Saturday, October 06, 2012
Max Eastman: A Life of Paradoxes
CHRONICLES OF CROTON'S BOHEMIA
Mabel Dodge was one
of the first bohemians to venture north to Croton from Greenwich
Village . Next to arrive was Max Eastman, radical journalist,
prolific writer and romantic poet. Years later he would become the best known
American intellectual to move across the political spectrum from far left to
extreme right.
In 1915, Eastman
and his wife Ida Rauh were living in a sixth-floor walk-up on Charles Street Greenwich Village when Mabel Dodge invited them to spend a
week in the little white cottage she had rented on Mt. Airy Road
Eastman, a
former graduate student and instructor in philosophy at Columbia
A Converted Cider Mill
Eastman, a
country boy at heart, was attracted to a house in Croton and bought it, paying
$20 against the purchase price of $1,500. Because the previous owner had died
and the heirs were scattered, preparation of a deed took time. The agent
encouraged Max to move in; he took possession on October 6, 1915.
In his
autobiography he later described how he "bought with my own money--and my
father's--a tiny house and barn at the crest of Mt. Airy Road
Max could now
regularly visit Mabel Dodge at her cottage further along Mt. Airy Road Alexander Lane
Max’s newly
acquired house stood very close to the road, he recalled, "so that its
front steps were almost like a horse block. But you could go around to the back
porch and look down through a wild tangle of trees to the river."
The Osage Orange Tree
"Beside the
porch, and overarching it almost like a roof, was an Osage orange tree some
twenty feet high, the only one I ever saw in our part of the world. I got Philip Schnell, Croton's good-natured
carpenter, whose benignly keen smile was as satisfying as the work he did, to
make me a long oak dining table, heavy enough to live the year round outdoors
on that roofless porch.
"When
weather permitted, the porch was the dining room, and the catbirds would come
and eat butter out of the dish in front of us. Philip told me my house was the
second oldest in Croton, and showed me how strangely it was built, with yellow
clapboards outside and papered plaster walls inside, but between them a
concealed solid wall of brick.
"For further
isolation, I had him fix me up a little study in the barn. And below the Osage
orange tree I carved out from my rough acre of land an excellent tennis
court--a little short for professionals, but with plenty of room for a hot game
by first-class amateurs.”
The house, at 70 Mt. Airy Road
America’s Most Famous Radical
Max Forrester
Eastman was born in upstate New York New York ,
was assistant pastor at Elmira ’s prestigious Park Church
Max Eastman was
the imaginative and creative editor of The
Masses, a combative mix of art and politics, for five years. Founded in 1911 by Piet Vlag, a bearded
Dutchman more interested in consumer cooperatives than in social revolution or
art, and financed by Rufus Weeks, an insurance executive. Weeks soon withdrew
his backing. Lacking adequate financing, The
Masses ceased publication in August 1912.
The magazine’s desperate
editorial board sent Eastman a brief note scribbled a sheet of paper to notify
him of his appointment: "You are elected editor of The Masses. No pay," was all it said.
From the
December1912 issue to 1917, The Masses
was the focal point of everything that was alive--or irreverent--in American
culture. With Eastman as its shrewd and perceptive editor, it featured brilliant
artists and cartoonists like John Sloan, Stuart Davis, Boardman Robinson,
Robert Minor and Art Young, and gifted writers like John Reed, Sherwood
Anderson and Floyd Dell. Subsidized by wealthy patrons charmed by Eastman, the
magazine became a genuine force in the radical movement.
Max Forrester Eastman, the young Adonis who became
editor of The Masses.
Death of The Masses
With war
hysteria at its height in August of 1917, the New York
Simultaneously,
Eastman and six of the staff were indicted under the 1917 Espionage Act for
conspiring to obstruct the draft. Jack Reed was in Russia
and another defendant had fled to Mexico
Undaunted, Eastman
and his brainy and beautiful sister Crystal, also a Croton resident, began a
successor magazine, The Liberator, with
a first issue date of March 1918. Its circulation grew to 60,000, double that
of The Masses, but it lacked its
predecessor’s lightheartedness.
Trial of the
four remaining Masses defendants began
in April of 1918 and lasted nine days, resulting in a hung jury. A second trial
began in October, enhanced now by the colorful presence of Reed, back from Russia
With the
original attorneys unavailable, Eastman became the lead speaker for the defense.
His three-hour extemporaneous summation was masterly. Again, the result was a
hung jury. The government wisely decided to forgo a third trial. Besides, the
war was almost over, and the charges were moot.
To the Soviet Union
Divorced from
Ida Rauh in 1922, Eastman sailed to Genoa ,
Italy
Later that year
he traveled to the Soviet Union to inspect the
Bolshevism he had been praising from a distance but also in pursuit of Miss
Krylenko. In the almost two years he spent in the new nation, he became
friendly with Leon Trotsky and strongly supportive of him.
Unable to leave Russia because his passport had expired (the U.S. did not recognize the Soviet
Union ), Max married Eliena Kylenko in 1924. He described it as
"a marriage of convenience," but it would last 32 years until her
death in 1956. Her connections enabled the couple to leave for Europe , where he continued to write about the Russian
revolution.
After an absence
of five years, Max returned to America
Critics liked
its robustness; Mabel Dodge loved it because the hero, reminiscent of Jack
Reed, had a love affair with "a wise and charming woman”--a thinly
disguised character much like herself. The taste-setting New York Times Book Review called Venture “a novel of ideas that stands well above the majority.”
Max Eastman
returned to the U.S. Russia , Trotsky
would be murdered in Mexico
A series of
Eastman books in the 30s and 40s questioning communism and Marxism reflected
his disillusionment with the Russian experiment, making him a pariah and the
object of attacks from the left.
Two Literary Titans
Eastman would
have many literary and political scraps in print, but it was a physical scuffle
with Ernest Hemingway in 1937 that captured the public’s attention.
Hemingway was
unhappy with Eastman because of Max’s review of Death in the Afternoon four years earlier. Max hated bullfighting
and titled his review, "Bull in the Afternoon."
He accused
Hemingway of emphasizing his masculinity and creating "a veritable school
of fiction writers--a literary style, you might say, of wearing false hair on
the chest." Hemingway saw this as an attack on his manhood. Eastman wrote
a note to Hemingway assuring him this was not so.
About to embark
for Loyalist Spain, a still-angry Hemingway encountered Eastman in the office
of Scribner’s legendary editor Maxwell Perkins. Hemingway acknowledged him with
a friendly greeting but then demanded angrily, "What do you mean accusing
me of impotence?” He opened his shirt to reveal a hairy chest.
Eastman produced
a copy of his book Art and the Life of
Action in which the essay had been reprinted to show Hemingway he had
misread the review. Hemingway responded by shoving the book in Eastman's face.
Max was no boxer
but he could wrestle. He grabbed Ernest by the throat and threw him--or backed
him up--over Perkins's desk and pinned him with both shoulders touching the
floor. Hemingway patted Eastman's shoulder as if to signal defeat and got up.
No sooner on his feet, however, he cursed Max and challenged him to meet him
"in the ring."
Hemingway was
famous for his drunken belligerence and for sucker-punching opponents with an
unexpected blow. Eastman ignored this, and a cursing Hemingway strode from the
office.
Local newspapers
called it a split decision. The
World-Telegram and the Post gave
the nod to Eastman. The Post headline
read, "Unimportance of Being Ernest Hemingway Shown, When Eastman Unbeards
a Chest." Its story concluded with a quip: "Mr. Eastman is planning
an article to be entitled "The Enjoyment of Thrashing Ernest." The Times and Herald Tribune were in Ernest's corner.
Hemingway
claimed that Eastman, sixteen years his senior, clawed at him like a woman, and
that he had used only enough force to subdue him. Editor Perkins later
complimented Eastman for "acting magnificently" in handling the
situation.
A Generous Tribute
Still smarting
over his opponent's account of the affair, when the troubled Hemingway
committed suicide in 1961 Eastman wrote magnanimously about him:
"You can't
ask everything of one man, and I find Ernest's triumph over fear, his scorn for
the petty big-city, big-celebrity life he might have lived in New York as a
well-advertised literateur, his bold honesty in expressing his dissent from
mollycoddle standards, and the superb style in which he often expressed it--I
find these things a joy and an inspiration. I think sometimes in reading him of
Walt Whitman's great lines: 'This is no book--who touches it touches a man.’”
The
Hitler-Stalin pact of 1939 put the capstone on Eastman's disillusionment with
Stalinism and Marxism. He produced two openly hostile books in 1940, Stalin's Russia and the Crisis in Socialism
and Marxism: Is It Science? Critic
Edmund Wilson hailed them as presenting "the most intelligent and
searching as well as the best-informed discussion of the implications of the
Marxist movement and the development of the Revolution in Russia
Don Juan Eastman
Eastman had been
conflicted about sex in his early years. After an affair with his sister-in-law
Rosalind Fuller while still married to Ida Rauh, he quickly made up for lost
time. Even into his seventies, he had many love affairs, sometimes carrying on
several simultaneously. He indiscreetly recorded these conquests in his memoirs
to the chagrin of partners he openly identified.
For women, a
love affair with Max followed a usual pattern: a chance meeting, avid
attention, bombardment with romantic love letters and poems, until eventual surrender.
After a brief period, Max would lose interest, grow distant and trysts would
cease. Even so, many former lovers remained on good terms with him.
A stormy and
tempestuous relationship with ambitious young movie actress Florence Deshon
ended tragically in 1922. While away from Max, Florence
openly had an affair with Charlie Chaplin in Hollywood
Max Eastman meets Charlie Chaplin in Hollywood. Both were lovers
of actress Florence Deshon.
Back in New York St. Vincent 's Hospital, Max gave her a blood transfusion,
but she could not be saved. He was so remorseful he was unable to attend her
funeral. The coroner ruled it an accidental death.
A tall,
strikingly handsome man, Max was openly vain about his looks, his swimming
ability and his skill at tennis. In Paris
Despite his many
casual affairs, Max Eastman was inherently a highly moral person, retaining the
residual Puritanism of the era and his upbringing as the son of ministers. He disliked
obscene or even risqué language in books or conversation.
Max Eastman’s Dark Side
Max was never
comfortable around children. His first wife's pregnancy was one of his
principal grievances against her. Their divorce gave her sole custody, and Max
did not see his son Daniel for 23 years. The boy grew up never knowing his
father and never forgave him for deserting him.
Daniel Eastman
married twice, but both marriages failed. By the age of 29, he had already
tried four different careers. More jobs followed. An alcoholic, he was writing
a book at the time of his death in 1969.
When Max's
widowed sister Crystal died unexpectedly of nephritis in the summer of 1928,
she left two small orphaned children. Instead of taking them in, Max selfishly
found foster homes for them.
The Eastmans Leave Croton
Max landed a job
with CBS in 1938 as the moderator of a radio show, "The Word Game."
Although it lasted only five months, the income enabled Max and Eliena to buy a
hilltop at Gay Head on Martha's Vineyard and
eventually erect a house there. They would retain their Croton home until the
early 1940s.
In 1941, his
agent suggested that he write an article about his mother for the Reader's Digest feature "My Most
Unforgettable Character." DeWitt Wallace, the magazine's publisher, liked
Eastman's piece and suggested that he write more.
Eastman wrote an
essay blandly titled "Socialism and Human Nature." When it was
published, however, the title had been changed by Digest editors to "Socialism Does Not Gibe with Human
Nature."
The article was
glowingly endorsed by Wall Street lawyer and unsuccessful 1940 Republican
presidential candidate Wendell Willkie. Even though Eastman wrote nothing he
had not written before, the liberal left reviled him as a turncoat.
Eventually, he
became a roving editor for the Digest,
writing pretty much as he pleased. Publisher DeWitt Wallace offered him an
annual retainer of $10,000 in return for a first option on anything Max might
write, plus the standard Digest fee.
Although they had no written contract and Max's article output was meager, to
his credit Wallace honored the agreement for the rest of Max's life and even
gave his widow a pension.
Eliena Eastman
developed cancer and died at their home on Martha's
Vineyard in 1956. Two years later, at 75, Max Eastman married
Yvette Szekely, a much younger woman he had met years before when she was a
teenager.
He wrote 86
books, had uncounted lovers (but failed to seduce Edna St. Vincent Millay) and
remained vigorous to the end. While wintering on the island of Barbados
