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Alms for Oblivion
Book by Edward Dahlberg
Paperback
First published January 1, 1964
About the author
Edward Dahlberg
41 books24 followersHis first novel, Bottom Dogs, based on his childhood experiences at the orphanage and his travels in the American West, was published in London with an introduction by D. H. Lawrence. With his advance money, Dahlberg returned to New York City and resided in Greenwich Village. He visited Germany in 1933 and in reaction briefly joined the Communist Party, but left the Party by 1936. From the 1940s onwards, Dahlberg made his living as an author and also taught at various colleges and universities. In 1948, he taught briefly at the experimental Black Mountain College. He was replaced on the staff by his friend and fellow author, Charles Olson.
He was an expatriate writer of the 1920s, a proletarian novelist of the 1930s, a spokesman for a fundamental humanism in the 1940s. For a number of years, Dahlberg devoted himself to literary study. His extensive readings of the works of Dante, Shakespeare, Thoreau and many others resulted in a writing style quite different from the social realism that characterized his earlier writing.
He moved to the Danish island of Bornholm in 1955 while working on The Flea of Sodom. The Sorrows of Priapus was published in 1957, becoming his most successful book thus far. He later moved to Mallorca, while working on Because I Was Flesh, an autobiography which was published in 1964. During the 1960s and 1970s, he became quite prolific and further refined his unique style through the publication of poetry, autobiographical works, fiction and criticism.
He was an expatriate writer of the 1920s, a proletarian novelist of the 1930s, a spokesman for a fundamental humanism in the 1940s. For a number of years, Dahlberg devoted himself to literary study. His extensive readings of the works of Dante, Shakespeare, Thoreau and many others resulted in a writing style quite different from the social realism that characterized his earlier writing.
He moved to the Danish island of Bornholm in 1955 while working on The Flea of Sodom. The Sorrows of Priapus was published in 1957, becoming his most successful book thus far. He later moved to Mallorca, while working on Because I Was Flesh, an autobiography which was published in 1964. During the 1960s and 1970s, he became quite prolific and further refined his unique style through the publication of poetry, autobiographical works, fiction and criticism.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
December 5, 2013
It is a strange thing this collection of essays has not one written review - stranger yet is contemplating the 'Proper' way to introduce one to Edward Dahlberg. In a land wherein unhappiness is treason, another original mind is locked away in the solitary confinement of historical obscurity - a writer once published in his life by New Directions, The New York Times, posthumously by Dalkey Archive, when Googled linked at once to everybody's favorite whiskey-sod memoir-maker, Frank McCourt, who complains often about Dahlberg, and would have been nothing without him. Is it so wrong to ask a friend to tie one's shoe in times of woe - Enough of acquaintance, where art the Galilean fishermen of the soul? Who else to nail Melville, Whitman, and Poe at once of suffering from 'Sodomy of the heart'? What took me so long to get around to Dahlberg? Why is it taking even longer for the rest of the world? What is this man, this book of essays, about?
In my early scholastic days a friend taught me a technique better than any five Ivy League itineraries combined: Find your favorite publishing houses, make a list of every author published by them, and type them into every database in town, and see who comes up. If the author doesn't come up, Google them; it was a good way of cutting down to the chase, which is what I needed more than anything while running the school newspaper, manning the van all over the east coast for conferences, imitating Lautreamonte in my spare time, writing an - I cringe - 'Experimental novel' - all the while under the haze of teenage love. I do not recall the exact series of events, but it must have started with City Lights, skipped over to Grove, Black Sparrow, NYRB, Penguin Classics, and New Directions. I believe New Directions taught me the most in the end, or at least unlocked the doors which desperately needed such unlocking the most: While I was mesmerized by then-obscurities like Lew Welch, Jane Bowles, Knut Hamsun, Coover, New Directions went on to become my go-to in the Days of Lists, as I'll call them, the days of researching from morning until evening, accumulating 400 titles of books, films, albums, exploring them with my girlfriend, an adolescent Nabokovian dream.
Dahlberg must have been skipped over because my research warranted just about nothing, no one I asked had even heard of him - maybe one or two had, had even read him, but it was a long time ago, and nothing of importance, endurance - and all ND had to offer was an autobiography. I thought that was odd and moved on to H.D., or Mishima, or Tennessee Williams, Schwartz, or any other luminary from the list printed on the last page of a book by Yvor Winters, Krelza, Kussano, or Karr.
Last summer, or the one before it, was one of much reading, and I at last got my hands on Charles Olson's Ishmael - It was the first time I noticed Dahlberg anywhere else but on a catalogue - in the dedication of the Christ chapter.
Peopleless Fiction, for instance, in a concise berating of Fitzgerald, and one of my personal favorites in the collection. His theory that colossal bores in literature are 'The author's intention' and heroes evocative of complete idiocy in turn are labeled the 'Representative American.' In short, no matter which way one argues, no matter how logical one's standpoint, or thorough one's research, literature became plagued by mere, infinite selling points long ago.
Whitman and Melville are particularly under fire. In just about any other work of criticism I would consider the constant berating - as subject matter and in passing - as a sigh-inducing weakness on the part of the writer, and choosing two targets even the village idiot has at least heard of. I wonder how much of Dahlberg's hatred is authentic - It is Dahlbergian, yes, in that he can pull it off, and in parts it's unintentionally (I assume) hilarious i.e. on Whitman, painted in one instance'A large, sacred heifer,' in another, 'The inpecunious Quaker,' and one can find his essay on Melville here and in The Edward Dahlberg Reader.
Regardless of what one thinks, if one even thinks, of Dahlberg's personal life, Elizabethan prose, which like a miracle is pulled off without a fragmented subject to ridicule, but the pathos of an original style. In the sunset of American letters, now debased by technological condensation, imbecilic abbreviation, invasive slang, the hypersaturation of 24/7 media and its rigorous, persistent call for mass mental illness, if not psychic genocide, altogether the infernal plague of irrationality, Dahlberg is a gem for those still invested in the dazzling effects of language and history.
Other topical celebrations and thrashings include Florentine Codex, the realm of the Aztecs (In a more horrifying statement Dahlberg explains that Americans are en route to becoming the coldest, most disgusting race in the history of Mankind, a belief I share, envision, witness, yet speak seldom of, for it makes leaving one's room an occasionally daunting task), Poe, Dante, Tate, William James, Randolph Bourne (Who I'd never heard of till now), literary prostitution, testicles, ripping down the veil before The Lost Generation - 'None of their books ever ripened, and all of their books were the same' - , a memoir of Robert McAlmon, who typed and edited the first edition of Ulysses, one of the essays filled with particular affection and further historical tidbits.
There's a bit more going on and two or three topics unmentioned, but I feel like that's a quick way to shed the simplest light on this little book.
The annihilation of the textbook Lords, maimed at the static Hegelian altar, by our despairing Dahlberg, hailing all the way from Kansas City, clad in tattered Hebrew rags, throwing rocks at the cylindrical glass wall, occasionally creating cracks, mind and arms now numbed, asleep.
Some links for the curious:
http://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/anasta...
http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/52806.pdf
In my early scholastic days a friend taught me a technique better than any five Ivy League itineraries combined: Find your favorite publishing houses, make a list of every author published by them, and type them into every database in town, and see who comes up. If the author doesn't come up, Google them; it was a good way of cutting down to the chase, which is what I needed more than anything while running the school newspaper, manning the van all over the east coast for conferences, imitating Lautreamonte in my spare time, writing an - I cringe - 'Experimental novel' - all the while under the haze of teenage love. I do not recall the exact series of events, but it must have started with City Lights, skipped over to Grove, Black Sparrow, NYRB, Penguin Classics, and New Directions. I believe New Directions taught me the most in the end, or at least unlocked the doors which desperately needed such unlocking the most: While I was mesmerized by then-obscurities like Lew Welch, Jane Bowles, Knut Hamsun, Coover, New Directions went on to become my go-to in the Days of Lists, as I'll call them, the days of researching from morning until evening, accumulating 400 titles of books, films, albums, exploring them with my girlfriend, an adolescent Nabokovian dream.
Dahlberg must have been skipped over because my research warranted just about nothing, no one I asked had even heard of him - maybe one or two had, had even read him, but it was a long time ago, and nothing of importance, endurance - and all ND had to offer was an autobiography. I thought that was odd and moved on to H.D., or Mishima, or Tennessee Williams, Schwartz, or any other luminary from the list printed on the last page of a book by Yvor Winters, Krelza, Kussano, or Karr.
Last summer, or the one before it, was one of much reading, and I at last got my hands on Charles Olson's Ishmael - It was the first time I noticed Dahlberg anywhere else but on a catalogue - in the dedication of the Christ chapter.
Peopleless Fiction, for instance, in a concise berating of Fitzgerald, and one of my personal favorites in the collection. His theory that colossal bores in literature are 'The author's intention' and heroes evocative of complete idiocy in turn are labeled the 'Representative American.' In short, no matter which way one argues, no matter how logical one's standpoint, or thorough one's research, literature became plagued by mere, infinite selling points long ago.
Whitman and Melville are particularly under fire. In just about any other work of criticism I would consider the constant berating - as subject matter and in passing - as a sigh-inducing weakness on the part of the writer, and choosing two targets even the village idiot has at least heard of. I wonder how much of Dahlberg's hatred is authentic - It is Dahlbergian, yes, in that he can pull it off, and in parts it's unintentionally (I assume) hilarious i.e. on Whitman, painted in one instance'A large, sacred heifer,' in another, 'The inpecunious Quaker,' and one can find his essay on Melville here and in The Edward Dahlberg Reader.
Regardless of what one thinks, if one even thinks, of Dahlberg's personal life, Elizabethan prose, which like a miracle is pulled off without a fragmented subject to ridicule, but the pathos of an original style. In the sunset of American letters, now debased by technological condensation, imbecilic abbreviation, invasive slang, the hypersaturation of 24/7 media and its rigorous, persistent call for mass mental illness, if not psychic genocide, altogether the infernal plague of irrationality, Dahlberg is a gem for those still invested in the dazzling effects of language and history.
Other topical celebrations and thrashings include Florentine Codex, the realm of the Aztecs (In a more horrifying statement Dahlberg explains that Americans are en route to becoming the coldest, most disgusting race in the history of Mankind, a belief I share, envision, witness, yet speak seldom of, for it makes leaving one's room an occasionally daunting task), Poe, Dante, Tate, William James, Randolph Bourne (Who I'd never heard of till now), literary prostitution, testicles, ripping down the veil before The Lost Generation - 'None of their books ever ripened, and all of their books were the same' - , a memoir of Robert McAlmon, who typed and edited the first edition of Ulysses, one of the essays filled with particular affection and further historical tidbits.
There's a bit more going on and two or three topics unmentioned, but I feel like that's a quick way to shed the simplest light on this little book.
The annihilation of the textbook Lords, maimed at the static Hegelian altar, by our despairing Dahlberg, hailing all the way from Kansas City, clad in tattered Hebrew rags, throwing rocks at the cylindrical glass wall, occasionally creating cracks, mind and arms now numbed, asleep.
Some links for the curious:
http://www.thing.net/~grist/ld/anasta...
http://www.sunypress.edu/pdf/52806.pdf
Displaying 1 of 1 review