An interesting read. This is a biography of Alexander Woollcott by an acquaintance--who helped him get his start in journalism--but not a fan. Adams often resorts to the least charitable interpretations (though he does absolve him of being homosexual (!))), but it is clear there is also great fondness, if only because he undertook this biography. The book is almost novelistic at times--which raises questions about the research, especially since there are no citations and conversations are recorded as though exact--and insightful, if also a bit repetitive.
Woollcott was born in 1887 to a family that lived in a Fourier-inflected commune. His parents moved the family to Kansas and then Germantown, PA, and Woollcott eventually matriculated at Hamilton College in New York, a poor school but one he had a fondness for. (He visited China in 1931 on the strength of an alumnus connection; he had his ashes interred here.) The commune eschewed formal education, but Woollcott was well learned in several languages there. Hopkins thinks that the environment effected him in other ways: “The principles, practices, and social status of the Phalanx powerfully affected Alexander Woollcott’s character, particularly upon the emotional side. He breathed in nonconformity with the soft air of his first habitat. Throughout his life he was a hot and often unreasoning partisan of the underdog, a passionate supporter of minority rights, a devoted crusader for free speech and independent thought." (p. 26; also 96).
His time in school was difficult. Woollcott was very feminine, but also more than willing to brave schoolyard fights. He loved being in plays, including acting female parts. There was some suggestion of his being homosexual, but that was put to rest when he had an affair with a married woman (and was beaten for it). This part o the biography made me think of Carl Sandburg saying that Abraham Lincoln had a touch of the lavender about him. Throughout his life he would fall "in love" with women, but rarely had sustained relationships, and never married or had children. One wonders what a modern day biographer would make of this sexual confusion.
Woollcott also loved journalism, and Adams, also a Hamilton alum, though older than Woollcott, got him a job with the _Times._ This was cut short by a case of the mumps, but Woollcott bounced back and spent the rest of his life in journalism, as a drama critic, book reviewer, and essayist writing for a variety of New York publications.
The other interruption to his career was World War I. He was a dedicated supporter of the Allies and though physically prevented from becoming a soldier was a hospital worker for the AEF before being transferred to work on the American wartime newspaper, Stars and Stripes, where he met other future journalists, including Harold Ross, who would be a friend and publish him in the New Yorker.
Woollcott hit his stride in the mid-1920s. In addition to his writing, he was a well-known member of the Algonquin Table. He made a lot of money. and lived a very large life. He became notably corpulent. Woollcott could be mean and cutting, but he did not intend injury: he was interested in the turn of the phrase. I cannot help think of him as an a proto-example of what Susan Sontag described as a camp persona. Adams writes, “Aleck’s enduring friends--I use the term in its double sense--bore with him out of tolerance, compromise, or kindly understanding of a character that had its elements of tragedy. They realized that there was a deep-seated reason for these outbreaks; that he suffered from an inner exasperation, constantly if secretly inflamed by the ineluctable sense of his inadequacy.”(225) Woollcott was a great writer, but with nothing in particular to say.
The narrative does not dwell on the point, but it is hard to resist the interpretation that Woollcott hated himself--perhaps because of his sexuality, perhaps for some other reason--and so created a caricature to overcome that hatred. He made himself a vehicle for attack. (On one occasion he confronted a group exasperated by waiting with the announcement, “I have just had the most magnificent bowel movement.” (168) He picked fights with friends--at one point Ross disowned him, though Booth Tarkington never did: “It was not for lack of conscientious endeavor on Woollcott’s part that his friendship with Booth Tarkington did not come to ruin over political difference; against the novelist’s imperturbable good humor, the younger man’s savage thrusts were impotent.” (208). He resigned from positions on the slightest offense, only to come simpering back. A friend diagnosed him well: “What began as a defense mechanism led to the invention of the almost wholly artificial character, Alexander Woollcott, persistently enacted before the world until it became a profitable investment." (168). Some called him a Gila Monster.
Against this relatively negative assessment is set his greta generosity; Woollcott never really cared for money. He shrugged at his losses in the Great Crash of 1929 and went on to become maybe the highest paid book reviewer (He was paid 2,500 for each issue of _McCall's_). He supported Seeing Eye--the charity that supplied dogs for the blind--both because he was worried about blindness--especially Tarkington's flirtation--and loved dogs--particularly poodles, a love sparked by Tarkington and shared with many other writers of the time, He threw himself into the war effort as World War II approached, Woollcott had pacifist--and generally leftish--leanings--but thought that the war would bring the best chance for perpetual peace. (He got in trouble once for supporting the ACLU during a sponsored talk on the radio.) He evangelized his enthusiasms--among them Charles Fort; Adams has it that, “the prime virtue of Alexander Woollcott’s method method lies in its informing personality and pervasive friendliness.” (251) But while it seemed personal, there was a method: “Yet, though the Woollcott practice may seem casual, almost careless, the results were generally happy; the finished product, which appeared to be generated so effortlessly, was thoughtfully constructed, uniformly readable, and often brilliant. This was due largely to his prodigious if not always reliable memory, which enabled him to hold all his data in solution ready for use; partly to his newspaper regimen when he must work under the imminence of the deadline.” (249).
His writing career was recurrently interrupted by a love for acting--Adams thinks he preferred the immediate gratification--and resurrected by radio. “Radio saved Alexander Woollcott. High grade though his literary wares were, they were becoming shopworn. He had rung the interminable changes upon his stock subjects; his friends, his dogs, hi mysteries, his favorite murders, his war experiences; in newspapers, in magazines, between book covers, on the lecture platform. It was done with inimitable art and wit, with infinite adroitness. But it was done too often. Editors were becoming restive.”
Woollcott eventually moved out of New York, looking for a place to conquer, and ended up on an island off of Vermont, where he continued his lordly lifestyle. Towards the end of his life, his body started to break down, but he continued to live as he always had--trapped, I guess, by the prison he had built--and despite doctor's orders travelled to England to rally support for the War. Back in America, doing a radio broadcast, he suffered a stroke, and died later that day.
The book is eloquent, though dwells too much on Woollcott's negatives. This may be because of the times--it was an attempted correction of the legend, Today, oddly, Woollcott is known as one of the original collectors of urban legends, but this book dismisses this work as an anomalous love of 'mysteries."
In the end, my conclusion would be, insightful but, at least from today's perspective, limited.
Woollcott was born in 1887 to a family that lived in a Fourier-inflected commune. His parents moved the family to Kansas and then Germantown, PA, and Woollcott eventually matriculated at Hamilton College in New York, a poor school but one he had a fondness for. (He visited China in 1931 on the strength of an alumnus connection; he had his ashes interred here.) The commune eschewed formal education, but Woollcott was well learned in several languages there. Hopkins thinks that the environment effected him in other ways: “The principles, practices, and social status of the Phalanx powerfully affected Alexander Woollcott’s character, particularly upon the emotional side. He breathed in nonconformity with the soft air of his first habitat. Throughout his life he was a hot and often unreasoning partisan of the underdog, a passionate supporter of minority rights, a devoted crusader for free speech and independent thought." (p. 26; also 96).
His time in school was difficult. Woollcott was very feminine, but also more than willing to brave schoolyard fights. He loved being in plays, including acting female parts. There was some suggestion of his being homosexual, but that was put to rest when he had an affair with a married woman (and was beaten for it). This part o the biography made me think of Carl Sandburg saying that Abraham Lincoln had a touch of the lavender about him. Throughout his life he would fall "in love" with women, but rarely had sustained relationships, and never married or had children. One wonders what a modern day biographer would make of this sexual confusion.
Woollcott also loved journalism, and Adams, also a Hamilton alum, though older than Woollcott, got him a job with the _Times._ This was cut short by a case of the mumps, but Woollcott bounced back and spent the rest of his life in journalism, as a drama critic, book reviewer, and essayist writing for a variety of New York publications.
The other interruption to his career was World War I. He was a dedicated supporter of the Allies and though physically prevented from becoming a soldier was a hospital worker for the AEF before being transferred to work on the American wartime newspaper, Stars and Stripes, where he met other future journalists, including Harold Ross, who would be a friend and publish him in the New Yorker.
Woollcott hit his stride in the mid-1920s. In addition to his writing, he was a well-known member of the Algonquin Table. He made a lot of money. and lived a very large life. He became notably corpulent. Woollcott could be mean and cutting, but he did not intend injury: he was interested in the turn of the phrase. I cannot help think of him as an a proto-example of what Susan Sontag described as a camp persona. Adams writes, “Aleck’s enduring friends--I use the term in its double sense--bore with him out of tolerance, compromise, or kindly understanding of a character that had its elements of tragedy. They realized that there was a deep-seated reason for these outbreaks; that he suffered from an inner exasperation, constantly if secretly inflamed by the ineluctable sense of his inadequacy.”(225) Woollcott was a great writer, but with nothing in particular to say.
The narrative does not dwell on the point, but it is hard to resist the interpretation that Woollcott hated himself--perhaps because of his sexuality, perhaps for some other reason--and so created a caricature to overcome that hatred. He made himself a vehicle for attack. (On one occasion he confronted a group exasperated by waiting with the announcement, “I have just had the most magnificent bowel movement.” (168) He picked fights with friends--at one point Ross disowned him, though Booth Tarkington never did: “It was not for lack of conscientious endeavor on Woollcott’s part that his friendship with Booth Tarkington did not come to ruin over political difference; against the novelist’s imperturbable good humor, the younger man’s savage thrusts were impotent.” (208). He resigned from positions on the slightest offense, only to come simpering back. A friend diagnosed him well: “What began as a defense mechanism led to the invention of the almost wholly artificial character, Alexander Woollcott, persistently enacted before the world until it became a profitable investment." (168). Some called him a Gila Monster.
Against this relatively negative assessment is set his greta generosity; Woollcott never really cared for money. He shrugged at his losses in the Great Crash of 1929 and went on to become maybe the highest paid book reviewer (He was paid 2,500 for each issue of _McCall's_). He supported Seeing Eye--the charity that supplied dogs for the blind--both because he was worried about blindness--especially Tarkington's flirtation--and loved dogs--particularly poodles, a love sparked by Tarkington and shared with many other writers of the time, He threw himself into the war effort as World War II approached, Woollcott had pacifist--and generally leftish--leanings--but thought that the war would bring the best chance for perpetual peace. (He got in trouble once for supporting the ACLU during a sponsored talk on the radio.) He evangelized his enthusiasms--among them Charles Fort; Adams has it that, “the prime virtue of Alexander Woollcott’s method method lies in its informing personality and pervasive friendliness.” (251) But while it seemed personal, there was a method: “Yet, though the Woollcott practice may seem casual, almost careless, the results were generally happy; the finished product, which appeared to be generated so effortlessly, was thoughtfully constructed, uniformly readable, and often brilliant. This was due largely to his prodigious if not always reliable memory, which enabled him to hold all his data in solution ready for use; partly to his newspaper regimen when he must work under the imminence of the deadline.” (249).
His writing career was recurrently interrupted by a love for acting--Adams thinks he preferred the immediate gratification--and resurrected by radio. “Radio saved Alexander Woollcott. High grade though his literary wares were, they were becoming shopworn. He had rung the interminable changes upon his stock subjects; his friends, his dogs, hi mysteries, his favorite murders, his war experiences; in newspapers, in magazines, between book covers, on the lecture platform. It was done with inimitable art and wit, with infinite adroitness. But it was done too often. Editors were becoming restive.”
Woollcott eventually moved out of New York, looking for a place to conquer, and ended up on an island off of Vermont, where he continued his lordly lifestyle. Towards the end of his life, his body started to break down, but he continued to live as he always had--trapped, I guess, by the prison he had built--and despite doctor's orders travelled to England to rally support for the War. Back in America, doing a radio broadcast, he suffered a stroke, and died later that day.
The book is eloquent, though dwells too much on Woollcott's negatives. This may be because of the times--it was an attempted correction of the legend, Today, oddly, Woollcott is known as one of the original collectors of urban legends, but this book dismisses this work as an anomalous love of 'mysteries."
In the end, my conclusion would be, insightful but, at least from today's perspective, limited.
