Louis Adamic

Louis Adamic ( sl, Alojzij Adamič; March 23, 1898 – September 4, 1951) was a Slovene-American author and translator, mostly known for writing about and advocating for ethnic diversity of the United States.

Background

Louis Adamic was born at Praproče Mansion in Praproče pri Grosupljem in the region of Lower Carniola, in what is now Slovenia (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire). He was baptized ''Alojzij Adamič''. The oldest son of the peasants Anton and Ana Adamič, he was given a limited childhood education at the city school and, in 1909, entered the primary school at Ljubljana. Early in his third year he joined a secret students' political club associated with the Yugoslav Nationalistic Movement that had recently sprung up in the South-Slavic provinces of Austria-Hungary.

Swept up in a bloody demonstration in November 1913, Adamic was briefly jailed, expelled from school, and barred from any government educational institution. He was admitted to the Jesuit school in Ljubljana, but was unable to bring himself to go. "No more school for me. I was going to America," Adamic wrote. "I did not know how, but I knew that I would go."

On December 31, 1913, at the age of 15, Adamic emigrated to the United States.

He finally settled in a heavily ethnic Croatian fishing community of San Pedro, California. He became a naturalized United States citizen in 1918 as Louis Adamic.

Career

Adamic first worked as a manual laborer and later at a Yugoslavian daily newspaper, ''Narodni Glas'' ("The Voice of the Nation"), that was published in New York. As an American soldier he participated in combat on the Western front during the First World War. After the war he worked as a journalist and professional writer.

All of Adamic's writings are based on his labor experiences in America and his former life in Slovenia. He achieved national acclaim in America in 1934 with his book ''The Native's Return'', which was a bestseller directed against King Alexander's regime in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. This book gave many Americans their first real knowledge of the Balkans. It contained many insights, but proved far from infallible: Adamic predicted that America would prosper by eventually "going left", i.e. turning socialist.

He received the Guggenheim Fellowship award in 1932. During the Second World War he had supported the Yugoslav National liberation struggle and the establishment of a socialist Yugoslav federation. He founded the United Committee of South-Slavic Americans in support of Marshal Tito. From 1949 he was a corresponding member of th
Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts

From 1940 onwards he served as editor of the magazine '' Common Ground''. Adamic was the author of '' Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America'' (1931); '' Laughing in the Jungle: The Autobiography of an Immigrant in America'' (1932); ''The Native's Return: An American Immigrant Visits Yugoslavia and Discovers His Old Country'' (1934); ''Grandsons: A Story of American Lives'' (1935, novel); ''Cradle of Life: The Story of One Man's Beginnings'' (1936, novel); ''The House in Antigua'' (1937, travel); ''My America'' (1938); ''From Many Lands'' (1940); ''Two-Way Passage'' (1941); ''What's Your Name?'' (1942); ''My Native Land'' (1943); ''Nation of Nations'' (1945); and ''The Eagle and the Root'' (1950). Maxim Lieber was his literary agent, 1930–1931 and in 1946. In 1941, Adamic won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for ''From Many Lands''.

Adamic was strongly opposed to the foreign policy followed by British Prime Minister Winston Churchill, and in 1946 wrote ''Dinner at the White House'', which purported to be an account of a dinner party given by President Franklin D. Roosevelt at which Adamic and Churchill had both been present. After the proofs had been passed by publishers Harper and Brothers, an additional footnote was inserted in pages 151 and 152 which claimed that Churchill had opposed the National Liberation Front in Greece because they intended to scale down the rate of interest Greece was paying to Hambros Bank. The footnote further claimed that Hambros had "bailed Winston Churchill out of bankruptcy in 1912". The footnote appeared in the book when it was published, and a copy was circulated to every British Member of Parliament; when Churchill was alerted, he instructed his solicitors to issue a writ for libel. Harper and Brothers admitted the statement was untrue and Adamic also withdrew the claim and apologised; a substantial sum of damages was paid, reported by the '' Daily Express'' as £5,000. the copy of ''Dinner at the White House'' in the British Library is held in the Suppressed Safe collection, inaccessible to readers.

His support for the Tito regime led to him being targeted by Nevada Senator Pat McCarran, who between May and September 1949, chaired a subcommittee to expose Soviet sympathizers among ethnic communities.

Death

In his late years he was plagued by failing health. In 1951, he was found shot in his home in Milford, New Jersey, with his house burning and with a rifle in his hand. It was supposed to be suicide. Prior to that, he was often threatened by strangers, and once he was even severely beaten, which led to his relocation. It was a time of McCarthyism, witch-hunting, and state terror, in which there was no room for free-thinking social criticism.

Legacy

According to John McAleer's Edgar Award-winning ''Rex Stout: A Biography'' (1977), it was the influence of Adamic that led Rex Stout to make his fictional detective Nero Wolfe a native of Montenegro, in what was then Yugoslavia.For more information see the origins section of the article on Nero Wolfe. Stout and Adamic were friends and frequent political allies, and Stout expressed uncertainty to McAleer about the circumstances of Adamic's death. In any case, the demise seems to have inspired Stout's 1954 novel '' The Black Mountain'', in which Nero Wolfe returns to his homeland to hunt down the killers of an old friend.

Writings

Articles in '' Harper's Magazine'':
* "Racketeers and Organized Labor" (1930)
* "Sabotage" (1930)
* "Tragic Towns of New England" (1931)
* "The Land of Promise" (1931)
* "The Collapse of Organized Labor" (1931)
* "Wedding in Carniola" (1932)
* "Home Again from America," (1932)

* "Death in Carniola" (1933)
* "Thirty Million New Americans" (1934)
* "Education on a Mountain" (1936)
* "Aliens and Alien-Baiters" (1936)
* "The Millvale Apparition" (1938)
* "Death in Front of the Church" (1943)

Books:

Translator:
* ''Yugoslav Proverbs'' (1923)
* ''Yerney's Justice'' by Ivan Cankar (1926)
* ''Struggle'' by anonymous Yugoslav informants (1934)
* ''Yugoslavia and Italy'' by Josip Broz Tito (1944)
* ''Liberation. Death to Fascism! Liberty to the People! Picture Story of the Yugoslav People's Epic Struggle against the Enemy—To Win Unity and a Decent Future, 1941–1945'' (1945)

Author:
* ''Truth about Los Angeles'' (1927)
* ''Word of Satan in the Bible: Christians Rightly Regard Ecclesiastes Suspiciously'' (1928)
* ''Robinson Jeffers: A Portrait'' (1929, 1970, 1977, 1983)
* '' Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America'' (1931, 1960, 1976, 1983, 1984, 2008)
* ''Boj'' (1969)
* ''Laughing in the Jungle: The Autobiography of an Immigrant in America'' (1932, 1969)
** ''Smeh v džungli: Avtobiografija ameriškega priseljenca (slovenian - transl Stanko Leben 1933) , slovenian - transl Rapa Šuklje)
** ''Smijeh u džungli : autobiografija jednog američkog useljenika'' (1932)
* ''The Native's Return: an American Immigrant Visits Yugoslavia and Discovers His Old Country'' (1934, 1943, 1975)
** ''Vrnitev v rodni kraj'' (1962)
* ''Grandsons: A Story of American Lives'' (1935, 1983)
* ''Lucas, King of the Balucas'' (1935)
* ''Cradle of Life: The Story of One Man's Beginnings'' (1936)
* ''House in Antigua: A Restoration'' (1937)
* ''My America, 1928–1938'' (1938, 1976)
* ''America and the Refugees'' (1939, 1940)
* ''From Many Lands'' (1940)
* ''Plymouth Rock and Ellis Island: Summary of a Lecture'' (1940)
* ''Two-Way Passage'' (1941)
* ''Inside Yugoslavia'' (1942)
* ''What's Your Name?'' (1942)
* ''Foreign-Born Americans and the War'' with George F. Addes (1943)
* ''My Native Land'' (1943)
* ''Nation of Nations'' (1945)
* '' Dinner at the White House'' (1946)
* ''The Eagle and the Roots'' (1952, 1970)

Notes

References

External links

*

FBI Vault
Elizabeth Bentley FBI deposition, November 30, 1945, FBI file 65-14603


(PDF format pgs. 38,39, 52,53) pgs. 437, 438, 451, 452 in original.
* arper's Magazine articlesby Louis Adamic, written between 1930 and 1943 (subscription)
Louis Adamic papers and related collections
at th
Immigration History Research Center Archives, University of Minnesota Libraries
*

Louis Adamic Primary School
named after Louis Adamic, in Grosuplje, Slovenia

{{DEFAULTSORT:Adamic, Louis
1898 births
1951 deaths
1951 suicides
20th-century American male writers
20th-century American memoirists
20th-century American novelists
20th-century journalists
American literature in immigrant languages
American male non-fiction writers
American male novelists
American people of Slovenian descent
American spies for the Soviet Union
American translators
American travel writers
Austro-Hungarian emigrants to the United States
Carniolan people
Members of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
People from Milford, New Jersey
People from the Municipality of Grosuplje
Slovenian journalists
Slovenian writers
Suicides by firearm in New Jersey
Translators to English