1923, Ernest Hemingway and Robert McAlmon (1) (Robert McAlmon)

Robert Menzies McAlmon (also used Robert M. McAlmon, as his signature name, March 9, 1895 – February 2, 1956) was an American writer, poet, and publisher.
/ref> In the 1920s, he founded in Paris the publishing house, Contact Editions, where he published writers such as

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway (July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and journalist. His economical and understated style—which he termed the iceberg theory—had a strong influence on 20th-century fic ...

Gertrude Stein Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American novelist, poet, playwright, and art collector. Born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, in the Allegheny West neighborhood and raised in Oakland, California, Stein moved to Paris ...

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important writers of ...

and

Ezra Pound Ezra Weston Loomis Pound (30 October 1885 – 1 November 1972) was an expatriate American poet and critic, a major figure in the early modernist poetry movement, and a Fascism, fascist collaborator in Italy during World War II. His works ...

Life

McAlmon was born in

Clifton, Kansas Clifton is a city in Clay and Washington counties in the U.S. state of Kansas. As of the 2020 census, the population of the city was 454. History Clifton was founded in 1870, and bears the name of a surveyor who had platted the original town i ...

, the youngest of 10 children of an itinerant Presbyterian minister. He died in

Desert Hot Springs, California Desert Hot Springs is a city in Riverside County, California, Riverside County, California, United States. The city is located within the Coachella Valley geographic region. The population was 25,938 at the 2010 United States Census, 2010 cens ...

at age 60. McAlmon was admitted to the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota, formally the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities, (UMN Twin Cities, the U of M, or Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Tw ...

in 1916 but only spent one semester there before enlisting in the

United States Army Air Corps The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical r ...

in 1918. After

World War I World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, the United States, and the Ottoman Empire, with fightin ...

, he returned to university (1917–1920), this time at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in C ...

. He attended classes intermittently until 1920, when he moved to Chicago and then New York City, where he worked as a nude model at an art school. Once in New York, he collaborated with

William Carlos Williams William Carlos Williams (September 17, 1883 – March 4, 1963) was an American poet, writer, and physician closely associated with modernism and imagism. In addition to his writing, Williams had a long career as a physician practicing both pedia ...

on the '' Contact Review'', which did not last for long, but published poetry by

Wallace Stevens Wallace Stevens (October 2, 1879 – August 2, 1955) was an American modernist poet. He was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, educated at Harvard and then New York Law School, and spent most of his life working as an executive for an insurance compa ...

Marianne Moore Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. Early life Moore was born in Kirkwood ...

, H. D. (Hilda Doolittle),

Kay Boyle Kay Boyle (February 19, 1902 – December 27, 1992) was an American novelist, short story writer, educator, and political activist. She was a Guggenheim Fellow and O. Henry Award winner. Early years The granddaughter of a publisher, Boyle was ...

and

Marsden Hartley Marsden Hartley (January 4, 1877 – September 2, 1943) was an American Modernist painter, poet, and essayist. Hartley developed his painting abilities by observing Cubist artists in Paris and Berlin. Early life and education Hartley was born ...

. The next year, he moved to Paris after marrying the wealthy and lesbian English writer Annie Winifred Ellerman, better known as

Bryher Bryher ( kw, Breyer "place of hills") is one of the smallest inhabited islands of the Isles of Scilly, with a population of 84 in 2011, spread across . History The name of the island is recorded as ''Brayer'' in 1336 and ''Brear'' in 1500. Ge ...

. McAlmon typed and edited the handwritten manuscript of

Ulysses Ulysses is one form of the Roman name for Odysseus, a hero in ancient Greek literature. Ulysses may also refer to: People * Ulysses (given name), including a list of people with this name Places in the United States * Ulysses, Kansas * Ulysse ...

, with whom he had a friendship. 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 South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Lakota people, Lakota and Dakota peo ...

Contact Editions

Having published his book of short stories ''A Hasty Bunch'' with James Joyce's printer Maurice Darantière in

Dijon Dijon (, , ) (dated) * it, Digione * la, Diviō or * lmo, Digion is the prefecture of the Côte-d'Or department and of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté region in northeastern France. the commune had a population of 156,920. The earlies ...

in 1922, he founded the Contact Publishing Company in 1923 using his father-in-law's money. Lasting until 1929, Contact Editions brought out books by Bryher (''Two Selves''), H. D.'s ''Palimpsest'',

Mina Loy Mina Loy (born Mina Gertrude Löwy; 27 December 1882 – 25 September 1966) was a British-born artist, writer, poet, playwright, novelist, painter, designer of lamps, and bohemian. She was one of the last of the first-generation modernists to ...

's ''Lunar Baedecker'',

's first 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 Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer ( ); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals ''The English Review'' and ''The Transatlantic Review'' were instrumental in ...

(''The Making of Americans'', 1925),

Mary Butts Mary Francis Butts, (13 December 1890 – 5 March 1937) also Mary Rodker by marriage, was an English modernist writer. Her work found recognition in literary magazines such as '' The Bookman'' and ''The Little Review'', as well as from fellow mo ...

(''Ashe of Rings''),

John Herrmann John Theodore Herrmann (November 9, 1900 – April 9, 1959) was a writer in the 1920s and 1930s and is alleged to have introduced Whittaker Chambers to Alger Hiss. Biography Herrmann was born in Lansing, Michigan in 1900. He lived in Paris in ...

(''What Happens''),

Edwin Lanham Edwin Moultrie Lanham was born in Weatherford, Texas on October 11, 1904, in the north central part of Texas where his family settled in the 1868. His family included his grandfather S. W. T. Lanham, the former Governor of Texas. His father Edw ...

(''Sailors Don't Care''), Robert Coates (''The Eater of Darkness''), Texas schoolteacher

Gertrude Beasley Edna Gertrude Beasley (June 20, 1892 – July 25, 1955) was an American writer and memoirist. A feminist, her controversial 1925 autobiography, ''My First Thirty Years'' (published in Paris, France) received some favorable reviews but was also ...

's ''My First Thirty Years'' and

Saikaku Ihara was a Japanese poet and creator of the " floating world" genre of Japanese prose (''ukiyo-zōshi''). Born as Hirayama Tōgo (平山藤五), the son of a wealthy merchant in Osaka, he first studied haikai poetry under Matsunaga Teitoku and later ...

's ''Quaint Tales of Samurais''. McAlmon paid for the publication of ''The Ladies Almanack'' by

Djuna Barnes Djuna Barnes (, June 12, 1892 – June 18, 1982) was an American artist, illustrator, journalist, and writer who is perhaps best known for her novel ''Nightwood'' (1936), a cult classic of lesbian fiction and an important work of modernist litera ...

. One of McAlmon's most important and best-received works 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 Eugene Luther Gore Vidal (; born Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit, erudition, and patrician manner. Vidal was bisexual, and in his novels and ...

's father, with whom he grew up in

Madison, South Dakota Madison is a city in Lake County, South Dakota, United States. The population was 6,191 at the 2020 census. It is the county seat of Lake County and is home to Dakota State University. Geography Madison is located at (44.007734, -97.114738). ...

, which is documented in Gore Vidal's mid-90s memoir, ''

Palimpsest In textual studies, a palimpsest () is a manuscript page, either from a scroll or a book, from which the text has been scraped or washed off so that the page can be reused for another document. Parchment was made of lamb, calf, or kid skin an ...

.'' Other works include the short story collection ''A Companion Volume'' (1923), the autobiographical novel ''Post-Adolescence'' (1923), ''Distinguished Air (Grim Fairy Tales)'' (1925), the 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). McAlmon returned to the United States in 1940, residing in El Paso, Texas, where he sought treatment for a pulmonary ailment. He died at

, almost unknown in his native country, sixteen years later. In the 1990s,

Edward Lorusso Edward is an English given name. It is derived from the Anglo-Saxon name ''Ēadweard'', composed of the elements '' ēad'' "wealth, fortune; prosperous" and '' weard'' "guardian, protector”. History The name Edward was very popular in Anglo-Sax ...

brought out three volumes of McAlmon's fiction (many were first American publications), ''

Village A village is a clustered human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town (although the word is often used to describe both hamlets and smaller towns), with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to ...

'' (1924, 1990), '' Post-Adolescence'' (1923, 1991), and '' Miss Knight and Others'' (1992), all through

University of New Mexico The University of New Mexico (UNM; es, Universidad de Nuevo México) is a public research university in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Founded in 1889, it is the state's flagship academic institution and the largest by enrollment, with over 25,400 ...

Press.

also published '' Naked Truth: The Fiction of Robert McAlmon'' in 2020. McAlmon is heavily featured in the book ''Memoirs of Montparnasse'' by

John Glassco John Glassco (December 15, 1909 – January 29, 1981) was a Canadian poet, memoirist and novelist. According to Stephen Scobie, "Glassco will be remembered for his brilliant autobiography, his elegant, classical poems, and for his translations."S ...

about the golden age of Paris in the 1920s when writers and artists flocked to the city. His social circle and friendship with

are discussed in the novel ''

The Paris Wife ''The Paris Wife'' is a 2011 historical fiction novel by Paula McLain which became a ''New York Times'' Bestseller. It is a fictionalized account of Ernest Hemingway's marriage to the first of his four wives, Hadley Richardson. McLain decided t ...

'' by

Paula McLain Paula McLain (born 1965) is an American author best known for her novel, '' The Paris Wife'', a fictionalized account of Ernest Hemingway's first marriage which became a long-time ''New York Times'' bestseller. She has published two collections o ...

. In 2007, his fictionalized memoir ''The Nightinghouls of Paris'' was published, based on the experiences of Glassco and his friend Graeme Taylor with McAlmon in Paris. The previously unpublished book was based on a typescript held by Yale's archives. An

epistolary novel An epistolary novel is a novel written as a series of letters. The term is often extended to cover novels that intersperse documents of other kinds with the letters, most commonly diary entries and newspaper clippings, and sometimes considered ...

about McAlmon's life in Greenwich Village, his expatriate adventures in Paris, and final years in California, '' Letters from Oblivion'' was published by

in 2014.

Bibliography

Fiction

* ''A Hasty Bunch''. n.p., n.d. Printed by Maurice Darantière in Lyon in 1922. Short stories * ''A Companion Volume''. Contact, Paris 1923. Short stories * ''Post-Adolescence''. Contact, Paris 1923. Short stories * ''Village: As It Happened Through a Fifteen Year Period''. Contact, Paris 1924. Novel * ''Distinguished Air: Grim Fairy Tales'' Contact, Paris 1925 hoto-reprinted as ''There Was a Rustle of Black Silk Stockings''. 1963* ''The Infinite Huntress and Other Stories''. Black Sun Press, Paris 1932 * ''A Scarlett Pansy'' (under pseudonym Robert Scully), William Farro, Inc. (Roth), 1933 * Robert E. Knoll: ''McAlmon and the Lost Generation. A Self Portrait''. University of Nebraska, Lincoln 1962. * ''Miss Knight and Others''. University of New Mexico Press, 1992 * ''The Nightinghouls of Paris''. University of Illinois Press, 2007 * "La nuit pour adresse". Maud Simonnot (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 2017)

Memoirs

* ''Being Geniuses Together''. Secker & Warburg, London 1938. Memoir * ''Being Geniuses Together''. Doubleday, New York 1968 (revised with supplementary chapters by

)

Poetry

* ''Explorations''. Egoist Press, London 1921. * ''The Portrait of a Generation''. Contact, Paris 1925. * ''North America, Continent of Conjecture''. Contact, Paris 1929. * ''Not Alone Lost''.

New Directions Publishing New Directions Publishing Corp. is an independent book publishing company that was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin and incorporated in 1964. Its offices are located at 80 Eighth Avenue in New York City. History New Directions was born in 193 ...

, Norfolk, CT, 1937.

Legacy

William Saroyan William Saroyan (; August 31, 1908 – May 18, 1981) was an Armenian-American novelist, playwright, and short story writer. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Drama in 1940, and in 1943 won the Academy Award for Best Story for the film ''The ...

wrote a short story about McAlmon in his 1971 book, ''

Letters from 74 rue Taitbout ''Letters from 74 Rue Taitbout or Don't Go But If You Must Say Hello To Everybody'' is a book of short stories in the form of letters by William Saroyan. The stories often recollect meetings, relationships, observations, ask questions and wond ...

or Don't Go But If You Must Say Hello To Everybody''.

Notes

References

* * The only biography of the author. * Contains an insightful account of McAlmon's life. *

External links

* * Robert McAlmon Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. * {{DEFAULTSORT:McAlmon, Robert American male poets University of Minnesota alumni University of Southern California alumni Objectivist poets Poets from Kansas People from Clifton, Kansas People from Desert Hot Springs, California 1895 births 1956 deaths 20th-century American poets 20th-century American male writers People from Madison, South Dakota Private press movement people