Albert Halper
Encyclopedia
Life
Born in 1904 and raised in Chicago, Halper went to live and work in New York City in 1929. His work came to the attention of Elliot E. CohenElliot E. Cohen
Elliot E. Cohen was founder-editor of Commentary Magazine, published by American Jewish Committee from 1945 till his death in 1959. His editor position was filled by Norman Podhoretz in 1960, Neal Kozodoy in 1995, John Podhoretz in 2009.-External links:* * * *...
, who published him in his magazine, the Menorah Journal. Not long after, he met newly established literary agent Maxim Lieber
Maxim Lieber
Maxim Lieber was a prominent American literary agent in New York City during the 1930s and 1940s. Whittaker Chambers named him as an accomplice in 1949, and Lieber fled first to Mexico and then Poland not long after Alger Hiss's conviction in 1950.- Early years :Lieber was born in Warsaw, Poland,...
, becoming Lieber's third client.
New York in 1930s
Cohen also arranged a residency at the YaddoYaddo
Yaddo is an artists' community located on a 400 acre estate in Saratoga Springs, New York. Its mission is "to nurture the creative process by providing an opportunity for artists to work without interruption in a supportive environment."...
writers colony through Clifton Fadiman
Clifton Fadiman
Clifton P. "Kip" Fadiman was an American intellectual, author, editor, radio and television personality.-Literary career:...
. At Yaddo, Halper met Leonard Ehrlich, Winthrop Sargeant
Winthrop Sargeant
Winthrop Sargeant was an American music critic, violinist, and writer. He studied the violin in his native city with Albert Elkus and with Felix Prohaska and Lucien Capet in Europe. In 1922, at the age of 18, he became the youngest member of the San Francisco Symphony...
, Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland
Aaron Copland was an American composer, composition teacher, writer, and later in his career a conductor of his own and other American music. He was instrumental in forging a distinctly American style of composition, and is often referred to as "the Dean of American Composers"...
, Paul Bowles
Paul Bowles
Paul Frederic Bowles was an American expatriate composer, author, and translator.Following a cultured middle-class upbringing in New York City, during which he displayed a talent for music and writing, Bowles pursued his education at the University of Virginia before making various trips to Paris...
, Louis Lozowick
Louis Lozowick
Louis Lozowick was an American painter and a printmaker. He was born in Russian Empire , came to United States in 1906, and died in New Jersey in 1973...
, Pierre Loving, Percy MacKaye
Percy MacKaye
Percy MacKaye was an American dramatist and poet.-Biography:MacKaye was born in New York City, New York. After graduating from Harvard in 1897, he traveled in Europe for three years, residing in Rome, Switzerland and London, studying at the University of Leipzig in 1899–1900...
, Gregorio Prestopino
Gregorio Prestopino
Gregorio Prestopino, was an American artist, according to the art historian Irma B. Jaffe:one of the major American painters who refused to reject the image, has devoted his career to depicting the human condition with a warmth tempered only by honesty.-Biography:Prestopino was born in New York...
, Lola Ridge
Lola Ridge
Lola Ridge was an anarchist poet and an influential editor of avant-garde, feminist, and Marxist publications best remembered for her long poems and poetic sequences...
, and Mildred Gardner. He attended an address by Diego Rivera
Diego Rivera
Diego María de la Concepción Juan Nepomuceno Estanislao de la Rivera y Barrientos Acosta y Rodríguez was a prominent Mexican painter born in Guanajuato, Guanajuato, an active communist, and husband of Frida Kahlo . His large wall works in fresco helped establish the Mexican Mural Movement in...
at a meeting of the John Reed Club
John Reed Club
The John Reed Club was an American, semi-national, Marxist club for writers, artists, and intellectuals, named after the American journalist, activist, and poet, John Reed.-Founding:...
. Kenneth Fearing
Kenneth Fearing
Kenneth Fearing was an American poet, novelist, and founding editor of the Partisan Review. Literary critic Macha Rosenthal called him "the chief poet of the American Depression."-Early life:...
rented his flat while Halper was earning money in a summer camp outside New York, where he met Sender Garlin]].
Other people whom he knew included more from the Menorah Journal circle: Elliott Cohen, Herbert Solow, and Tess Slesinger
Tess Slesinger
Tess Slesinger was a Jewish-American writer and screenwriter and is credited as being a charter member of the New York intellectual scene....
. Garlin introduced him to Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers was born Jay Vivian Chambers and also known as David Whittaker Chambers , was an American writer and editor. After being a Communist Party USA member and Soviet spy, he later renounced communism and became an outspoken opponent later testifying in the perjury and espionage trial...
(then, an editor at the New Masses). Fellow clients of literary agent Maxim Lieber included Louis Adamic
Louis Adamic
Louis Adamic was a Slovenian American author and translator.- Biography :Adamic was born at Praproče Mansion in Praproče near Grosuplje, in what is now Slovenia...
, Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Caldwell
Erskine Preston Caldwell was an American author. His writings about poverty, racism and social problems in his native South like the novels Tobacco Road and God's Little Acre won him critical acclaim, but they also made him controversial among fellow Southerners of the time who felt he was...
, Katherine Anne Porter
Katherine Anne Porter
Katherine Anne Porter was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American journalist, essayist, short story writer, novelist, and political activist. Her 1962 novel Ship of Fools was the best-selling novel in America that year, but her short stories received much more critical acclaim...
, John Cheever
John Cheever
John William Cheever was an American novelist and short story writer. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs." His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan, the Westchester suburbs, old New England villages based on various South Shore towns around Quincy,...
, Josephine Herbst
Josephine Herbst
Josephine Herbst was an American writer and journalist, active from 1923 to near the time of her death. She was a radical with communist leanings, who "incorporate[d] the philosophy of socialism into her fiction" and "aligned herself with the political Left", She wrote "proletarian novels"...
, Albert Maltz
Albert Maltz
Albert Maltz was an American author and screenwriter. He was one of the Hollywood Ten who were later blacklisted by the Hollywood movie studio bosses....
, John O'Hara
John O'Hara
John Henry O'Hara was an American writer. He initially became known for his short stories and later became a best-selling novelist whose works include Appointment in Samarra and BUtterfield 8. He was particularly known for an uncannily accurate ear for dialogue...
, James Farrell
James T. Farrell
James Thomas Farrell was an American novelist. One of his most famous works was the Studs Lonigan trilogy, which was made into a film in 1960 and into a television miniseries in 1979...
, Nathanael West
Nathanael West
Nathanael West was a US author, screenwriter and satirist.- Early life :...
, Maxim Gorky
Maxim Gorky
Alexei Maximovich Peshkov , primarily known as Maxim Gorky , was a Russian and Soviet author, a founder of the Socialist Realism literary method and a political activist.-Early years:...
, and Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Dreiser
Theodore Herman Albert Dreiser was an American novelist and journalist of the naturalist school. His novels often featured main characters who succeeded at their objectives despite a lack of a firm moral code, and literary situations that more closely resemble studies of nature than tales of...
. He makes special mention of three African-American writers: Claude McKay
Claude McKay
Claude McKay was a Jamaican-American writer and poet. He was a seminal figure in the Harlem Renaissance and wrote three novels: Home to Harlem , a best-seller which won the Harmon Gold Award for Literature, Banjo , and Banana Bottom...
, Langston Hughes
Langston Hughes
James Mercer Langston Hughes was an American poet, social activist, novelist, playwright, and columnist. He was one of the earliest innovators of the then-new literary art form jazz poetry. Hughes is best known for his work during the Harlem Renaissance...
(another client of Lieber's), and Richard Wright
Richard Wright (author)
Richard Nathaniel Wright was an African-American author of sometimes controversial novels, short stories, poems, and non-fiction. Much of his literature concerns racial themes, especially those involving the plight of African-Americans during the late 19th to mid 20th centuries...
, each of whom he knew in varying degrees.
Halper traveled to Moscow in the early 1930s. En route, he stopped in London, where he met famed Russian translator, Constance Garnett
Constance Garnett
Constance Clara Garnett was an English translator of nineteenth-century Russian literature...
. In Moscow, he met former New Masses editor Walter Carmon and Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht
Bertolt Brecht was a German poet, playwright, and theatre director.An influential theatre practitioner of the 20th century, Brecht made equally significant contributions to dramaturgy and theatrical production, the latter particularly through the seismic impact of the tours undertaken by the...
.
Union Square books
His first novel, Union Square, was a Literary Guild selection.."). In his New Masses review, Mike GoldMike Gold
Michael "Mike" Gold is the pen-name of Jewish American writer Itzok Isaac Granich. A lifelong communist, Gold was a novelist and literary critic, his semi-autobiographical novel Jews Without Money from 1930 was a bestseller.- Biography :Gold was born Itzok Isaac Granich on April 12, 1894 on the...
slammed the novel as "a gold brick, an utter bourgeois sham," while citing its praise from other writers who included Sinclair Lewis
Sinclair Lewis
Harry Sinclair Lewis was an American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright. In 1930, he became the first writer from the United States to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, "for his vigorous and graphic art of description and his ability to create, with wit and humor, new types of...
, Upton Sinclair
Upton Sinclair
Upton Beall Sinclair Jr. , was an American author who wrote close to one hundred books in many genres. He achieved popularity in the first half of the twentieth century, acquiring particular fame for his classic muckraking novel, The Jungle . It exposed conditions in the U.S...
, Carl Van Doren, Horace Gregory
Horace Gregory
Horace Gregory was a prize-winning American poet, translator of classic poetry, literary critic and college professor.-Life:...
, and Lewis Gannett
Lewis Gannett
Lewis Gannett is an American writer.Gannett is the author of the books The Living One, Magazine Beach, The Siege, as well as two Millennium novels: Gehenna and Force Majeure.-External links:*...
. Lieber quickly got two articles by Halper published by the New Masses, thereby restoring his Leftist credibility.
In his 1970 memoir, Good-Bye, Union Square, Halper recalled the Leftist literary scene and impact of the Great Depression
Great Depression
The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression in the decade preceding World War II. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, but in most countries it started in about 1929 and lasted until the late 1930s or early 1940s...
. The title for memoir and earlier novel come from the place Halpert considered the focal point of his life in New York. "Union Square became my hangout."
Political Stance
Good-bye, Union Square records also the impact of the Spanish Civil WarSpanish Civil War
The Spanish Civil WarAlso known as The Crusade among Nationalists, the Fourth Carlist War among Carlists, and The Rebellion or Uprising among Republicans. was a major conflict fought in Spain from 17 July 1936 to 1 April 1939...
and ensuing Hitler-Stalin Pact on New Yorkers.
The New York Times wrote that, because of Union Squares tenement characters and Depression background, "the author thereafter was branded a 'proletarian writer.' Mr. Halper disliked being labeled because, he said, his subjects were 'people' in a variety of situations."
Halper reflected with more insight about himself among New York Intellectuals of the 1930s and how they related to the Left as fellow traveller
Fellow traveller
Fellow traveler or fellow traveller is a term referring to a person who sympathizes with the beliefs of an organization or cooperates in its activities without maintaining formal membership in that particular group...
s and communists: "I felt no attachment to it [the Communist Party
Communist party
A political party described as a Communist party includes those that advocate the application of the social principles of communism through a communist form of government...
] whatsoever. I was sympathetic to some of its aims, as were many non-Party intellectuals, but these broad aims, I knew, were not the exclusive property of any political organization — anyone could be in favor of them — and consequently I didn't feel any sense of loyalty to the Party line." (Good-bye, Union Square, p. 138)
Hiss-Chambers Case
The FBI interviewed Halper about his association with Maxim Lieber and Whittaker Chambers as part of the Hiss-Chambers Case. The case and Lieber's role turn Good-bye, Union Square from a simple memoir into a tale with intrigue.Death
In 1984, Halper died in PawlingPawling (village), New York
Pawling is a village in Dutchess County, New York, USA. The population was 2,233 at the 2000 census. It is part of the Poughkeepsie–Newburgh–Middletown, NY Metropolitan Statistical Area as well as the larger New York–Newark–Bridgeport, NY-NJ-CT-PA Combined Statistical Area...
, New York, from leukemia
Leukemia
Leukemia or leukaemia is a type of cancer of the blood or bone marrow characterized by an abnormal increase of immature white blood cells called "blasts". Leukemia is a broad term covering a spectrum of diseases...
, aged 79. Survivors included wife Lorna and son Thomas.
Novels
- Union Square (1933, 1990)
- Foundry (1934)
- On the Shore (1934)
- Chute (1937)
- Sons of the Fathers (1940)
- Little People (1942, 1976)
- Only an Inch from Glory (1943)
- DruhaÌ Generace (1948)
- Golden Watch (1953)
- Atlantic Avenue (1956)
- Fourth Horseman of Miami Beach (1966)
- Chicago Crime Book (1967)
Articles
- DialThe DialThe Dial was an American magazine published intermittently from 1840 to 1929. In its first form, from 1840 to 1844, it served as the chief publication of the Transcendentalists. In the 1880s it was revived as a political magazine...
- Midland
- Prairie Schooner
- Menorah Journal
- Atlantic Monthly (articles)
- New YorkerThe New YorkerThe New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
(articles) - Yale ReviewYale ReviewThe Yale Review is the self-proclaimed oldest literary quarterly in the United States. It is published by Yale University.It was founded originally in 1819 as The Christian Spectator. At its origin it was published to support Evangelicalism, but over time began to publish more on history and...
(articles) - CommentaryCommentary (magazine)Commentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...
(articles)
External links
- Photo 1: Albert Halper at Willa Cather's gravestone, Jaffrey Center, NH. 1957
- Photo 2: Albert Halper at Willa Cather's gravestone, Jaffrey Center, NH. 1957
- Encyclopedia Britannica