Jonathan Baumbach (July 5, 1933 – March 28, 2019) was an American author, academic and film critic.
Life and career
Baumbach was born to a
Jewish
Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...
family in
Brooklyn
Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...
,
the son of Ida Helen (Zackheim), a teacher, and Harold M. Baumbach, a painter and academic. His father's disdain for earning tenure at the University of Iowa
The University of Iowa (UI, U of I, UIowa, or simply Iowa) is a public research university in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. Founded in 1847, it is the oldest and largest university in the state. The University of Iowa is organized into 12 col ...
and various other schools resulted in him moving every year for the first six years of Jonathan's life “looking for a new place to paint."
He received a B.A.
Bachelor of arts (BA or AB; from the Latin ', ', or ') is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the arts, or, in some cases, other disciplines. A Bachelor of Arts degree course is generally completed in three or four yea ...
in English from Brooklyn College in 1955. Baumbach also earned an M.F.A. in playwriting from Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
in 1956 and a Ph.D.
A Doctor of Philosophy (PhD, Ph.D., or DPhil; Latin: or ') is the most common degree at the highest academic level awarded following a course of study. PhDs are awarded for programs across the whole breadth of academic fields. Because it is ...
in English from Stanford University in 1961. Following two years of service in the United States Army
The United States Army (USA) is the land warfare, land military branch, service branch of the United States Armed Forces. It is one of the eight Uniformed services of the United States, U.S. uniformed services, and is designated as the Army o ...
, from 1956 to 1958,[ he was an instructor of English at Stanford (1958–1960) before holding assistant professorships at ]Ohio State University
The Ohio State University, commonly called Ohio State or OSU, is a public land-grant research university in Columbus, Ohio. A member of the University System of Ohio, it has been ranked by major institutional rankings among the best publ ...
(1961–1964) and New York University
New York University (NYU) is a private research university in New York City. Chartered in 1831 by the New York State Legislature, NYU was founded by a group of New Yorkers led by then- Secretary of the Treasury Albert Gallatin.
In 1832, th ...
(1964–1966). He returned to Brooklyn College as an associate professor in 1966 and was promoted to full professor in 1969. From 1975 to 2001, he was director of the College's M.F.A. fiction program. He also held visiting professorships at the University of Washington
The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington.
Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...
(1979-1980), Princeton University
Princeton University is a private research university in Princeton, New Jersey. Founded in 1746 in Elizabeth as the College of New Jersey, Princeton is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and one of the ...
(1990-1991) and Brown University (1994). During the late 1950s, he was a contributor to ''Film Culture
''Film Culture'' was an American film magazine started by Adolfas Mekas and his brother Jonas Mekas in 1954. The publication's headquarters were in New York City. Best known for exploring the avant-garde cinema in depth, it also published artic ...
'' magazine before publishing two novels and a monograph on American fiction in the 1960s.[ ]
Having had his third novel rejected 32 times, he and Peter Spielberg founded the author-run publishing house Fiction Collective in 1974; one of the first titles published was Baumbach's ''Reruns''. Later reorganized as FC2, the collective has since published many emerging writers (including Russell Banks
Russell Banks (born March 28, 1940) is an American writer of fiction and poetry. As a novelist, Banks is best known for his "detailed accounts of domestic strife and the daily struggles of ordinary often-marginalized characters". His stories usua ...
and Mark Leyner
Mark Leyner (born 4 January 1956) is an American postmodernist author.
Biography
Mark Leyner was born in Jersey City, NJ to a Jewish family. He is the son of Joel and Muriel (née Chasan) Leyner, who had divorced by 1997. Leyner received a B. ...
) and does so currently through the University of Alabama Press. Although he remained a board member, Baumbach's own involvement as writer with FC2 finished when the collective rejected his novel ''B'' in 2002; it was ultimately published elsewhere. Following ''Reruns'', he published nine additional novels, several collections of short fiction and his collected film criticism.
In the 1970s and early 1980s, Baumbach was film critic for ''Partisan Review
''Partisan Review'' (''PR'') was a small-circulation quarterly "little magazine" dealing with literature, politics, and cultural commentary published in New York City. The magazine was launched in 1934 by the Communist Party USA–affiliated Joh ...
''. He twice chaired the National Society of Film Critics
The National Society of Film Critics (NSFC) is an American film critic organization. The organization is known for its highbrow tastes, and its annual awards are one of the most prestigious film critics awards in the United States. In January 2014, ...
.
Baumbach was married four times: his first marriage, to, Naomi Miller, was brief and annulled; his second and third marriages, to Ellie Berkman and Georgia Brown, ended in divorce; his fourth marriage, to ''New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' arts editor Annette Grant, ended when she died in February 2019.[ He has four children: David Baumbach, a photographer; Nina Baumbach; filmmaker ]Noah Baumbach
Noah Baumbach () (born September 3, 1969) is an American film director and screenwriter. He is known for making witty and intellectual comedies set in New York City and has often been compared to writer-directors such as Woody Allen and Whit St ...
(in two of whose films he had acting roles) and Nico Baumbach, partner of Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Annie Baker
Annie Baker (born April 1981) is an American playwright and teacher who won the 2014 Pulitzer Prize for her play ''The Flick.'' Among her works are the Shirley, Vermont plays, which take place in the fictional town of Shirley: ''Circle Mirror Tr ...
and an assistant professor of film at Columbia University.
Baumbach died on March 28, 2019, at his home in Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Great Barrington is a town in Berkshire County, Massachusetts, United States. It is part of the Pittsfield, Massachusetts, Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 7,172 at the 2020 census. Both a summer resort and home to Ski Butternut, ...
.[
]
Work
Preceded by his academic activity and on the heels of a critical study, 1965's ''The Landscape of Nightmare: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel'', Baumbach's first novel, ''A Man to Conjure With'', published the same year, "synthesizes various trends outlined in his critical study" and "has a protagonist who moves simultaneously backward and forward in time, carefully orchestrating revelations of plot and character so that the present is gradually understood in a plausible and convincing way. As a result, the narrative is assembled as a psychological collage."
In the novels which followed, Baumbach has been said to be 'representative of a new style of novelist' alongside contemporaries Ronald Sukenick, Jerzy Kosinski
Jerzy is the Polish version of the masculine given name George. The most common nickname for Jerzy is Jurek (), which may also be used as an official first name. Occasionally the nickname Jerzyk may be used, which means "swift" in Polish.
Peopl ...
, and William H. Gass while developing an experimental approach bearing comparison with surrealist and magical realist writers in their use of dream imagery. Baumbach himself has said "I'm not just using the dream in the traditional sense, in the psychological sense where it's an almost compacted parable, with special symbols. I'm just trying to find another way of getting at reality. I mean, my sense is that the conventional novel, for me, anyway, is on its way to a dead end. And I'm trying to get at the way things are in a way that no one has ever seen them before."
His second novel, ''What Comes Next'', further explores the themes in his critical study and 'organizes itself as a literal landscape of nightmare, as all reference points for the character's reality are located within his own disjointed perceptions. As far as temporal narrative, "what comes next" is created from the workings of his mind.'. His reputation as an experimental novelist develops further with his third novel, ''Reruns'', which "abandons plot and character entirely in favor of dream-like images from movies rerun page by page." In his fourth, ''Babble'', Baumbach constructs his narrative from "the stories his infant son allegedly tells him."
Baumbach's work has been compared with the dreamlike filmic style of David Lynch and is often grouped with postmodernists like William Gaddis
William Thomas Gaddis, Jr. (December 29, 1922 – December 16, 1998) was an American novelist.
The first and longest of his five novels, '' The Recognitions'', was named one of TIME magazine's 100 best novels from 1923 to 2005
and two oth ...
, Donald Barthelme
Donald Barthelme (April 7, 1931 – July 23, 1989) was an American short story writer and novelist known for his playful, postmodernist style of short fiction. Barthelme also worked as a newspaper reporter for the ''Houston Post'', was managing ...
and Robert Coover
Robert Lowell Coover (born February 4, 1932) is an American novelist, short story writer, and T.B. Stowell Professor Emeritus in Literary Arts at Brown University. He is generally considered a writer of fabulation and metafiction.
Background
...
. At the same time, he is acclaimed for a "singular fictional voice."
Novels
*''A Man to Conjure With'' (1965)
*''What Comes Next'' (1968)
*''Reruns'' (1974)
*''Babble'' (1976)
*''Chez Charlotte and Emily'' (1979)
*''My Father, More of Less'' (1982)
*''Separate Hours'' (1990)
*''Seven Wives: A Romance'' (1994)
*''D-Tours'' (1998)
*''B, a novel'' (2002)
*''YOU or the Invention of Memory'' (2007)
*''Dreams of Molly'' (2011)
Short fiction
*''The Return of Service'' (1979)
*''The Life and Times of Major Fiction'' (1987)
*''On The Way To My Father's Funeral - New And Selected Stories'' (2004)
*''The Pavilion of Former Wives'' (2016)
Nonfiction
*''The Landscape of Nightmare: Studies in the Contemporary American Novel'' (1965)
*''Shots In The Dark: Collected Film Criticism'' (2017)
References
External links
The Baumbachs: Three generations of creative life
InDialogue: Jonathan Baumbach and Lawrence Raab
{{DEFAULTSORT:Baumbach, Jonathan
1933 births
2019 deaths
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American novelists
20th-century American short story writers
Academics from New York (state)
American film critics
American male novelists
American male short story writers
Brooklyn College alumni
Brooklyn College faculty
Columbia University School of the Arts alumni
Jewish American novelists
Military personnel from New York City
Novelists from Massachusetts
Novelists from New York (state)
Ohio State University faculty
People from Great Barrington, Massachusetts
Stanford University alumni
Stanford University faculty
United States Army soldiers
Writers from Brooklyn
21st-century American Jews