David Schwinghammer's Blog - Posts Tagged "biography"

Without a doubt the greatest influence on Clarence Darrow's career as "Attorney for the Damned" was his father, Amiris, a furniture store owner in Kinsman, Illinois. He was the town radical who had a hard time making ends meet, but somehow always found money for books, which he passed on to his precocious son.

Darrow began his career in Chicago working for the city and spent six years dispensing legal advice for the railroads, as Abraham Lincoln had done before him. He quit when his mentor, William C. Gowdy died, but said he had felt guilty working for a giant corporation long before that.

Darrow's career as a radical lawyer began when he represented coal miners who were bargaining for an eight hour day. Author Farrell gives us a gruesome picture of children under ten years old working sorting coal. The coal owners purposefully paid their men and boys less than a living wage and the garment industry took full advantage of it in that families needed to send the mother and daughters out to work also. Textile mills popped up around the coal mines. Eventually Darrow would move up the ladder of radical causes, representing Wild Bill Haywood who was charged in the murder of Governor Steunenberg, who had been a union foil, and he would later represent the McNamara brothers charged with bombing the LOS ANGELES TIMES.

John A. Farrell reveals Darrow's warts as well as his talents. He divorced his first wife and was a lifelong advocate of free love, although he married a second time. He carried on a long affair with reporter Mary Field Parton, even after she was married, and he tried to seduce her sister every time he saw her. The famous poet, Edgar Lee Masters, who was Darrow's law partner, viewed Darrow as somewhat of a phony, claiming Darrow chiseled him out of some fees.

Darrow was also tried twice for trying to bribe the McNamara jury. Farrell shows how Pinkertons were hired to infiltrate Darrow's defense team, so Darrow may have felt he was justified in using extra legal tactics, that is if he was guilty. Some of his friends thought he was.

Darrow also represented some questionable clients, namely Chicago gangsters and the rich such as the Leopolds and the Loebs, which astonished his fellow radicals. Darrow's excuse was always that he was a lawyer and that's what lawyers did.

Sometimes Darrow couldn't get his clients off so he tried to get the sentence reduced. This happened with Leopold and Loeb; Darrow argued that the state of Illinois had never put to death a murderer under the age of 18. He also defended Patrick Prendergast, the murderer of Chicago mayor Carter Harrison, employing an insanity plea.

Farrell doesn't do justice to Darrow's most famous case, The Scopes Monkey Trial held in Dayton, Tennessee. We do learn that the case was a show trial conceived by drugstore lawyers in Dayton, as a sort of booster ploy for the town. Darrow and William Jennings Bryan brushed the other lawyers aside. When the noted agnostic and the evangelical politician became the focus of the trial, matters got serious. Unfortunately the judge disallowed expert witnesses and the case for evolution never got a fair hearing.

Darrow often spent days making a closing statement. He must've been really good because it seems he usually did it to a packed house. He may be the greatest lawyer in American history.

BILL MAULDIN: A LIFE UP FRONT begins with thousands of WWII veterans coming to see Bill at a nursing home in California where he is suffering from Alzheimer's. He stares off into space until one of them pins a medal on him; then his eyes light up.

Author DePastino then shows us how Bill moved from a hell-raising kid living on a mountain in New Mexico to STARS AND STRIPES cartoonist and premier morale booster of World War II. DePastino shows us Mauldin's undaunted will to succeed. Prior to WWII, he labored at his craft, sending out thousands of cartoons with little chance he would ever get anything published. He borrowed money from his grandmother to go to the Chicago Academy of Fine Arts. We also see his mischievous side. He never did graduate from high school, thanks to a prank he pulled in a science class. He lit a cigarette and put it in the mouth of the class skeleton, too much for the teacher to overlook when he relit it and took a few drags.

Prior to WWII, Bill joined the Arizona National Guard. Four days later the guard was mobilized into the United States Army. He began his cartoonist career working part-time for the 45th Division News, going full-time when it was sent overseas. It was the hell-raiser kid who appealed to the soldiers. Bill was a sergeant in the Infantry before he was a cartoonist. There's a cartoon of Bill's characters Willie and Joe throwing tomatoes at the head of an officer as their unit enters a liberated city. This was one of the cartoons that would arouse the wrath of General George S. Patton, who wanted Bill fired. Thankfully other generals, Mark Clark among them, liked Bill's work enough to ask for signed originals.

When he returned from the war, Bill eventually went to work for the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, then the Chicago Sun-Times
as a political cartoonist where he took on such issues as segregation in the South and the House Un-American Activities Committee. His cartoon of Lincoln holding his head in his hands after the Kennedy assassination would become one of the most famous of the 20th Century. He won the Pulitzer Prize twice.

The book also examines Bill's personal life in elaborate detail. He was married three times, his second wife dying in a car accident after a massive stroke. There's an especially touching anecdote about how he reconciled with his first wife after fifty years apart.

As a writer I found Bill's work regimen especially impressive. For one thing he used a Polaroid camera to take pictures of himself in various poses. "Capturing precisely the curl of an arm, the twist of a face, or the wrinkles in an overcoat was an ongoing obsession." The man never stopped trying to get better, and should be remembered as an authentic American hero. Like Snoopy, let's all quaff a root beer with Bill Mauldin on Veteran's Day.

ANITA’S PIANO is an original Holocaust story told from a nine-year-old’s point of view (fourteen at the end). It also includes pictures of Anita and her family as well as such mundane information as a recipe or two.

At the beginning of the book, Anita lives in Czechoslovakia; Hitler is just about to claim the Sudetenland for Germany. Such well-known events as Kristallnacht begin to portend a cataclysmic future for Anita’s family; the requirement that all Jews wear a five-point yellow star occurs, and Anita is shocked that her old friends seem to be avoiding her.

Family history is intermixed with the above. Anita’s grandmother tells her about a suicide in the family. Anita (married name Schorr) has a little brother Michael whose spirits she attempts to keep up, even if she has to lie to do it.

Eventually Anita’s family must surrender their home; they’re moved to a ghetto where her father is mustered into the ghetto guard. They are given little food. As more people arrive, more of the original newcomers are moved, and that’s how Anita and her family arrive in Auschwitz.

Several other surprising anecdotes are included such as when Anita is waiting in line to be vaccinated for hepatitis by the infamous Dr. Josef Mengele. She begins to cry and a Nazi nurse takes pity on her and gives her cocoa.

Anita life is saved when her mother suggests she volunteer for a work detail. She’s supposed to be eighteen, but somehow she qualifies; the food gets better, and she meets a Wehrmacht lieutenant who gives her part of his sandwiches and lets her go swimming in the ocean. But she’s separated from her family and has no way of knowing what has happened to them.

Anita is a likable character; the reader really cares what will happen to her, but the book starts with her in a refugee camp, so we already know she survived the war. The only suspense is what happened to her father, mother, brother and the rest of the family.

Author Marion A. Stahl includes “historical highlights” at the end of the book, starting with the Sino-Japanese war in 1939, ending with the surrender of the German Army Group Center in Czechoslovakia in May of 1945.

Nikola Tesla was born in Serbia, the younger son of an Orthodox priest. His older brother, Dane, was the star of the family. Nikola was jealous and blamed himself when his brother was killed in an accident. According to author, Vladimir Pistalo, Tesla was haunted, literally sometimes, by his brother for the rest of his life.

When Dane died, Nikola’s father expected Nikola to take Dane’s place and become a priest, but Nikola was always interested in science. Nikola attends college, but leaves early to work in Edison’s Paris laboratory, and from there in New York where Edison offers him $50,000 to work on 24 electrical motors. Pistalo claims Tesla had already formulated his ideas on alternating current. When Edison reneges on his contract, Tesla quits; ultimately, when he can’t find a job, he ends up a ditch digger, ironically working for Edison. Okay, here’s the problem I have with this kind of book, a literary novelist’s version of Tesla’s life. Believe it or not, Telsa works with the brother of a man who manages Western Union. He’s heard of Tesla, and he hires him to run their lab. He also eventually arranges a meeting between George Westinghouse and the scientist. As you may know, Westinghouse financed Tesla alternating current laboratory; Tesla eventually got the contract to light up Niagara Falls and the World Exposition in Chicago. Somewhere in there Westinghouse was in danger of bankruptcy and Tesla surrendered his patents for much less than they were worth.

Meanwhile Tesla builds a laboratory in Colorado Springs where Pistalo claims he discovered wireless electricity; he was able to create thunder and lightning. When J.P. Morgan, who created General Electric, and Bernard Baruch found out, their soul worry was how they could put a meter on Tesla’s process. Essentially Morgan cheated Tesla out of his discovery, due to some Wall Street chicanery. Tesla did build a laboratory in Long Island, but it was eventually torn down to pay off Tesla’s debt. It seems odd that a financier would trade profit for what might have been the answer to the clean energy conundrum. Carbon based fuels as an energy source are never mentioned in connection with Tesla’s process.

As I said above, this is a literary novel, and there’s quite a bit of metaphysical stuff going on. Tesla hires an unhinged young girl, whom he fires. I’m not sure if he fired her for stealing bread or eating on the job, but she tries to kill him, wounding him in the arm. As an older man Tesla is run over by a taxi cab and refuses to go to the hospital. He creates this weird concoction that he claims will let him live forever. Either Tesla was one strange dude or Pistola’s character was. Whichever, now I’m going to have to read a biography to find out if Tesla really did invent wireless electricity. By the way, he also invented a better version of the radio. which Marconi took credit for, and florescent lights. Edison also switched to alternate current, without being sued, because Westinghouse was using his light bulb.

Stewart O'Nan does best when he writes about ordinary people as he did in LAST NIGHT AT THE LOBSTER. When I read that, I couldn't tell if it was fiction or non-fiction. That's not the case in WEST OF SUNSET, about F. Scott Fitzgerald's last days.

He's out West trying to make some money as a screenwriter to pay for his daughter Scottie's college and Zelda's stay at a sanitarium.

The only time he actually got a screen credit was for THE THREE COMRADES, which was supposed to star Spencer Tracy who bowed out because of appendicitis. Scott was plagued by a co-writer, whom he considered a hack. The man questioned most of Scott's scenes. Apparently this was payback for when Scott used the man's real name in one of his books, portraying him as a doofus. But the film made money, and it got good reviews. Joseph Mankiewicz also had a penchant for making changes while he directed, thusly the references to the nazis were deleted. One of the financiers was German.

Sheila Graham is also a major figure in the book, as is Zelda. Sheila portrayed herself as a high-classed Englishwoman, but she eventually tells Scott Sheila Graham wasn't her real name; she was born Cockney and worked her way up from the bottom. They fight over Scott's drinking and she doesn't let him move in with her until his heart begins to give out.

Scott doesn't start working on THE LAST TYCOON until the last part of the book. He had to borrow money from Maxwell Perkins in order to pay for Scottie's tuition and Zelda's care. He tried to serialize the book in some of the major magazines but was turned down, which mortified him. He had been pretty much blackballed as a screenwriter because of his drinking.

Familiar people keep popping up. If you remember the golden age of television, you'll recognize screenwriter Budd Schulberg who worked with Scott on a picture set at Dartmouth University; it was about the winter carnival; everybody was drinking, a bad place for Scott and Budd as they were both eventually fired for imbibing more than writing.

Everybody wants to know about Zelda. I know it's sounds like Scott was unfaithful, but he remembered the young and vibrant Zelda, and he went to see her out East quite often. Most of the time, she sounds normal, calling him by his nickname, Do-Do, but then she lapses. She has a big one when they finally let her go home to visit her mother and sisters in Alabama.

A big surprise is that Scott worked on GONE WITH THE WIND. It was “all hands on deck” as Scott's boss at Metro told Scott, but he only lasted a few weeks.

There's a cute little sequence toward the end when Scott hires a college student as a secretary to work on LAST TYCOON. He calls her Francois, her real name being Francis. She calls him monsieur. She's a great sounding board, as he interprets her body language when she reads back what he's written. Sheila is jealous.

Despite the above, I don't think there's enough here to merit a book. You're probably better off reading one of the many biographies. The biggest outrage seems to be that the doctor's weren't honest with Scott. He thought he had angina. Maybe if he knew he had serious heart disease he would have taken better care of himself. After all he'd had a heart attack at a movie theater the same day he died. Instead of going to the hospital, he made an appointment with his cardiologist for the next day.

Charlemagne (Charles the Great) was the grandson of Charles Martel, major domo to the Merovingian king, who defeated the Saracens at the Battle of Tours, stopping the spread of Islam in western Europe.

Charlemagne's father, Pepin, put an end to the feckless Merovingians and declared himself king of the Franks. When Pepin died, he left his kingdom to his two sons, Charles and Carloman. When Carloman died rather young, Charles became the sole king and began his conquest of western Europe. Author Richard Winston details Charles many battles with the Lombards, the Saxons, and the Saracens. He also shows us Charlemagne many chess matches with Pope Hadrian and the popes who succeeded him. Charlemagne was know as “the defender of the faith, but when the Pope asked him to return Vatican land stolen by the Lombards, Charlemagne did what was best for the Franks.

Charlemagne's reputation has come down through the ages as an almost saintly ruler who fought for the poor as well as the more high born. He built a system of schools, that became the model for modern education and the abbots were to provide a free education for the poor as well as aristocratic youths. But Charlemagne could be ruthless as well. He had 4,500 Saxons put to death when they rebelled once too often.

He had other character flaws as well. His eldest son was a hunchback. Charlemagne blamed his first wife and divorced her. When his younger brothers were given kingdoms to prepare them for rule and Pepin the Hunchback was left with nothing, he rose up against his father. Charlemagne didn't have the heart to kill his son; he had him tonsured instead, spending the rest of his life in a monastery.

The saintly image above came to fruition when he was declared a saint after his death by Frederick Barbarossa, the holy Roman emperor most like Charlemagne, with the blessing of the schismatic pope.

Charlemagne had two children with is first wife and nine with his second, a young girl only in her twenties when she died in childbirth. He also had many mistresses with whom he had more sons. In order to prevent the hostility he went through with his own brother, he had his sons Pepin, Louis the Pius, and Charles crowned during his lifetime, dividing the empire. By then he had been crowned Holy Roman Emperor by the Pope. A protective father, Charles never let his daughters marry, although one was promised to the Byzantium emperor's son.

John Jacob Astor made his fortune trading furs with the Indians. When he went bust, he had enough to buy up a large percentage of land on Manhattan Island. At the time it was nothing more than a small city of 25,000 or so.

The Astors were plagued by the press as part of the original Astor's money came from tenements. They still owned them four generations later. William Waldorf and John Jacob IV saw nothing wrong with it.

These two cousins hated each other but they enhanced the Astor fortune by building luxury hotels, the most famous of which was the Waldorf-Astoria aimed at the rich. Eventually both would build more luxury hotels, including the Astor and the St. Regis. They never let personal animosity interfere with business. William built the Waldorf; John Jacob IV added on to the Astoria.

This book centers on William Waldorf and John Jacob IV of Titanic fame. William thought Americans were a bunch of louts, especially the press; he moved to England where he bought two castles and had his eye on becoming a baron. John Jacob IV coveted a military title, and he got one during the Spanish-American War when he sent an artillery regiment to fight alongside Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders. JJ IV witnessed the charge up San Juan Hill, and this got him the military title of Lt. Col. he so much desired. From then on he was known as Colonel. The press thought he was a jackass and that's what they called him.

Both of them proved the old adage, “Money will not make you happy.” JJ IV's wife, Ava, was a noted beauty and she knew it. They argued constantly until JJ IV's mother Caroline Webster Schermerhorn Astor, queen of New York's exclusive “Four Hundred,” died and he was able to quietly divorce Ava, only to fall in love with a seventeen year old girl; he was 46; this was shortly before the Titanic sunk, and that's how JJ IV is remembered; he went down with the ship after making sure his wife was safe in a lifeboat. Thanks to his donations to WWI veterans and other charities, William eventually got his peerage. He donated one of his castles to his son, Waldorf, as a wedding present. Waldorf married American spitfire, Nancy Langhorne, the first woman to win in a seat in Parliament. She was a suffragette and staunchly liberal while William was more conservative than Rush Limbaugh. When he finally won his title, Waldorf disapproved as he had already won a seat in the Commons. If William were to accept the title, when he died, Waldorf would have to move to the ineffective House of Lords. They never spoke again, nor did he speak to his daughter Pauline who also disapproved. He died a pig-headed, lonely old man.

I was familiar with Sylvia Plath because I read THE BELL JAR and later did a report on her for a woman's literature class where I was exposed to ARIEL and her poetry.
At first I was reluctant to order the book because it's almost a thousand pages long and it hadn't been that long wince I read THE MIRROR AND THE LIGHT, equally daunting.
I was surprised I wasn't seeing a bio of one of the greatest writers of the 20th century on the best seller's lists. It may have something to do with Heather Clark's analysis of practically every poem Sylvia ever wrote, including the high school stuff. When she finally got to the good stuff, she would quote a few lines, which is an injustice to the poet in my view. The reader could use an appendix.
Sylvia was a driven person, but she had a rather split personality. She wanted to be a famous poet and novelist but she also wanted to be a wife and mother. She often referred to career women as barren in her poetry. Her fanatical drive got her in trouble early when she got an internship at MADEMOISELLE. Remarkably she was assigned to work with the managing editor. But she was disappointed in the magazine's main purpose, selling make-up and other gunk to women. When she returned home, she went into a funk and became so depressed she actually tried to commit suicide, which led to a stint in a sanatorium and, believe it or not, shock treatment. She had nightmares for years about that.
Sylvia was publishing poetry in high school (try that some time) mainly in the women's magazines, but once she got to Smith she got the occasional poem in POETRY magazine and even the ATLANTIC. The NEW YORKER was a lifelong goal which accomplished repeatedly just before she died.
Upon graduating from Smith she got a fellowship to Cambridge in England where she eventually met Ted Hughes, the great poet. He had no idea how to get a poem published until he met Sylvia. He was her dream man at first, and they were a team, reading and criticizing each other's work. They were married for six years; again Sylvia was her own worst enemy. She was jealous of every woman Ted met. When he brought home a sixteen year old girl whom he was mentoring, Sylvia wouldn't let her in the house. When Ted worked with an older woman at the BBC, she blew up. Heather Clark implies Ted wasn't cheating until after he left her.
By then they had two kids. She tried to get an au pair to help her with the kids so she could write in the mornings; that worked for a while, but she just couldn't stand to live without Ted no matter how much she denied it. She did establish a relationship with Al Alvarez, the leading literary critic in England, who loved her work. But England was even more sexist than America when it came to female poets. When Alvarez published his anthology of leading young poets, no women were in it. Sylvia and Anne Sexton made the second one. He thought she was better than Ted.
Sylvia is often viewed as a confessional poet, but she was a lot more than that. She bared her soul in her work. She wrote about depression, infidelity, motherhood, mother hatred and sex. Outrageously THE BELL JAR, a female CATCHER IN THE RYE wasn't published in America until 1971, eight years after she died. It was one of the best-selling books of the 20th century, and it's still selling.
Ted, Alvarez and others tried to diagnose why Sylvia committed suicide. Ted and his girlfriend Assia Wevill got most of the blame, but I think it was really deja vu all over again, to quote Yogi Berra. She thought that if she met her soul mate and got a book published her life would be great. Instead her husband left her and the book didn't sell until she was gone. She couldn't live with that.