Miss Knight and Others

by Robert McAlmon, Edward N.S. Lorusso (Editor/Introduction), Gore Vidal (Forward)

Robert McAlmon, editor-writer and expatriate personality (1896-1956), is a vital - and neglected - literary figure. He published, often first, Gertrude Stein, Hemingway, Djuna Barnes and Nathanael West. He is known today for his memoir, "Being Genuises Together" (1938), which was expanded 30 years later with alternating chapters by his Paris friend Kay Boyle. This collection offers his mostly unknown short stories -- three deal with the malaise of post-war Berlin and the fourth is set in his roots of the American midwest. In an introduction Edward N.S. Lorusso writes, "Let's hope that today's wise world is ready for his guts and honesty."

126 pages, Paperback

First published May 1, 1992

About the author

Robert Menzies McAlmon (also used Robert M. McAlmon, as his signature name, March 9, 1895 – February 2, 1956) was an American author, poet and publisher

Reviews

[Sketchbook · Rating 4 out of 5]

Editor-writer McAlmon ("Being Geniuses Together") -- a
key player in John Glassco's "Memoirs of Montparnasse" --
is a forgotten man of US Letters. A rather dashing figure who
promoted Stein-Joyce, McAlmon was generous to emerging
writers in Paris '20s. Three of his stories vividly capture
Berlin's gay bars & clubs a decade before Isherwood. He further details the heavy drug scene there which Isherwood omits.

In one story, he suggests, "We'd better take a sniff of the cocaine to liven us up... my nose began to feel numbed; however, I felt exhilarated.." (You can understand why these stories remained unpublished here). He tells an American bloke who has turned into a promiscuous bore, "Berlin is no place for a man of impressionable amiability, if the amiability could stand the strain." He has a keen wit.

McAlmon kept his own longings private (and briefly married a UK super-heiress who preferred same-sex). This volume also includes a thoughtful novella about a mismatched couple in the midwest. "In less than 30 pages we get the lifetime of a marriage," says Gore Vidal. McAlmon's writing - like the man - is sympathetic but never sentimental. He was also a big, startling Personality. "In his cups," adds The Gore, "he felt it his duty to reveal Ernest and Scott as fairies." Huhh? "Whether they were or not is immaterial. Many people thought they were, including a couple of their wives."

McAlmon wrote with candor, which kept him from getting a US publisher in his lifetime and, so, writes prof. Edward Lorusso, he remained forgotten -- and unpublished here until he was forty. "Let's hope that today's wise world is ready for his honesty," Lorusso concludes. (Sanford J Smoller has written the only bio on him). The son of a Presbyterian minister, he liked a gin fizz or three with Bricktop in Paris; he died in California in 1956. "To him it is moral to state the truth even at its most distasteful," sums up William Carlos Williams.

[Dvora Treisman · Rating 1 out of 5]

I expected to like this. I liked McAlmon's We Were Geniuses Together. I thought McAlmon wrote well, was unpretentious, and had creditable openions. I also liked Isherwood's stories about Berlin, written about a decade later. I've heard that Isherwood's stories are a lighter, more sanitary version compared to McAlmon's. The thing is, I prefer that. I enjoyed the Isherwood stories so much I've read them more than once. They are colorful and sensitive and for me, they painted a picture of a place that I enjoyed spending time in while I was reading. McAlmon's Berlin gave me the feeling I wanted to buy a ticket for somewhere, anywhere else. When it came to the final story, which takes place not in Berlin but somewhere in mid-America, that promised to be rather unpleasant, I decided I had had enough.

To top it off (or actually, to begin with), the foreword by Gore Vidal was quite bitchy and was trashing writing of McAlmon that isn't even in this book. I think McAlmon could write. It's just that in this volume I don't care for what he is writing about and that is part of the pleasure of reading for me.

[Larry-bob Roberts · Rating 3 out of 5]

Fans of Djuna Barnes' Nightwood should check this out - the character of Miss Knight is based on the same person as Dr. O'Connor in Nightwood.