The Blowtop

by Alvin Schwartz

Born in NYC in 1916, Alvin Schwartz began his literary career while still in high school as a co-editor of Mosaic, a "little" magazine of the thirties that published such luminaries as William Carlos Williams, Ezra Pound, R.P. Blackmur and Gertrude Stein. He wrote critical pieces for other little mags including Ken Giniger's Lion & Unicorn, while his poetry and criticism also appeared in such places as Voices, The American Scholar and American Imago.Caught in the depression, he turned to writing comics for a living and was soon scripting the two leading newspaper strips of the day, Batman and Superman. He was often described as having a double identity, like Superman, his comics writing extending all the way to the creation of two best-selling Superman Operettas at a time when The Blowtop, his first novel, was being described in the NY Times as probably the first conscious existentialist novel in America.Schwartz's close friendships with many of the leading abstract expressionist painters, including Pollock and DeKooning among others, as well as contacts with some of the leading French existentialists such as Simon de Beauvoir and Jean Wahl also marked his work and led eventually to publication of The Blowtop in France (Les Editions de l"Elan Paris 1950) where under the title of Le Cingli, it became a best seller. His most recent book, written in his eighties, entitled: An Unlikely Prophet, is a memoir dealing with some very off-the-wall experiences generated by his years doing not only Superman but the mix of literary genres that followed. Described by some critics as offering a new and exciting vision of reality, this late work also leans very heavily on insights firstintimated in his seminal early work, The Blowtop, lending credence to the likelihood that the latter's cult role at Columbia University may very well have set a direction for Allen Ginsburg and Jack Kerouac who were Columbia undergrads at the time.

240 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1948

About the author

Librarian Note: There is more than one author in the Goodreads database with this name.
Alvin^^Schwartz

Born in NYC in 1916, Alvin Schwartz wrote his first comics for Fairy Tale Parade in 1939, and wrote extensively for Shelley Mayer, then an editor at Max Gaines’ All-American Publications (later purchased by National/DC in 1944). He had also done a short stint at Fawcett on Captain Marvel. Schwartz wrote his first Batman story in 1942, and his first Batman newspaper strip in Aug 1944 (an assignment he continued on until 1958) and his first Superman newspaper strip in Oct 1944. He had a long association with Superman as the writer of both the Man of Steel’s newspaper strip and many of his comic book appearances, and one of his many enduring contributions to the Superman mythology was the creation of Bizarro, a character who became a part of popular culture, quite apart from comics. While writing most of DC’s newspaper strips between 1944 and 1952, he also went on to do stories for many of their comics magazines, working on characters such as Aquaman, Vigilante, Slam Bradley, Date With Judy, Buzzy, House of Mystery, Tomahawk, Wonder Woman, The Flash, Green Lantern, Newsboy Legion and numerous others.

After his 1958 departure from comics, Schwartz took on a whole new role in the corporate world, using the knowledge of plotting gained in comics to open new directions in market research, developing the now well-known techniques of psycho-graphics, typological identification and others, until as Research Director for the famed think tank of Dr Ernst Dichter, The Institute for Motivational Research, he provided structural and marketing advice to some of America’s largest corporations ranging from General Motors to General Foods. He was subsequently appointed to an advisory committee of the American Association of Advertising Agencies.

Schwartz also authored three novels for Arco Press, one of which, Sword of Desire, a detective story, won praise for its successful takeoff on Reichian orgone therapy, a popular psychotherapeutic technique during the 40s and 50s. His Beat generation novel, The Blowtop was published by Dial in 1948. Under the title Le Cinglé, it became a best seller in France. He also wrote and lectured on superheroes at various universities and received a prestigious Canada Council Grant for a study on the religious symbolism in popular culture, using Superman as a springboard.

Also in Canada, he wrote feature films and did numerous docu-dramas for The National Film Board for nearly 20 years and did a number of economic and social studies for the Canadian government.

His last two books, written in his eighties, were: An Unlikely Prophet: Revelations on the Path Without Form (published in 1997) — a memoir dealing with some very off-the-wall experiences generated by his years doing Superman which led him to a unique understanding of Superman’s significance as well as some life-enriching possibilities available to every one of us, and the sequel A Gathering of Selves: The Spiritual Journey of the Legendary Writer of Superman and Batman (published in 2006).

Schwartz received the first Bill Finger Award for his contributions to comics via writing in 2006. The Finger Award was created by the legendary creator Jerry Robinson to honour his friend Bill Finger (the uncredited co-creator of Batman) and is given to comic book writers as part of the Will Eisner Comic Book Industry Awards in July of each year.

Reviews

[Nathan "N.R." Gaddis]

Another Moore review of a book you don't know about. And since I just finished Down and in: Life in the Underground, this Beat thing is serendipitous ::

"Alvin Schwartz's The Blowtop was first published in 1948, a full four years before what are usually considered the first Beat novels (Chandler Brossard's Who Walk in Darkness, John Clellon Holmes's Go, and George Mandel's Flee the Angry Strangers, all published in 1952). It describes the turmoil created in a band of Greenwich Villagers' lives when a local pusher is murdered, and includes musings on the then-new French existentialism and Abstract Expressionist painting. In fact, Jackson Pollack assumed he was the model for the painter in the novel, though (as the 85-year-old author tells us in a new introduction) a less famous artist named Attilio Salemme was intended.
Despite some interesting temporal shifts, The Blowtop isn't particularly innovative, and certainly lacks the liberated language that makes reading the other Beats suck a kick. What is remarkable about the novel is the way potentially sensationalist material—Drug Fiends! Crazy Artists! Promiscuous Greenwich Village Chicks!—is downplayed. Schwartz's characters smoke dope in the same uneventful way characters in other novels of the time drink beer. (Here "blowtop" is a term for a marijuana user, before "blow" became associated with cocaine; today's potheads will be amused by the novel's period slang.) Instead, the emphasis is on the new intellectual and artistic ideas that were in the air. A valuable discovery, The Blowtop should certainly figure in future histories of the Beat movement." (also posted at amazon by Moore ; presumably originally pub'd in RCF 2001) [bold is again mine]