2. LR, 538.
3. YE, Dearest Wilding: A Memoir (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 59.
4. YE to ME, January 26, 1955, EM.
5. ME to FN, February 7, 1957, NMII.
6. YE’s correspondence with Bernard Steffen (“Steff”) is in EMIIA2.
7. ME to FN, September 9, 1958, NMII. See also YE’s unpublished memoir, pp. 398, 420, EMIIA2.
8. David Randall to ME, March 20, April 26, 1957, EMIIA1. Max requested an additional $500 upon signing his agreement with Indiana University in January 1957 (YE, unpublished memoir, p. 426, EMIIA2) as well as two more payments of $5,250 each for 1958 and in 1959; ME to Randall, August 12, 1958; invoice for the final payment, June 30, 1959 (Lilly Administrative Files, David Randall, box 3).
9. ME to FN, September 9, 1958, NMII.
10. Daniel Aaron, personal communication, February 5, 2013.
11. ME to FN, August 24, 1957, NMII.
12. Melville, “Knights and Squires,” Moby-Dick, chapter 27; Amos Smalley, “I Killed ‘Moby Dick,’” Reader’s Digest (June 1957): 172–80.
13. “Re Wally and the Readers Digest,” November 2, 1957, EM; EL, 554.
14. ME to FN, March 13, May 2, 1957, NMII.
15. ME to FN, May 7, May 18, May 8, May 28, June 25, 1957, NMII.
16. ME to FN, April 20, June 2, 1957, NMII.
17. ME to FN, February 8, 1958, NMII.
18. Sidney Hook, “Abraham Lincoln, American Pragmatist,” New Leader (March 18, 1957): 16–18.
19. “Marx, Dewey and Hook,” New Leader (February 10, 1958): 16–17; 16.
20. “The Reaction against John Dewey,” National Review 6.1 (June 21, 1958): 9–11.
21. “Reaction against Dewey,” 10.
22. ME to FN, March 20, March 23, March 28, August 12, 1958, NMII.
23. ME to FN, March 29, 1958, NMII. Max states that Rosalinde’s show was at the “McDougall [sic] Street Theatre,” but the New York Times, March 11, 1958, advertises it as taking place at the Sullivan Street Playhouse, also in the Village.
24. ME to FN, May 16, 1958; October 22, 1960, NMII.
25. ME to FN, October 22, 1960, NMII.
26. ME to FN, January 14, 1959, NMII.
27. “My Feelings about Marriage,” May 18, 1958, EMII; ME to FN, May 21, 1958, NMII.
28. ME to FN, May 16, July 15, 1958, NMII.
29. ME to FN, July 5, 1959, NMII.
30. EE to Marion Morehouse Cummings, September 26, 1958, Houghton, bMS Am 1823.2 (73).
31. YE, “Loving you and being involved with you,” EMII.
32. Suzanne Sekey, Journal, April 10–June 6, entry for May 17, 1964, EMII2A. Reinventing herself as a designer of ladies’ underwear, Margaret Szekely dropped the “z” and the “l” from her last name. While Suzanne adopted the new name, Margaret’s stepdaughter Yvette preferred the original spelling (YE, Dearest Wilding, 14).
33. ME to DeWitt Wallace, January 29, 1959, EM.
34. ME to DeWitt Wallace, February 2, 1959, cc, EM.
35. DeWitt Wallace to ME, February 16, April 6, 1959, EM.
36. ME to FN, March 31, 1959, NMII.
37. ME to FN, August 5, 1960, NMII.
38. “Florence: The City of Renaissance,” draft, cc, September 14, 1960, EMII.
39. “The Immortal Treasures of Florence,” Reader’s Digest (September 1964): 154–51.
40. “My Self and the Reader’s Digest,” EMII; LR, 643.
41. “Reflections on the Failure of Socialism: Introduction to the Paperback Edition,” EMII. In the paperback these passages appear as a postscript to chapter 6 (“What to Call Yourself”), minus Max’s antireligious comments; Reflections on the Failure of Socialism (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1962), 79–80.
42. Senator Barry Goldwater, “A Statement of American Principles,” Human Events 18.49 (December 8, 1961): 839.
43. Colors of Life, 13.
44. John P. Diggins, Up from Communism: Conservative Odysseys in American Intellectual Histories (1975; rpt. New York: Harper Torchbook, 1977), 344.
45. William Buckley, Rumbles Left and Right: A Book About Troublesome People and Ideas (New York: Putnam, 1963), 86, 134, 86.
46. Frank S. Meyer, “The Separation of Powers,” National Review 12 (January 30, 1962): 59. Meyer was responding to an essay by Morton Auerbach in the same issue, “Do-It-Yourself Conservatism?” (57–58).
47. L. Brent Bozell, “To Magnify the West,” National Review 12 (April 24, 1962): 285–87. A radical Catholic conservative and editor at the National Review, Bozell was also Buckley’s brother-in-law.
48. “A Question to the National Review,” EMII.
49. On Eastman and Buckley, see O’Neill, The Last Romantic, 241–44.
50. “Am I a Conservative?” National Review 16 (January 28, 1964): 57–58. Max was alluding to an essay by one of his free-market icons, the Austrian economist Friedrich Hayek, “Why I Am Not a Conservative” in Hayek’s The Constitution of Liberty (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1959), 397–411, 529–31.
51. ME, undated draft note, EMII.
52. “Who’s News with Cobey Black: Life and Loves of a Living Legend,” Honolulu Star-Bulletin, February 20, 1965.
53. “Personality of the Week,” KNDI Honolulu, February 1965, EMII.
54. “Foreword” to “How Human Are Animals,” EMII.
55. Whitman, “Song of Myself,” 32.
56. “The Father Instinct,” EMII.
57. “How Human Are Animals?” Saturday Review, June 22, 1957; rpt. Reader’s Digest (August 1957): 112–16.
58. “Love Among the Insects,” Reader’s Digest (June 1963): 163–69.
59. Pascal Covici to ME, January 28, 1957; Seymour Lawrence to ME, June 15, 1960; ME to Jason Epstein, December 5, 1960, cc, as well as multiple undated notes by Daniel Aaron, all in EMIIA1; ME to FN, October 22, 1960, NMII.
60. George Lichtheim, “The Romance of Max Eastman,” New York Review of Books 3.11 (January 14, 1965).
61. Barbara Epstein to ME, undated [December 1964]; ME to Barbara Epstein, cc, December 23, 1964, EMII.
62. Norman Podhoretz, “Out of the Brambles into the Cornfield,” Book Week, January 24, 1965.
63. Alan Pryce-Jones, “Love and Revolution: Max Eastman’s Story,” Herald Tribune, January 7, 1965.
64. Jessie Kitching, “Capsules: Non-Fiction,” New York Post, January 3, 1965.
65. Joseph Slater, “On Coming Home to Poetry,” Saturday Review, February 6, 1965, EMII.
66. Seven Kinds of Goodness, 19, 22, 87, 95.
67. Seven Kinds, 119, 120, 134.
68. From “To the Virgins, to Make Much of Time” by Robert Herrick (1591–1674).
69. Seven Kinds, 149.
70. Pat Smith, “Max Eastman at 83 Still Is Life of Party,” New York World-Telegram, January 21, 1966.
71. Nicholas Delbanco, Lastingness, 185–87; Delbanco, personal communication, April 3, 2015.
72. YE, Journal for 1967, January 8, 1967, EMIIA2.
73. Samuel Ewer Eastman to ME, September 29, 1967, EM; ME to Samuel Ewer Eastman, October 1967 [?], draft, EM.
74. ME to DE, December 21, 1962, copy, EMIIA1.
75. DE to ME, July 12, 1965, EMIIA1.
76. DE to ME, July 12, 1965; ME to DE, September 5, 1965, copy; DE to ME, October 26, 1965, EMIIA1.
77. YE, July 11, 1967, Journal for 1967, EMIIA2.
78. “Last night Yvette and I went to see . . .,” EMII.
79. Suzanne Sekey, August 9, 1968, in Sekey, Journal, May 31–August 21, 1968, EMIIA2.
80. Typescript of introduction to The Life of Lenin (later: The Young Lenin), EMIIA2. W. H. Bond, Librarian of Houghton Library, believed the translation might have come to Houghton via Harvard University Press, a supposition not confirmed by the publisher; W. H. Bond to ME, August 5, 1968; Mark Carroll to ME, August 16, 1968. Correspondence with Doubleday does show that, in late 1937, they saw and had in hand both the original and a copy of Max’s translation; H.
E. Maule to ME, December 3, 1937; all in EMIIA2. The book was published in 1972 with an introduction that combined Max’s draft (which Doubleday’s Sam Vaughan found wearing “a bit heavily” in a letter of August 8, 1968) with notes provided by the prominent Slavicist Maurice Friedberg. Examination of the typescript (“The Young Lenin,” bMS Russ 90, Houghton) gives credence to Max’s theory that it was somehow taken from him. It is a patchwork at best: original typescript pages alternate with carbons, and polished chapters finally yield, with chapter 9, to drafts heavily annotated by Max. A comparison between the Harvard typescript and the published book reveals that the mostly light revisions of Max’s translation—made, presumably, by Friedberg—sacrifice literary adventurousness for blandness: for example, the “eager and life-loving atmosphere prevailing” in the Ulyanovs’ dining room has been toned down to the level of a “cheerful mood” (Trotsky, The Young Lenin, 1, 13).
81. Suzanne Sekey, Journal, May 31–August 21, 1968, entries for August 9 and August 6, EMIIA2.
82. He was suffering from an “arthritic condition of the spine,” ME to William Buckley, September 19, 1968, cc, EMIIA2.
83. Rosalinde Fuller to ME, October 25, 1968, EMIIA2; Margarita Dobert to ME, December 16, 1968, EMIIA1; “Egrets,” Poems of Five Decades, 101. See also Patricia Sullivan, “Margarita Dobert, Cosmopolitan Travel Writer, Dies,” Washington Post, June 27, 2004.
84. Likely Max was considering L-dopa, which had just entered clinical practice; Peter Eastman to ME, February 22, 1960, EMIIA1.
85. The account of Max’s last weeks is based on Suzanne Sekey’s journal, March 5 to May 16, 1969 (see especially the entries for March 5, March 18–April 2, May 10) and a typescript of Yvette’s “Journal entries during Max’s last days,” EMIIA2.
86. First published as “Epitaph for a Masochist,” Kinds of Love, 46.
87. Dan was to get Lot 451 and Lot 428, with a right-of-way to the beach. Codicil to ME’s will, August 17, 1967. Photocopy provided by Charles Young, Martha’s Vineyard; Suzanne Sekey, Journal, May 17 to July 22, 1969, entry for May 19, EMIIA2.
88. Andrew Dasburg, Ida Rauh’s former partner, quoted in Gardner, “Friend or Lover”: The Life of Louise Bryant (New York: Horizon, 1982), 352n6.
89. Jeffrey Fuller to Richard Green, May 11, 1969, EMIIA2. Personal communication, Rebecca Agnes Young to Charles Young, April 6, 2015. Even the exact date of Dan’s death is not clear. YE received the news on September 30, 1969; likely he had died the day before (journal fragment, EIIA2). Requests for a death certificate were unsuccessful since no immediate family members have survived.
90. Personal communication, Rebecca Agnes Young to Charles Young, April 6, 2015.
91. Sekey, Journal, May 17 to July 22, 1969, entry for August 3, EMIIA2.
92. William Buckley to YE, May 20, 1969, EMII.
93. Ken Ringle, “Popular Nude Beach Sold,” Victoria Advocate, September 6, 1972; Jonathan Miller, “A House Built on Sand,” New Republic, September 3, 1972.
94. ME to Charles Neider, December 16, 1964, cc, EMII2A.
95. Stan Hart, as quoted in Mike Seccombe, “Going Au Naturel: Is There a Future for Nude Beaches on the Island?” Martha’s Vineyard Magazine, August 2008.
96. Interview with Daniel Aaron, Cambridge, Massachusetts, February 5, 2013.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would not have written this biography without the encouragement and inspirational support of Max Eastman’s literary executor, the extraordinary Breon Mitchell, who gave me unrestricted access to Eastman’s archives and offered excellent counsel along the way as well as when I was finished. This book owes its final shape to his guidance and wisdom. Crystal Eastman’s grandson and Max Eastman’s grandnephew, Charles Young, kindly read a draft of this manuscript and helped in many other ways, great and small. George Hutchinson and Susan Gubar enthusiastically supported the idea of a biography of Max Eastman. Of course, my preoccupation with another man’s life would not have been possible without the understanding and patience of my friends and family. Much love and thanks to my wife, Lauren Bernofsky, for keeping me reasonably sane, and to Eckart Weiher, for all he has done for my mother when I haven’t been able to. Thanks also to Arthur Fagen, for his music and occasional lunches, to Raphael Falco, for reminding me that there is a world beyond my desk, and to Jeremy, for twenty years of love and companionship. And although my father, Hans Dietrich Irmscher, is gone, I feel his presence in everything I do and write.
Several friends and colleagues commented on my evolving manuscript, answered questions, and tolerated me when I could not stop talking about Max. For advice, assistance, and encouragement I thank Jonathan Aaron, Paul Aaron, John Bethell, Steven Brown, Ava Dickerson, Danny Heitman, Archie Henderson, Brooke Kroeger, Katherine Powers, Kathy Smith, Maura Smyth, Jack Trumpbour, Alan Wald, and Waldemar Zacharasiewicz. At a time when I really needed it, Dave Frasier read an early version of this book and cheered me on; I won’t forget the many kindnesses he showed me during the often painful process of revision. I am also grateful to my friends James Nakagawa and Jeff Wolin for helpful conversations about photography. Daniel Aaron was my first reader and constant interlocutor and, as he had been so many times before, my best and most important critic. The world is empty without him. I miss him tremendously.
An earlier, longer version of this book benefited greatly from the recommendations of two reviewers, Nicholas Delbanco and Werner Sollors. My research assistant, Anna Arays, was part of the project from the beginning, made many helpful suggestions, and translated Russian sources. Paul Gutjahr, chair of the English Department at Indiana University Bloomington, awarded me use of the Susan Gubar Endowment for one year, which helped with travel and other expenses. In addition, the Office of the Vice Provost for Research at Indiana University supported my work with a New Frontiers grant, and Provost Lauren Robel graciously allowed me a teaching-free semester. My outstanding students at Indiana University have contributed to this book in many ways. Their questions and suggestions kept me going.
Several libraries and librarians have made my work possible, and my debts to them are acknowledged in the notes. Here I want to thank my friend Joel Silver, Director of the Lilly Library, and Cherry Williams, the Lilly Library’s former Curator of Manuscripts, as well as Erika Dowell, the current Curator of Manuscripts, and the librarians Rebecca Baumann, Jim Canary, David Frasier, Erika Jenns, Kristin Leaman, and Isabel Planton for their generosity and help. With a few exceptions, all the photographic reproductions were made by the Lilly’s amazing photographer, Zach Downey. Unless otherwise mentioned, the photographs are from the Eastman family collections and appear by permission of Breon Mitchell. Diana Carey at the Schlesinger Library facilitated access to the Crystal Eastman papers. For invaluable help in understanding Florence Deshon I am deeply indebted to Mike Mashon at the Library of Congress and Nicola Mazzanti at the Cinémathèque Royale de Belgique. Robert Reed at the National Archives kindly assisted me during my FOIA request regarding Max Eastman. John Wilhite of the Indiana University Foundation has done exemplary work preserving Max’s legacy on the Vineyard.
Special thanks go to all those involved in the book’s publication: my agent Andrew Stuart and my editor Jaya Chatterjee, as well as William Frucht, executive editor at Yale University Press. Jaya and Bill championed this book at an early stage and did what they could to make it happen—I hope they like the result. My copy editor, Lawrence Kenney, was the most exacting reader I could have hoped for; thanks to him this is an infinitely better book. No praise can be high enough for my production editor, Dan Heaton. His wit and professionalism helped me get through that agonizing home stretch when a book seems done but really isn’t. No end of kudos to the intrepid proofreader, Nancy Moore Hulnick.
Last but not least, I want to express my gratitude to Max Eastman’s friends, family members, and their friends and descendants for answering my questions: Daniel Aaron, Ted Daniel, Philip Danks, Nick Delbanco, Susan Neider, Catherine Stern, Chris Stern Hyman, Charles Young
, and Rebecca Young. Charles graciously welcomed me to Max’s house on the Vineyard, and James Tuman, the current owner of Max’s former home in Croton, opened his doors to me on a sweltering summer afternoon, even though I was none too presentable after the unexpectedly steep walk up Mount Airy Road.
Max Eastman struggled mightily with fatherhood. I hope I have done a little better in my life, but as an immediate attempt to alleviate my guilt over the hours I didn’t spend with them when I was writing this book and as a token of my boundless love, I offer this book to Julia and Nick.
INDEX
Page numbers in bold indicate illustrations.
Aaron, Daniel, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv), (v)n59
Acheson, Barclay, (i)
Allen, Roger, (i)
American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), (i), (ii), (iii)
American Federation of Labor (AFL), (i)
American Fund for Public Service, (i)
American Medical Association, (i)
American Mercury, The, (i), (ii)
American Peace Mobilization (APM), (i)
American Union Against Militarism, (i)
American Youth Congress, (i)
Anderson, Sherwood, (i)
Andreytchine, George: bailed out by Max, (i); living in Max’s Croton house, (i), (ii); and Max’s car accident, (i), (ii)n76; in Russia, (i), (ii)
animal behavior, Max’s study of, (i)
Annenkov, George (“Yuri”), (i)
Anthony, Susan B., (i), (ii)
antistatism, (i), (ii), (iii)
Arens, Egmont (“Eggie”), (i)
Army-McCarthy hearings, (i)
Arnold, Ethel, (i)
Ash, Adra. See Mann, Adra Ash
Atherton, Gertrude, (i)
Atlantic Monthly, The, (i)
Auction Block, The, (i), (ii)n4
Avksentiev, Nikolai, (i)
Axelbank, Herman, (i)
Babel, Isaac, (i), (ii)
Baldwin, Roger, (i), (ii)
Barbados, (i), (ii), (iii), (iv)
Barr, Amelia, (i), John, (ii)
Bates, Ernest Sutherland, (i)
Baudelaire, Charles, (i)
Beaumont, Harry, (i)
Beauvoir, Simone de, (i)
Max Eastman Page 54