Anecdotes of America’s literati

Press, 18 March 1985, Page 20

Anecdotes of America’s literati

The Oxford Book of American Literary Anecdotes. Edited by Donald Hall. Oxford University Press. 360 pp. $16.75.

(Reviewed by

Stan Darting)

Anecdotes about the sayings and activities of some writers do not come easily, and the poet Donald Hall had a hard time scraping together even a couple of stories about some of the American literary ladies and gentlemen in this companion volume to a book of English literary anecdotes. In fact, some of the best stories are by, and about, Abraham Lincoln, who does not strictly belong in this collection. Much of the fun in the American

companion comes not from re-reading old stories about familiar authors, but from gaining a passing acquaintance with poets and essayists we know little about. There is Bronson Alcott, a Transcendentalist, and the father of Louisa May (“Little Women”). His airy way of going about living — he was always gentle with mosquitoes, and believed that the correct diet could drive out sin — provides material for several stories. Rip Van Winkle’s creator, Washington Irving, had a captivating laugh. Near the end of his life he wished he had 20 years more so he could take all his books down from the shelf and re-write them. Some of the writers in this collection are hell-bent on self-destruction, doing the job on themselves in snippets. Donald Hall, admits that the attempt to show what writers were like through selected passages — does not always work well. Still, many of the stories are at least worthwhile as gossip, if not as historical pointers. Ben Hecht, who shared with Charles McArthur the credit for “The Front Page,” based on their experience as journalists in Chicago had no scruples when it came to stories printed in his paper. He not only embellished them, he made them up. With the help of a photographer, he even invented an earthquake. He dug a trench in a Chicago park, then had it photographed to represent quake damage. His relatives were quoted on how the quake affected them, and stood by their quotes. Thomas Wolfe, not Tom, who wrote at unmanageable length, was often asked by his editor Maxwell Perkins, to toss out some of the verbiage. He complied at times, but produced transitional sentences of several

thousand words to fill the gaps. Nathaniel Hawthorne, whose novel “The Scarlet Letter” was an early American critical success, had a wife who did not remark at all on his writing while it was in progress. When he finished the book, he read her the latter part. “It broke her heart,” he wrote, “and sent her to bed with a grievous headache, which I look upon as a triumphant success.” Longfellow was visited by an English traveller who opted to see him since there were no ruins in America. The Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier, ended his life in a positive way: “My love to the world” were his last words. Even the short sketches in this book reveal much. One describes the young Ezra Pound in Paris, walking down the street “with the step of a dancer, making passes with a cane at an imaginary opponent.” His trousers were of green billiard cloth, and he wore a pink coat, blue shirt, handpainted tie, big sombrero and a large, blue earring. The description comes from the novelist, Ford Madox Ford. Pound, a practised fencer, proposed a duel with another poet. His intended victim was able to choose the weapons. He suggested they should bombard each other with unsold copies of their books. Perhaps the longest and bestdeveloped passage comes from George Plimpton. It describes a meeting between the poet Marianne Moore, and Muhammad Ali, boxer and poet, at Toots Shor’s restaurant in New York City. The picture of Ali and Mrs Moore trying to compose a poem in tandem on an upcoming heavyweight title fight is charming. It sticks in the mind more firmly than some of the one-liners in the collection.