major rewrite. With help from his wife and his friend and fellow writer Arthur Henry, he cut 40,000 words and made other changes, including an alternate ending.

When Dreiser approached publisher Doubleday, Page and Company with his new manuscript, junior partner Walter Page loved the novel and accepted it for publication, offering the author a verbal contract. Unfortunately, senior partner Frank Doubleday had a different reaction.

Doubleday found Sister Carrie extremely distasteful and unsuitable for publication, but Page's contract with Dreiser was binding, so he couldn't cancel it. So, he decided to sabotage the novel instead. He refused to promote the book in any way.

Not only that, Doubleday gave it a bland, red cover, with only the names of the novel and the author on it. Less than 500 copies were sold. When Doubleday's wife complained that the novel was too sordid, he withdrew it from circulation completely.

Theodore Dreiser earned only $68.40 from the ill-fated first publication of Sister Carrie. The ordeal drove the writer to a nervous breakdown and turned him off writing for ten years. Ironically, it also ended up saving his life.

In 1912, Dreiser had originally planned to book passage home from England on the Titanic. Unable to afford tickets for the ill-fated luxury ocean liner, he sailed home earlier on a less expensive passenger ship.

Sister Carrie was later republished when Frank Norris, a reader for Doubleday, sent a few copies to reviewers who raved about it. All future editions of the novel would come from the edited version of the manuscript.

Still controversial even in its edited version, the novel told the story of 18-year-old Caroline "Carrie" Meeber, a young girl living an unhappy life in rural Wisconsin. So, Carrie takes a train to Chicago, where she has made arrangements to move in with her older sister Minnie and her brother-in-law, Sven.

On the train, Carrie meets a traveling salesman named Charles Drouet. He is attracted to her and they exchange information. Carrie finds life at her sister's apartment not much happier than it was in Wisconsin. To earn her keep, Carrie takes a job at a shoe factory.

She finds her co-workers (both male and female) vulgar and the working conditions squalid, and the job takes a toll on her health. After getting sick, Carrie loses her job. She is reunited with Charles Drouet, a married man who is still attracted to her.

He takes her to dinner, where he asks her to move in with him and lavishes her with money. Tired of living with her sister and brother-in-law, Carrie agrees to be Drouet's kept woman. Later, Drouet introduces Carrie to George Hurstwood, the manager of his favorite bar.

Hurstwood, an unhappily married man, falls in love with Carrie, and they have an affair. But she returns to Drouet because Hurstwood can't provide for her financially. So, Hurstwood embezzles a large sum of money from the bar and persuades Carrie to run away with him to Canada.

In Montreal, Hurstwood is trapped by both his guilty conscience and a private detective and returns most of the stolen money. He agrees to marry Carrie and the couple move to New York City, where they live under the assumed names George and Carrie Wheeler.

Carrie believes she may have finally found happiness, but then she and George grow apart. After George loses his source of income and gambles away the couple's savings, Carrie, who has been trying to build a career in the theater, leaves him.

She becomes a rich and famous actress, but finds that wealth and fame don't bring her happiness and that nothing will. Sister Carrie would be rightfully considered a classic American novel, and its author would finally be recognized as one of America's greatest novelists.

Dreiser would go on to write more classic novels, including his Trilogy of Desire - The Financier (1912), The Titan (1914), and The Stoic (1947) - and his masterpiece, An American Tragedy (1925).

For the rest of his life, Theodore Dreiser was haunted by the ordeal he suffered in getting Sister Carrie published. He felt that, just like his anti-heroine, he had prostituted himself to survive and thrive. He died in 1945 at the age of 74.

Though he wouldn't live to see it, his original manuscript for Sister Carrie would finally be published - over eighty years after the edited version was released. In 1930, during his Nobel Prize Lecture, legendary writer Sinclair Lewis said this about the novel and its author:

Dreiser's great first novel, Sister Carrie, which he dared to publish thirty long years ago and which I read twenty-five years ago, came to housebound and airless America like a great free Western wind, and to our stuffy domesticity gave us the first fresh air since Mark Twain and Whitman.


Quote Of The Day

"Words are but the vague shadows of the volumes we mean. Little audible links they are, chaining together great inaudible feelings and purposes."

- Theodore Dreiser


Vanguard Video

Today's video features a complete reading of Theodore Dreiser's classic novel Sister Carrie. Enjoy!

Wednesday, April 16, 2025

Notes For April 16th, 2025


This Day In Literary History

On April 16th, 1962, The Golden Notebook, the classic novel by the Nobel Prize winning English writer Doris Lessing, was published. The novel is rightfully considered a seminal early work of feminist literature.

That wasn't what the author intended, though the book does have feminist themes. The Oxford Companion to English Literature described it as "inner space fiction." A more accurate description would be experimental existentialist fiction.

The Golden Notebook uses a fragmented, stream-of-consciousness narrative to tell the story of Anna Wulf, a middle aged writer and single mother who has come apart - literally and metaphorically. She keeps four notebooks, each one representing a part of her personality.

In her black notebook, Anna records her experiences in Africa, where she helped fight the colonial oppression of black Africans. In her red notebook, she records her idealism, specifically her political idealism, as she first becomes a passionate young communist.

Over time, however, she changes into a sober realist, disillusioned by the crimes of the Stalin regime and the realization that communism can't create the better world she had hoped for.

Anna's yellow notebook contains her novel, which is a fictionalized version of her life. Her blue notebook is her personal diary, a record of her day to day life.

The narrative is comprised of alternating fragments from each of her four notebooks, which reflects her chaotic state of mind. Fearing that she might go insane, Anna tries to weave together the threads of her four notebooks and create one complete Golden Notebook.

In doing so, she embarks on a harrowing journey in search of her true self, confronting her anxieties and the painful truths at the heart of her personal crises.

The Golden Notebook is a classic existentialist novel written in a post-modernist style. In 2005, Time magazine listed it as among the 100 best English-language novels since 1923.


Quote Of The Day

"With a library, you are free, not confined by temporary political climates. It is the most democratic of institutions because no one - but no one at all - can tell you what to read and when and how."

- Doris Lessing


Vanguard Video

Today's video features a BBC documentary on Doris Lessing. Enjoy!

Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Notes For April 15th, 2025


This Day In Literary History

On April 15th, 1755, A Dictionary of the English Language, the classic reference book by the legendary English writer Samuel Johnson, was published. Neither the first nor the last English language dictionary ever published, it was, however, one of the most memorable dictionaries ever published.

That's because it was written by Samuel Johnson - the legendary English poet, essayist, literary critic, biographer, and lexicographer considered to be "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history."

Most dictionaries of the time were found to be unsatisfactory at best, so in 1746, a group of London booksellers commissioned Samuel Johnson to write a dictionary for £1,575 - about £250,000 in today's money. Johnson claimed that he could complete it in three years.

Actually, it took him almost nine years to finish his dictionary. It took Johnson a whole year just to draft a plan for the design of the dictionary. The plan received the support of statesman Lord Philip Stanhope, the 4th Earl of Sandwich.

After the dictionary was published, Stanhope wrote an anonymous essay endorsing the work and complaining that the English language lacked structure. Johnson didn't like the tone of the essay and felt that Stanhope hadn't done enough to fulfill his obligations as a patron of the dictionary.

The first edition of A Dictionary of the English Language was published in a ponderously large sized volume, (18" tall by 20" wide) on the finest quality paper available at the time.

This made the dictionary incredibly expensive to print and affordable only by nobility and royalty. Johnson called this volume "Vasta mole superbus." - "Proud in its great bulk."

Johnson's dictionary contained the definitions of 42,773 English words (only a few more words would be added in its revised editions) and was innovative in its use of literary quotations to illustrate the meanings of words.

The dictionary contained some 114,000 quotations by authors such as Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden. In addition to the quotations, Johnson's dictionary was the first to use humor in its definitions of words.

A famous example is Johnson's definition of the word oats as "a grain which in England is generally given to horses, but in Scotland supports the people." The legendary American writer Ambrose Bierce would employ similar humor in his masterpiece of scathing satire, The Devil's Dictionary (1911).

A Dictionary of the English Language was a huge hit in England, receiving rave reviews and becoming famous throughout Europe. In America, however, it was poorly received, especially by one Noah Webster.

Webster, an American lexicographer, argued that British English should no longer be the American standard because "the taste of [Britain's] writers is already corrupted, and her language is on the decline." He would later write a famous dictionary of his own - a dictionary of American English.

In England, Samuel Johnson's dictionary would be the standard English dictionary until the Oxford English Dictionary was completed and published in 1884. It earned Johnson a £300 pension from King George III and a legacy that continues to this day.


Quote Of The Day

"Books, like friends, should be few and well-chosen."

- Samuel Johnson


Vanguard Video

Today's video features a BBC documentary on Samuel Johnson and his dictionary. Enjoy!


Monday, April 14, 2025

IWW Members' Publishing Successes For The Week Ending 4/13/25


Paul S. Fein

I would like to thank everyone who helped improve my Debates can help set us free column. It was published as a Guest Viewpoint in the April 8 edition of The Republican, our major newspaper. It hasn't appeared online yet.


Friday, April 11, 2025

Notes For April 11th, 2025


This Day In Literary History

On April 11th, 1931, the legendary American writer Dorothy Parker resigned as drama critic for the New Yorker magazine.

Best known as a poet, Dorothy began her career as a magazine writer in 1914 when Vogue hired her as an editorial assistant after one of her poems appeared in its sister magazine, Vanity Fair.

After working at Vogue for two years, Dorothy was transferred to Vanity Fair to work as a staff writer. By 1918, she had become the magazine's guest drama critic, filling in for the vacationing P.G. Wodehouse.

It was in this capacity that Dorothy Parker began developing the rapacious wit that would make her famous. Her reviews were often brutal. She offered this advice to potential audiences of one particular musical comedy: "If you don't knit, bring a book."

She reviewed a production of Leo Tolstoy's Redemption by saying, "I went into the Plymouth Theater a comparatively young woman, and I staggered out of it, three hours later, twenty years older."

Infuriated by Dorothy's scathing reviews of their plays, the wealthy, powerful producers flexed their considerable muscle to get her fired. Her friends and fellow Vanity Fair writers, Robert Benchley and Robert E. Sherwood, resigned in protest.

Together, they formed the Algonquin Round Table, a famous group of New York City writers, actors, critics, and wits. Another founding member of the group was Harold Ross, who founded the New Yorker magazine in 1925.

He named Dorothy Parker and Robert Benchley as members of the magazine's board of editors, which made his investors happy. Over the next fifteen years, Dorothy would reach her peak of productivity and success.

Her first poetry collection, Enough Rope, was published in 1926. It sold nearly 50,000 copies and received great reviews. The Nation newsmagazine described her poetry as "caked with a salty humor, rough with splinters of disillusion, and tarred with a bright black authenticity."

Within the next four years, Dorothy would publish over 300 poems in the New Yorker and many other national magazines. In addition to her poetry, she also wrote humorous pieces, essays, columns, and book reviews for the New Yorker.

She also served as the magazine's drama critic for over five years. Then she tired of drama - and of the drama her scathing reviews created - and resigned as drama critic. She continued writing book reviews - under the byline Constant Reader - until 1933.

Dorothy Parker's writing talent and sparkling wit was noticed by Hollywood, and she became a screenwriter. In 1937, she co-wrote the hit film, A Star Is Born and earned an Academy Award nomination. Her political activism would eventually derail her Hollywood career.

She served as a correspondent for the communist magazine New Masses, reporting on the Spanish Civil War. In 1936, before her success with A Star Is Born, she founded the Hollywood Anti-Nazi League.

During the McCarthy era of the 1950s, Dorothy protested the government's relentless and mostly illegal persecution of suspected communists and communist sympathizers. She never joined the Communist Party, but did declare herself a sympathizer.

The FBI deemed her a subversive and compiled a dossier on her that would reach 1,000 pages in length. She was never charged with a crime, but her former Hollywood studio bosses blacklisted her for years. In 1957, she moved back to New York City and served as a book reviewer for Esquire magazine.

Dorothy died of a heart attack in June of 1967 at the age of 73. She left her estate to civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. After his assassination the following year, it was passed on to the NAACP.

In 1988, the NAACP interred Dorothy's ashes in a memorial garden outside its Baltimore headquarters. The plaque in the garden reads as follows:

Here lies the ashes of Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) humorist, writer, critic. Defender of human and civil rights. For her epitaph, she suggested Excuse my dust. This memorial garden is dedicated to her noble spirit which celebrated the oneness of humankind and to the bonds of everlasting friendship between black and Jewish people. Dedicated by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. October 28, 1988

Four years later, to celebrate Dorothy's 99th birthday, the United States Postal Service honored her with a commemorative postage stamp.


Quote Of The Day

“The first thing I do in the morning is brush my teeth and sharpen my tongue.”

- Dorothy Parker


Vanguard Video

Today's video features a rare recording of Dorothy Parker reading her poem, Inscription for the Ceiling of a Bedroom. Enjoy!

Thursday, April 10, 2025

Notes For April 10th, 2025


This Day In Literary History

On April 10th, 1906, The Four Million, the classic short story collection by the legendary American writer O. Henry, was published. It contained two of the author's most popular stories - The Cop and the Anthem and The Gift of the Magi.

The Cop and the Anthem is set in New York City. It's late autumn, and with winter coming, a homeless hobo called Soapy isn't looking forward to sleeping out in the cold.

Soapy decides to get himself arrested so he can spend the night in a warm jail cell. He tries swindling, petty thievery, vandalism, and pretending to be publicly intoxicated, but he just can't get arrested.

When Soapy tries sexually harassing a young woman, she turns out to be a prostitute. Heartbroken, he moves on. As the sun begins to set on a cold night, he finds himself standing outside a small church.

Inside the church, the organist is practicing. Soapy listens to him play. Moved by the music, he contemplates his life and decides to clean up his act and get himself a job and a home. Lost in reverie over the prospect of a brighter future, Soapy is suddenly arrested by a cop - for loitering.

The Gift of the Magi, considered O. Henry's most beloved story, is a heartwarming Christmas tale. Jim and Della are a poor young married couple living in a modest little apartment.

Although poor, they each have a valuable possession that they take pride in. Della has her beautiful, long flowing hair, while Jim's prize possession is his grandfather's pocket watch.

It's Christmas Eve, and Della has just under two dollars to spend on Jim's Christmas present. Desperate, she decides to sell the only thing of value she has - her hair. She sells it for $20 and buys a shiny platinum fob chain for Jim's treasured pocket watch.

When Jim comes home, she gives him his present and tells him she sold her hair to pay for it. He fixes her with an expression “that she could not read, and it terrified her.” Then he gives Della her Christmas present - a set of expensive, fancy combs for her hair. He sold his grandfather's pocket watch to pay for them.

The couple is left with two Christmas presents they can't use and one invaluable gift they take great pleasure in - their deep love for each other. The story ends with the author comparing their sacrificial gifts to each other with the biblical gifts of the Magi given to the baby Jesus:

The magi, as you know, were wise men – wonderfully wise men – who brought gifts to the new-born King of the Jews in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication.

And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the Magi.


O. Henry was the pseudonym of William Sydney Porter, born in Greensboro, North Carolina, in 1862. A voracious reader as a child, he took up writing in his twenties. While living in Austin, Texas, in the late 1880s, he wrote short stories and founded a humorous weekly literary magazine called The Rolling Stone.

Porter supported himself by working at a bank, which would lead to his downfall. He would be accused of embezzlement and fired, but not indicted. He moved to Houston, where he worked on his magazine and also wrote for the Houston Post.

During this time, the bank where Porter had worked was audited by the feds, who arrested him on embezzlement charges. He fled, and while on the lam, went to Honduras, where he coined the term "banana republic" to describe that third world Latin American country and others like it.

When Porter learned that his wife was dying of tuberculosis, he returned to Texas and surrendered. He was granted bail so he could remain with his wife pending an appeal. After she died, Porter lost his appeal and was sentenced to five years in a federal prison in Ohio.

While serving his time, Porter continued to write. He used several pseudonyms, settling on O. Henry - the name he was becoming famous under. He had a friend in New Orleans forward his stories so publishers wouldn't know that he was in prison.

After serving three years of his five year sentence, he was paroled for good behavior. The year after his release from prison, O. Henry moved to New York City, which was the mecca of the publishing world.

He would become one of the great masters of the short story, writing nearly four hundred of them. The critics of the day were rarely kind to O. Henry, but his readers loved him and couldn't get enough of his stories.

Sadly, O. Henry's life would be cut short by chronic health problems such as diabetes, cirrhosis of the liver, and an enlarged heart. These problems were caused or worsened by his heavy drinking. He died in 1910 at the age of 47.

Stories from his classic collection would be adapted as a classic anthology feature film, O. Henry's Full House, in 1952. The movie, directed by multiple filmmakers, featured an all-star cast, with each story introduced and narrated by legendary writer John Steinbeck.


Quote Of The Day

"Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves."

- O. Henry


Vanguard Video

Today's video features a complete reading of O. Henry's classic short story collection, The Four Million. Enjoy!