The Leafless American and Other Writings

by Edward Dahlberg

Edited with an Introduction by Harold Billings.
Preface by Robert Creely.
Afterword by Gerald Burns. Rabble articles and labor squandered in creating them hardens the heart. Nations that are rich in parasitic goods are poor in spirit. Thus Edward Dahlberg in one of these essays. Praised for developing a prose style that is, in Paul Carroll's words, "a weapon of rage and authority...monumental and astonishing," his work is unsettling as he confronts the American psyche and morality, its declevities and hollow ambitions. This book is an excellent introduction to Dahlberg's enduring vision and exemplifies the several modes in which he autobiography, literary sketch, principled diatribe, poetry of conscience.

128 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1986

About the author

His 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.

Reviews

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

Two of the essays, "A Decline of Souls" and "The Sandals of Judith," are classic Dahlberg: well-wrought absolute statements on the idiocy of the world and the folly of sexual pursuit. Here, for example, is his description of modern man, home from work: "Lumpish at the table he drearily swallows his packaged hamburgers and canned pears, and his head is as comatose as his pudendum. He is abstemious because he is prematurely impotent." He brings up questions that have haunted every pubescent male: "Here is a riddle: if the gospel, and many wise books, have been written to govern the genitals, and to take away the imperial mind from his rugose pouch of mirth, how is it that a boy just growing his pubes, and while at chapel and without the least thought of anything save Mark and Luke, has an erection. This is as much of an enigma as the Ephesian sod, and must be considered along with the lilies and the Proverbs of Solomon."

The works of literary criticism are idiosyncratic, occasionally insightful. Of modern writers, Dahlberg is particularly fond of Sherwood Anderson, and is insistent on dissociating Nietzsche from Nazism. The essay on Oscar Wilde devolves into an embarrassingly homophobic screed rooted in outdated theories of sexuality. His responses to critics, as in "How Do You Spell Fool," are quite entertaining, as they allow Dahlberg to fully flex his misanthropic muscles. The next-to-last piece, a poem called "The Garment of Rā," is a low point, a nearly unintelligible series of "X is Y" statements featuring enough proper names, classical allusions, obscure plant names, and unknown vocabulary to scare off even his most ardent admirers.

Those who have never read Dahlberg before are invited to turn elsewhere first, such as Because I Was Flesh or The Sorrows of Priapus. The Leafless American is more for the fanboy who needs to have everything ever written by Dahlberg.

[Dionysius the Areopagite · Rating 5 out of 5]

This will be much briefer than my other Dahlbergian scrapings. A slim collection with some stand out pieces worth the package: The True Nietzsche, The Malice of Witlings, A Decline of Soul, How Do You Spell Fool? - Admirers of Because I Was Flesh will cherish the brief gem, Kansas City Revisited. In one of the better blurbs I've read, Thomas Merton offers, 'What has he not done for us? Like Montaigne, Cervantes, Rabelais, he has dared unstop the more robust insanities of language.'

As I have written elsewhere, such is my opinion.

Having absorbed the masterpiece initium of Flesh, experienced Alms and Confessions, I would definitely pick this little book up just for the sake of further completing one's collection, and having a handful of forgotten gems out on the occasion of half an afternoon, or a deliberate bath.

In the afterword there is also a description of Dahlberg in bed eating coffee cakes and having a friend pour him milk, putting something of a hilarious twist on Dahlberg's attackers, Frank McCourt of all nobodies topping the list. Gerald Burns, a name I do not recognize, closes thusly:

'There is no one in New York I can talk to about half as many authors, and he is kind, generous, and tolerant. He has, he said, too many authors to re-read to take a book from me, and mentioned Suetonious.'

[Matt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Curmudgeonly goodness.

[Bren · Rating 1 out of 5]

*furious jacking off noises*