1. I'd
like to start off this post with a short blurb about Malcolm
Cowley. He's been in my radar for awhile now, but then
serendipity happened and I was able to pick up his book about the
expats in 1920s Paris (for fifty cents!). Cowley was probably
one of the more important critics to the Lost Generation writers.
Hemingway had described Cowley in the Snows of Kilimanjaro as
Cowley did note in The Paris Review,
"that American poet with a pile of saucers in front of him and a stupid look on his potato face talking about the Dada movement."
Cowley did note in The Paris Review,
"Hemingway had the bad habit of never forgiving anyone for giving him a hand up. That may have been the problem between them. Ford was a character; he was a liar, not for his own profit, but just because he had a very faint hold on actuality. He told beautiful stories of English literary life, in which he knew everybody, had a hand in everything, and his hand grew larger as he told the story. He had a roving eye for younger women, whom he especially liked to fascinate. He came to this country after the breakup of his relationship with Stella Bowen. I can remember on one occasion he came up to Robber Rocks—a place back in the woods near the New York-Connecticut line which was the country headquarters for Allen Tate, Hart Crane, and others—where a lot of young wives were around at the party. They would be fondled by Ford, and then escape him up the stairs. Ford, heavy and wheezing by that time, would follow them to the head of the narrow stairs, and the door would close in his face. He would wheeze back down, and a while later he'd follow another young woman until she took refuge behind a locked door."Although he was an active participant in the Paris circles of writers, artists and poets that comprised the Lost Generation; many of his peers from that era apparently didn't think much of Cowley, but were careful to not let him know of their disdain for the sake of their careers. Additional writers that I have found from that time period include:
- Ford Madox Ford (Guthrie MacInnes?????)
Cowley
also started the League of American Writers, but later resigned due
to it's ties with the communists. Notable authors from that
group include:
Other
items of note is that Cowley spent some time as the deputy
for Archibald
MacLeish (writer,
poet and Libararian of Congress), who was head of the Office of Facts
of Figures under Roosevelt, but Cowley resigned when his liberal
political leanings came under fire.
2. In
other news, The publisher of the Brazilian botanical gardens of the
postcard appears to be Lito Tipo Guanabarathe. In looking at
some online auction sites, there was a company named Lito Tipo
Guanabarathe, their cards apparently were often stamped "LITO
TIPO GUANABARA."
3. Out
of pure cussidness (and, perhaps, with some masochism thrown in), I
did a worldcat search for Vaclav Straka and found some entries that
have strange references thrown in. These may turn out to have
no significance, but the translation of Random
Harvest caught my eye.
(8/1/14 edited for grammar and tags added)
Don't for get to include Gertrude Stein as one of the "Lost Generation" authors. Not only was she vastly influential of the literary word and art world in the early 20's, she was also a mentor to many artists and writers living in Paris at that time such as Picasso, James Joyce, T.S. Elliot, Pound, & even, Sherwood Anderson but particularly Hemingway ("Midnight in Paris" the movie is based on this). She actually 'coined" the term "The Lost Generation". The Epigraph in "The Sun Also Rises" says: "You are all a Lost Generation" --Gertrude Stein. Here is the link to wikipedia for more info. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lost_Generation
ReplyDeleteYou are absolutely right and it is an oversight in my part. I will correct that in the next few days. By the way, I loved Midnight in Paris.
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