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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, Gertrude Stein, James Joyce and Ezra Pound.


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 ...
, 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, United States. The city is located within the Coachella Valley geographic region. The population was 25,938 at the 2010 census, up from 16,582 at the 2000 census. The city has exp ...
at age 60. McAlmon was admitted to the University of Minnesota in 1916 but only spent one semester there before enlisting in the United States Army Air Corps in 1918. After World War I, he returned to university (1917–1920), this time at the University of Southern California. 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 on the '' Contact Review'', which did not last for long, but published poetry by Ezra Pound,
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, 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 wa ...
and Marsden Hartley. 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. G ...
. McAlmon typed and edited the handwritten manuscript of Ulysses by James Joyce, 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.


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 earlie ...
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'', Ernest Hemingway'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, Gertrude Stein (''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 m ...
(''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 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 es ...
'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.'' 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
Desert Hot Springs, California Desert Hot Springs is a city in Riverside County, California, United States. The city is located within the Coachella Valley geographic region. The population was 25,938 at the 2010 census, up from 16,582 at the 2000 census. The city has exp ...
, 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'' (1924, 1990), '' Post-Adolescence'' (1923, 1991), and '' Miss Knight and Others'' (1992), all through University of New Mexico Press.
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 ...
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 Ernest Hemingway 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 about McAlmon's life in Greenwich Village, his expatriate adventures in Paris, and final years in California, '' Letters from Oblivion'' was published by
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 ...
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 The Black Sun Press was an English language press noted for publishing the early works of many modernist writers including Hart Crane, D. H. Lawrence, Archibald MacLeish, Ernest Hemingway, and Eugene Jolas. It enjoyed the greatest longevity amon ...
, 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
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 wa ...
)


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, 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