Robert McAlmon. Courtesy The Dusty Bookcase.
Robert Menzies McAlmon (March 9, 1895 - February 2, 1956) was an American poet, fiction writer, and publisher.
Life[]
McAlmon was born in Clifton, Kansas, the youngest of 10 children of an itinerant Presbyterian minister.
McAlmon was admitted to the University of Minnesota in 1916, but only spent a semester there before enlisting in the United States Army Air Corps in 1918. At the conclusion of World War I, he returned to university (1917-1920), this time at the University of Southern California. He attended classes intermittently until 1920.
In 1920 he moved to Chicago and then New York City, where he worked as a nude model at art school. In New York, he collaborated with William Carlos Williams on the Contact Review, which did not last for long, but published poetry by Ezra Pound, Wallace Stevens, Marianne Moore, H.D. (Hilda Doolittle), Kay Boyle, and Marsden Hartley.
In 1921, he moved to Paris after marrying the wealthy and lesbian English writer Annie Winifred Ellerman, better known as Bryher. McAlmon typed and edited the handwritten manuscript of Ulysses by James Joyce, with whom he had a friendship.[1]
McAlmon became a prolific writer after the move, with many of his stories and poems based on his experiences as a youth in South Dakota.
Contact Publishing[]
Having published his book of short stories A Hasty Bunch with James Joyce's printer Maurice Darantière in Dijon in 1922, he founded Contact Publishing in 1923 using his father-in-law's money. Lasting until 1929 the Contact Editions brought out books by Bryher (Two Selves), H.D.'s Palimpsest, Mina Loy's Lunar Baedecker, Ernest Hemingway's earliest book Three Stories & Ten Poems (1923), poems by Marsden Hartley, William Carlos Williams (Spring and All, 1923), Emanuel Carnevali's only book during his lifetime (The Hurried Man), prose by Ford Madox Ford, Gertrude Stein (The Making of Americans, 1925), Mary Butts (Ashe of Rings), John Herrmann (What Happens), Edwin Lanham (Sailors Don't Care), Robert Coates (The Eater of Darkness), Texas schoolteacher Gertrude Beasley's My First Thirty Years and Saikaku Ihara's Quaint Tales of Samurais. McAlmon paid for the publication of The Ladies Almanack by Djuna Barnes.
McAlmon returned to the United States in 1940, and died at Desert Hot Springs, California, almost unknown in his native country, 16 years later.
Writing[]
Arguably McAlmon's most important and best-received work is Village: As it happened through a fifteen year period (1924) which presents a bleak portrait of an American town. The book shows his love for Eugene Vidal (Eugene Collins in the book), Gore Vidal's father, with whom he grew up in Madison, South Dakota, which is documented in Gore Vidal's 1990s memoir, Palimpsest.
Other works by McAlmon include the short story collection A Companion Volume (1923), the autobiographical novel Post-Adolescence (1923), Distinguished Air (Grim Fairy Tales) (1925), poetry collections The Portrait of a Generation (1926) and Not Alone Lost (1937), the 1,200 line epic poem North America: Continent of conjecture (1929), and his memoir Being Geniuses Together: An autobiography (1938).
Recognition[]
In the 1990s, Edward Lorusso brought out 3 volumes of McAlmon's fiction (many were 1st American publications), Village (1924, 1990), Post-Adolescence (1923, 1991), and Miss Knight, and others (1992), all through University of New Mexico Press.
In popular culture[]
McAlmon is heavily featured in the book Memoirs of Montparnasse by John Glassco, about the golden age of Paris in the 1920s when writers and artists flocked to the city.
His social circle and friendship with Ernest Hemingway is discussed in the novel The Paris Wife by Paula McClain.
Publications[]
Poetry[]
- Explorations. London: Egoist Press, 1921.
- The Portrait of a Generation. Paris: Contact, 1925.
- North America, Continent of Conjecture. Paris: Contact, 1929.
- Not Alone Lost. Norfolk, CT: New Directions, 1937.
Novels[]
- Village: As it happened through a fifteen year period. Paris: Contact, 1924.
- (edited by Edward N.S. Lorusso). Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1990.
- A Scarlet Pansy (as "Robert Scully"). New York: William Faro, 1933; New York: Masquarade, 1994.[2][3]
- The Nightinghouls of Paris (edited by Sanford J. Smoller). Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2007.
Short fiction[]
- A Hasty Bunch: Short stories. Lyon, France: Printed by Maurice Darantière, 1922; Carbondale, IL: Southern Illinois University Press, 1977.
- A Companion Volume. Paris: Contact, 1923.
- Post-Adolescence: A selection of short fiction. Paris: Contact, 1923
- (edited by Edward N.S. Lorusso). Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1991.
- Distinguished Air: Grim fairy tales. Paris: Contact / Three Mountains Press, 1925
- facsimile-printed as There Was a Rustle of Black Silk Stockings. New York: Belmont Books, 1963.
- Indefinite Huntress, and other stories. Paris: Black Sun Press, 1932.
- Miss Knight, and others (edited by Edward N.S. Lorusso). Albuquerque, NM: University of New Mexico Press, 1992.
Non-fiction[]
- Being Geniuses Together: An autobiography. London: Secker & Warburg, 1938
- Robert E. Knoll, McAlmon and the Lost Generation: A self-portrait. Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1962.
Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.[4]
Poems by Robert McAlmon[]
See also[]
References[]
- Sanford J. Smoller (1975). Adrift Among Geniuses: Robert McAlmon, Writer and Publisher of the Twenties. Pennsylvania State University Press. ISBN 978-0-271-01173-8. The only biography of the author.
- Humphrey Carpenter (1987). Geniuses Together: American Writers in Paris in the 1920s. Unwin Hyman. ISBN 0-04-440331-3. Contains an insightful account of McAlmon's life.
- Mellow, James R. (July 22, 1990). "Talent and All the Right Connections". New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/07/22/books/talent-and-all-the-right-connections.html?pagewanted=all&src=pm. Retrieved August 30, 2012. "Village: As It Happened Through a Fifteen Year Period. By Robert McAlmon. Edited by Edward N. S. Lorusso."
Notes[]
- ↑ Biography of McAlmon.
- ↑ Neil Pearson, "A Scarlet Pansy: Robert McAlmon's secret book," Rare Books. Web, Dec. 6, 2014.
- ↑ Search results = ti:A Scarlet Pansy, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Dec. 6, 2014.
- ↑ Search results = au:Robert McAlmon, WorldCat, OCLC Online Computer Library Center Inc. Web, Dec. 7, 2014.
External links[]
- Poems
- Robert M. McAlmon at the Poetry Foundation
- McAlmon in Poetry: A magazine of verse, 1912-1922: "Aero-laughter," "Aero-metre," "Consecration," "Consummation," "Volplanetor," "Perspicuity," "White Males," "Today's Music," "Form Destructionist - Sculptor"
- Books
- Robert McAlmon at Amazon.com
- About
- Robert McAlmon in the Encyclopædia Britannica
- Robert McAlmon at NNDB
- Robert Menzie McAlmon at Find a Grave
- A Scarlet Pansy: Robert McAlmon's secret book
- Robert McAlmon's Service to Canada, The Dusty Bookcase
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