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Death of a Rebel: The Charlie Fenton Story
Death of a Rebel tells the story of Charles Andrews Fenton (1919-1960), a charismatic
teacher, scholar, and writer who took his own life by jumping from the top of the Washington Duke Hotel in Durham, North Carolina. At the time he was apparently at the peak of his career. He had written excellent books on Hemingway and Stephen Vincent Benét, had three other books in press, and was working on a new version of his novel about World War II (a 1945 account won the Doubleday Twentieth Century Fox award). He had earned Guggenheim and ACLS grants. Students flocked to his courses. He was widely regarded as the most popular professor at Duke.
Charlie Fenton’s story is a compelling one, and takes on further meaning in the context of the times. An individualist during the notoriously conformist 1950s, he swam against the current, defying authority and openly inviting controversy. This jaunty refusal to accept received wisdom made him an appealing figure to many of his students and colleagues. But it was a dangerous stance that did not sit well with his superiors, and it cost him when his fortunes took a turn for the worse in the spring and summer of 1960.
Love and war had a lot to do with his suicide as well. Charlie Fenton, who had come down to Duke from Yale two years earlier with a promotion to full professor, fell in love with one of his graduate students. His wife, outraged, left and took their son Andy with her. The scandal left him alone and a social pariah around campus. Then he suffered one of his bouts of depression. Usually these periods were triggered by trauma, most of it derived from his service as a tail gunner with the RAF bomber command in the summer and fall of 1942. In the past he’d always been able to shake free of his despondency. This time he was overcome by psychological pain deriving from of wife and family, of public admiration, of companionship, and worst of all, of self-regard.
The book recounts Fenton’s last days in vivid detail. In writing it, Donaldson had the assistance of family members, of his devoted students, and even – at a painful distance – of the woman he fell in love with fifty years ago. They all share an abiding sense of what might have been, and a deep regret that he could not go on to inspire the uncounted students who would never get to know and admire and learn from him.
teacher, scholar, and writer who took his own life by jumping from the top of the Washington Duke Hotel in Durham, North Carolina. At the time he was apparently at the peak of his career. He had written excellent books on Hemingway and Stephen Vincent Benét, had three other books in press, and was working on a new version of his novel about World War II (a 1945 account won the Doubleday Twentieth Century Fox award). He had earned Guggenheim and ACLS grants. Students flocked to his courses. He was widely regarded as the most popular professor at Duke.
Charlie Fenton’s story is a compelling one, and takes on further meaning in the context of the times. An individualist during the notoriously conformist 1950s, he swam against the current, defying authority and openly inviting controversy. This jaunty refusal to accept received wisdom made him an appealing figure to many of his students and colleagues. But it was a dangerous stance that did not sit well with his superiors, and it cost him when his fortunes took a turn for the worse in the spring and summer of 1960.
Love and war had a lot to do with his suicide as well. Charlie Fenton, who had come down to Duke from Yale two years earlier with a promotion to full professor, fell in love with one of his graduate students. His wife, outraged, left and took their son Andy with her. The scandal left him alone and a social pariah around campus. Then he suffered one of his bouts of depression. Usually these periods were triggered by trauma, most of it derived from his service as a tail gunner with the RAF bomber command in the summer and fall of 1942. In the past he’d always been able to shake free of his despondency. This time he was overcome by psychological pain deriving from of wife and family, of public admiration, of companionship, and worst of all, of self-regard.
The book recounts Fenton’s last days in vivid detail. In writing it, Donaldson had the assistance of family members, of his devoted students, and even – at a painful distance – of the woman he fell in love with fifty years ago. They all share an abiding sense of what might have been, and a deep regret that he could not go on to inspire the uncounted students who would never get to know and admire and learn from him.
198 pages, Paperback
First published November 1, 2011
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About the author
Scott Donaldson
28 books10 followersScott Donaldson was one of the nation's leading literary biographers. His books include the acclaimed Edwin Arlington Robinson: A Poet's Life and Archibald MacLeish: An American Life, which won the Ambassador Book Award for biography. His other works are Poet in America: Winfield Townley Scott; By Force of Will: The Life and Art of Ernest Hemingway; Fool for Love: F. Scott Fitzgerald; John Cheever: A Biography; and Hemingway vs. Fitzgerald: The Rise and Fall of a Literary Friendship.
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August 29, 2015
The biographer does a good job of presenting an engaging read. The thing is, there are probably not that many people who will want to know about Charles Fenton.
For many years, I have been working on a biography of Stephen Vincent Benet--and Fenton wrote the, to date, only existing biography of Benet. Therefore, Fenton's book was an important source for my work.
When I first read Fenton's Benet biography, I saw him as a stuffy old professor who delivered boring lectures and spent his free time in a research library. Therefore I was amazed to learn that Fenton was anything but stuffy, or old, or boring--and rated his own biography.
From getting kicked out of Yale after, among other things, being caught in the act with a woman in his bed—a no-no in those days, to dropping out to fight Hitler before America enters WWII; from bucking his superiors in the Royal Canadian Air Force, to verbal jousts with his conservative college professor employers--Fenton is a rebel.
And then, of course, there is the whole leaps to his death while distraught, in part, over an illicit love at the age of 41.
Displaying 1 of 1 review