Max Eastman
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Enjoyment of Laughter. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1936.
The End of Socialism in Russia. Boston: Little, Brown, 1937.
Anthology for Enjoyment of Poetry. New York: Scribner’s Sons, 1939.
Stalin’s Russia and the Crisis in Socialism. New York: Norton, 1940.
Marxism: Is It Science? New York: Norton, 1940.
Heroes I Have Known: Twelve Who Lived Great Lives. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1942.
Lot’s Wife. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1942.
Enjoyment of Living. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1948.
Poems of Five Decades. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1954.
Reflections on the Failure of Socialism. New York: Devin-Adair, 1955.
Great Companions: Critical Memoirs of Some Famous Friends. New York: Farrar, Straus, and Cudahy, 1959.
Love and Revolution: My Journey through an Epoch. New York: Random, 1964.
Seven Kinds of Goodness. New York: Horizon, 1967.
Trotsky, Leon. The Young Lenin. Translated from the Russian by Max Eastman. Garden City: Doubleday, 1972.
Introduction
1. Daniel Aaron, Writers on the Left (1961; rpt. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1977), 315; FN, Journal, September 9, 1945, NM.
2. Carly Simon, personal communication, February 7, 2016.
3. Max’s typing is fondly evoked by Nicholas Delbanco, Lastingness: The Art of Old Age (New York: Grand Central, 2011), 187.
4. Reader’s Digest Student Guide. Close-up of a Digest Writer: “Max Eastman Recalls . . .” (Pleasantville, NY: September, 1961), S-3.
5. “What will trouble me most,” July 2, 1954, EMII.
6. Charmion von Wiegand, “Arrows of the Sun,” EMII. The title was inspired by Max’s poem “Coming Spring”: “Arrows of the sun are flying!” (Child of the Amazons, 29).
7. “I Have the Gift of Leisure and of Life,” “Poems and Sketches” [1913–15], EMII; Time (April 4, 1969): 90.
8. On April 19, 1938, Max declined, for the second time, an invitation to supply biographical material for inclusion in Who’s Who in American Jewry. “I explained before that much as I appreciate the compliment to my intellectual ability, I am not a Jew, and have no Jews among my ancestors so far as they are known.” ME to ?, April 19, 1938, EM.
9. Ted Daniel, personal communication, March 4, 2014.
10. ME to Frank Lieber, June 21, 1967, cc, EM.
11. ME to FN, January 25, 1956, NMII.
12. William L. O’Neill, The Last Romantic: A Life of Max Eastman (1978; rpt. New York: Transaction, 1991), xi, 295.
13. “Myself,” “Poems and Sketches” [1916], EMII.
14. Venture, 57.
15. ME to EE, June 27, 1953, EEM; Louis Menand, “Stand by Your Man,” New Yorker, September 26, 2005.
16. Edmund Wilson, “Max Eastman in 1941” (1941), in Wilson, Classics and Commercials: A Literary Chronicle of the Forties (New York: Vintage, 1962), 57–69.
17. Conversation with Daniel Aaron, January 30, 2015.
18. ME to Granville Hicks, November 23, 1935, Granville Hicks Papers, University of Syracuse Special Collections.
19. Michael Kazin, American Dreamers: How the Left Changed a Nation (New York: Knopf, 2011).
20. Venture, 42.
21. “I always cry when people are very happy,” June 19, 1958, EM.
Chapter 1. The Devil at Park Church
1. EL, xiii; AFE to ME, April 27, 1899, EMII.
2. AFE to Grace Bill, February 11, 1879, EMII.
3. AFE to ME, [April 24], 1909, EM.
4. “Rev. Dr. Eastman, Pastor Emeritus of The Park Church, Succumbs to Illness Developed While in South,” Elmira Star-Gazette, February 7, 1925. George and Sam Eastman had a “common great-great-great grandfather” (EL, 4).
5. SEE to AFE, September 23, 1874, EMII; AFE to SEE, October 21, 1874, EMII.
6. SEE to AFE, September 23, 1874, EMII; EL 40.
7. AFE to Grace Bill, February 1, 1876, EMII.
8. AFE to Grace Bill, February 24, 1876, EMII.
9. AFE to SE, November 8, 1891, EMII.
10. EL, 79.
11. “Mark Twain’s Elmira,” Harper’s Monthly Magazine 176 (December 1, 1937): 620–32.
12. Marion S. Bryan to ME, November 6, 1936, EMII.
13. AFE to ME, March 16, April 17, 1900, EM.
14. SEE, “Pretty little aster!” November 5, 1901, Cherith-Log, 1901–1904, EMII.
15. ME to AFE, February 16, 1909, EM.
16. “To My Father,” Colors of Life, 78.
17. “From notebook marked Recollections at Glenora,” EMII.
18. AFE to ME, March 21, 1906, EM. Annis describes how, after she had forced down a quart of milk at bedtime, hoping it would relieve her troubles, all the milk came up again, “as if my soul rose up and said . . . ‘Enough.’”
19. AFE to ME, March 27, 1906, EM.
20. AFE to SEE, n.d., EMII.
21. AFE to CE, “Saturday evening alone by the fire,” n.d., EMII; AFE to ME, May 27, October 27, 1907, EM.
22. AFE to ME, March 23, 1908, EM.
23. AFE to CE, February 13, 1905 (letter separated into different folders).
24. AFE to ME, September 24, 1898, EM.
25. See http://www.theparkchurch.org/history.
26. ME to AFE, March 19, 1907, EM.
27. ME to AFE, February 1, 1907, EM.
28. AFE, “Man’s Place in Nature,” n.d., CEP.
29. AFE to ME, February 21, 1909, EM.
30. AFE, “Men and Reform,” n.d., CEP; EL, 114.
31. “When I knew I should speak here tonight,” EMII.
32. Compendium of the Eleventh Census: 1890, Part III (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 1897), 13.
33. “Some people will think I violate the sacredness,” EMII.
34. ME, “We were all,” EMII; EL, 62, 86.
35. EL, 66.
36. ME to CE, October 2, 1897, EM.
37. ME to CE, October 17, 1897, EM.
38. ME to CE, October 17, 1897, EM.
39. EL, 94; folder “My Character,” EM.
40. AFE, “Men and Reform,” undated, CEP.
41. Cherith-Log, 1901–1904, September 1, 4, 1901, EMIIA2.
42. Cherith-Log, 1901–1904, July 7, 1901, EMIIA2.
43. AFE to ME, February 21, March 11, 1899; AFE to AE, January 19, 1910; AFE to ME, January 21, 1899, EM.
44. ME to CE, May 28, 1899, EM.
45. EL, 116.
46. AFE to ME, undated note, with Max’s addition: “found and read on September 23 [1898],” EM.
47. AFE to ME, September 17, September 16, 1898, EM.
48. AFE to ME, September [?], 1898; February 7, February 18, 1899; January 6, 1899; all EM. The “no-breakfast plan” was a new fad in Annis’s repertoire of self-healing techniques, and she had already convinced Samuel and Max’s cousin Adra to adopt it; AFE to ME, January 12, February 21, 1899, EM.
49. Annis, characteristically, encouraged Max to have sympathy for them: “They are probably beginners and doing their best. I think young people are apt to be very cruel and thoughtless”; AFE to ME, September 24, 1898, EM.
50. AFE to ME, February 21, February 26, 1900; AFE to ME, April 2, 1899, EM.
51. Max initially thought not. Annis told him he was wrong and should start reading a good weekly newspaper; AFE to ME, January 12, 1899, EM.
52. AFE to ME, January 21, 1899, EM; EL, 122.
53. AFE to ME, October 26, October 10, 1898; January 6, 1899; EM.
54. CE to ME, December 18, 1899, CEP.
55. AFE to ME, May 14, 1900, EM.
Chapter 2. Dearest of All Lovers
1. CE to AFE, July 2, 1899, CEP.
2. CE to ME, October 2, 1899, CEP.
3. CE to ME, October 2, 1899, CEP.
4. CE to ME, January 20, 1900, CEP.
5. CE to ME, February 4, 1900, CEP.
6. CE to ME, February 24, 1900, CEP.
7. ME to CE, September 27, 1900, CEP.
8. ME to CE, October 1, 1901, EM.
9. ME to CE, October 28, 1900, EM.
10. ME to CE, October 4, 1900, CEP.
11. Williams College Freshman Year “Experience Book” (“Autumn of 1900 to February 1901”), EMII.
12. Venture, 11–15.
13. ME to CE, February 19, 1901, CEP.
14. “Experience Book,” EMII.
15. ME to CE, October 28, 1900, CEP.
16. “Experience Book,” EMII.
17. CE to ME, January 17, 1901, CEP; ME to CE, February 8, 1901, EM.
18. “Experience Book,” EMII; ME to CE, February 8, 1901, EM.
19. ME to CE, February 7, 1901, EM.
20. CE to ME, September 29, 1901, CEP.
21. Ralph Erskine to ME, May 9, 1938, copy, EMII.
22. ME to CE, October 6, 1901, EM.
23. ME to CE, November 18, 1901, EM.
24. ME to CE, November 22, 1901, EM.
25. ME to CE, December 3, 1901, EM.
26. ME to CE, January 19, 1902, EM.
27. ME to CE, March 16, 1902, EM.
28. AFE to ME, April 22, 1902, EM.
29. CE, Journal (“Catherine Crystal Eastman Her Book”), June 2, 1902, EMIIA2.
30. For this and the following quotations see ME’s “My Western Trip,” 1902, EMII.
31. Frederick William “Fritz” Updegraff or Up de Graff (1871–1927) later managed to get himself lost, for no less than seven years, in the Amazonian jungle, an experience he recounted in Head Hunters of the Amazon (1923).
32. CE to ME, August 13, 1902, CEP.
33. ME to CE, September 26, 1902, EM.
34. ME to CE, October 5, 1902, EM.
35. CE to ME, October 14, 1902, CEP.
36. ME to CE, October 14, 1902, EM.
37. ME to CE, October 26, 1902, EM.
38. ME to CE, December 7, 1902, EM.
39. ME to CE, January 14, 1903, EM.
40. ME to CE, October 26, 1902, EM.
41. ME to CE, January 14, 1903, EM.
42. CE to ME, January 19, 1903, CEP.
43. ME to CE, September 26, 1902, EM.
44. ME to CE, February 1, February 3, 1903, EM.
45. ME to CE, February 8, February 18, 1903, EM.
46. AE to CE, September 22, October 12, 1901, AEM.
47. CE to ME, June 12, 1903, CEP.
48. AFE to AE, July 24, 1903, CEP.
49. AFE to ME, October 19, 1898, AEM.
50. CE to ME, February 13, 1904, CEP.
51. EL, 212. Margaret (“Gretchen”) Fassett, born 1881 in Elmira, whom Max “liked . . . better than any other girl in Elmira” (LR, 103), would later marry Frederick Grady Hodgson. Her daughter, the poet Martha Hodgson Ellis, became Max’s lover in the early 1940s. Gretchen responded to Max’s admiration more ambivalently than Martha would, offering him her friendship but nothing else (Gretchen Fassett to ME, March 16, July 24, 1904, EM).
52. Ralph Erskine to ME, May 9, 1938, copy, EMII.
53. CE to ME, February 18, 1905, CEP.
54. CE to ME, March 9, 1905, CEP.
55. Decennial Record of the Class of 1905, Williams College, ed. Herbert Barber Howe (Waterbury, CT: Tuttle, Morehouse and Taylor, 1915), 51. Max did not participate in the reunion but contributed his poem “At the Aquarium” to the volume.
Chapter 3. A Village Apollo
1. “On the Folly of Growing Up,” Christian Register 8 (October 22, 1908): 1139–40.
2. “The Poet’s Mind,” North American Review 187 (March 1908): 417–25.
3. See Lyn Burnstine, Anita Trueman Pickett: New Thought Preacher (Boston: Skinner, 1991), 63.
4. ME to AFE, April 28, 1906, EM.
5. ME to Henry Loomis Nelson, draft, May 15, 1906, EM.
6. ME to AFE, May 15, 1906; ME to AFE, [June 1906]; insert and envelope [June 1906]; EM.
7. CE to AFE, September 30, 1906, CEP.
8. EL, 258.
9. ME to CE, November 11, 1906, EM.
10. CE to AFE, November 14, 1906, CEP.
11. CE to ME, November 15, 1906, CEP.
12. ME to CE, November 29, 1906, EM.
13. EL, 268–69; Anna Carlson to ME, January 20, 1907, EM.
14. Anna Carlson to ME, January 14, 1907, EM.
15. Anna Carlson to ME, January 11, 1907, EM.
16. Anna Carlson to ME, January 26, May 7, 1907, EM.
17. ME to CE, December 20, 1906, EM.
18. CE to ME, December [?], 1906, CEP.
19. CE to AFE, January 5, 1907, CEP.
20. CE to AFE, January 6, 1907, CEP.
21. ME to AFE, January 14, 1907, EM.
22. ME to CE, February 12, 1907, EM.
23. CE to AFE, January 18, 1907, CEP.
24. Report of the New York City Commission on Congestion of Population: Transmitted to the Mayor and the Board of Aldermen, February 28, 1911 (New York: Lecouver, 1911), 6, 11; ME to AFE and SEE, January 6, 1907, EM.
25. CE to AFE, September 30, 1906, CEP; ME to AFE, March 6, 1907, EM.
26. CE to AFE, January 24, 1907, CEP.
27. CE to AFE, May 8, 1907, CEP.
28. EL, 268.
29. Great Companions, 283.
30. ME to AFE, March 14, April 26, 1907, EM. Publishing under the name R. E. Hobart, Miller later caused a stir in the field with his views on determinism and free will.
31. ME to CE, March 11, 1907, EM.
32. CE to ME, March 6, 1907, CEP.
33. CE to ME, January 21, January 15, 1907, CEP.
34. CE to ME, March 13, 1907, CEP.
35. CE to AFE, February 26, 1907, CEP.
36. CE to ME, March 13, 1907, CEP.
37. CE to ME, March 9, March 28, April 12, April 29, May 4, 1907, CEP.
38. AFE to ME, February 1, 1907, EM.
39. ME to AFE, March 19, 1907, EM.
40. ME to AFE, April 10, 1907, EM.
41. See Max’s explanation in his show Word Game, CBS, May 4, 1938, EM.
42. ME to AFE, May 6, 1907, EM.
43. Great Companions, 250–52.
44. “The New Art of Healing,” Atlantic Monthly 101 (May 1908): 644–50.
45. EL, 279.
46. AFE to ME, November 6, 1907, EM.
47. September 1, 1907, Cherith-Log, 1904–1908, EMIIA2.
48. June 26, 1909, Cherith-Log, 1909, EMIIA2.
49. Annette Kellerman (1886–1975), a pioneer of synchronized swimming and the right of women to wear one-piece bathing suits; July 24, 1909, Cherith Log, 1909, EMIIA2.
50. F. J. Brunner, “Diving as a Fine Art: Hints for the Competitor in this Fascinating Sport,” Outing 68.5 (August 1916): 543–54; 552.
51. June 26, 1909, Cherith-Log, 1909; June 29, 1908, Cherith-Log, 1904–1908; July 24, 1909, July 24, September 10, Cherith-Log, 1909, EMIIA2.
52. August 5, 1907; July 8, 1908, Cherith-Log, 1904–1908, EMIIA2.
53. August 4, August 14, 1908, Cherith-Log, 1904–1908, EMIIA2.
54. Whitman, “Song of Myself,” 48; AFE to ME, March 23, 1908, EM.
55. The Wound-Dresser: A Series of Letters Written from Hospitals in Washington During the War of the Rebellion, ed. Richard Maurice Bucke (Boston: Small, Maynard, 1898), 42 (author’s collection).
56. “Walt Whitman’s Art,” EMII.
57. “Whitman’s Morals,” EMII.
58. AFE to ME, September 17, 1898, EM.
59. EL, 301.
60. Whitman, “Song of the Open Road,” 6.
61. CE to ME, October 6, 19, 1907, CEP.
62. CE to ME, October 6, 19, 1907, CEP.
63. CE to ME, January 14, 1908; CE to AFE, June 8, 1908, CEP.
64. CE to ME, July 4, July 10, 1908, CEP.
65. ME to AFE, February 10, 1909, EM.
66. ME to CE, [1908], EM.
67. ME to AFE, October 7, 1908, EM.
68. ME to AFE, September 23, 1908, EM.
69. ME to AFE, September 26, 1908, EM.
70. EL, 296.
71. EL, 303.
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72. ME to AFE, November 29, 1908, EM.
73. ME to AFE, December 7, December 13, 1908, EM. The praise had come from Dudley Sargent, the director of the Hemenway Gymnasium at Harvard. Kellerman was also known for offering a correspondence course intended to help women acquire “health and a beautiful figure.”
74. ME to AFE, May 5, 1909, December 19, 1908, EM.
75. ME to CE, June 8, 1909, EM.
76. ME to AFE, October 11, 1909, EM.
77. As mentioned in ME to AFE, May 12, 1909, EM.
78. ME to AFE, September 28, 1909, EM.
79. “Notes of Phil. A. Lectures,” EMII.
80. “The Meaning of Pragmatism,” n.d., EMII.
81. ME to AFE, November 19, 1908, EM.
82. ME to AFE, October 9, 1908, EM.
83. Annis is listed as a member of the Harvard Summer School of Theology in the Harvard University Catalogue for the years 1899 / 1900, 1901 / 1902, 1903 / 1904, 1905 / 1906, and 1909 / 1910.
84. “Attitude to Nature,” EMII.
85. CE, Work-Accidents and the Law (New York: Charities Publication, 1910), 5.
86. EL, 306.
87. EL, 317–18.
88. ME to AFE, December 3, 1909, EM.
89. Men’s League for Woman Suffrage: Constitution and Charter Members (New York: n.p., 1910), Miller Scrapbooks Collection, Library of Congress.
90. “Someone Will Be Killed While Suffrage Battle Is On,” Buffalo Courier, November 13, 1909.
91. “There is a class of people in this world” [1910?], EMII.
92. EL, 310.
93. “When I knew I should speak here tonight,” EMII.
94. “Woman Suffrage as a Man Sees It,” Rochester Democrat and Chronicle, January 14, 1911.
95. According to Patterson, the bill, apart from weakening the men, would distract women from their “true and heavenly mission,” which was to “bless the home and teach truth, honor and courage to their children”; “Governor Patterson’s Veto of the State-Wide Prohibition Bill of Tennessee,” January 19, 1909, in Prohibition: Its Relation to Temperance, Good Morals, and Sound Government (Cincinnati: n.p., 1910), 231–36; see 235.
96. ME to AFE, January 23, 1910, EM.
97. EL, 315.
98. “Men Suffragists Dine Mrs. Snowden,” New York Times, December 14, 1910.
99. EL, 298; ME to AFE, January 28, 1910, EM.
100. ME to AFE, January 16, 1910, EM. The event took place on January 12, 1910; Eva Boice, “Woman Suffrage, Vassar College, and Laura Johnson Wylie,” Hudson River Valley Review 20.2 (2004): 37–50.