A Century of Arts and Letters [Hardcover]

John Updike (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0231102488 | ISBN-13: 978-0231102483 | Publication Date: May 15, 1998 0

Although the American Academy of Arts and Letters is best known for the awards and prizes it grants artists, writers, and musicians, the organization itself remains as little-understood as its awards are acclaimed. John Updike has brought together eleven current members-including Cynthia Ozick, Norman Mailer, and Louis Auchincloss—to raid the Academy's archives. With each writer taking on a decade of the Academy's history, they have created an eye-opening documentary of an organization central to the arts in America for the past century. R. W. B. Lewis writes of the admission of Julia Ward Howe in 1907 (at the age of 86) as the first woman in the Academy, and the intense debate about the very consideration of female members. Lewis also recounts the humorous saga of the feuding James brothers, with William declining membership and decrying the election several months prior to the nomination of his "younger and shallower and vainer brother" Henry. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., tells of the Academy's struggle against modernism in the 1930s—largely a one-man war waged by its feisty septuagenarian secretary, Robert Underwood Johnson-that resulted in a perennial failure to nominate F. Scott Fitzgerald and H. L. Mencken, among others. And composer Jack Beeson notes Gore Vidal's droll telegram declining an honorary membership on the grounds that he was already a member of the Diners Club.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Rather grandly housed in a less-than-glamorous Manhattan neighborhood, the American Academy of Arts and Letters tends to keep a low profile. Indeed, most people have probably never heard of the institution, which hands out awards and grants and convenes once a year for a celebrity-intensive blowout. Yet this all-American equivalent of the Academie Française has just turned 100, occasioning this chronicle by an eminent round robin of academicians. R.W.B. Lewis covers the initial decade, during which William James declined his nomination on the grounds that his little brother Henry had been elected first. Norman Mailer recalls the momentary entente between the Kennedy White House and the arts community, while architecture critic Ada Louise Huxtable documents the Academy's semicomatose state during the early 1980s. A Century of Arts & Letters is, on one hand, a kind of anthropological study, which tells us a great deal about the roosting patterns of artistically-inclined Homo sapiens. Yet it also tracks the slow incursion of modernism into the academy, which has finally embraced it and made a little room, even, for the postmodern barbarians at the gate.

From Booklist

This People magazine for the literati, chock-full of gossip, literary feuds, and the ego games of those who were tapped over the last century for entry into America's less virile version of the Academie Francaise--and those who should have been but who fell victim to those games. Twelve of the impressive cast of academy members--including Updike, Norman Mailer, Cynthia Ozick, Arthur Schlesinger Jr., and R. W. B. Lewis--each take a decade of the academy's history and report on its trials and tribulations. One of the giants of the academy, Robert Underwood Johnson, casts a decades-long shadow in his one-man war against encroaching modernism, blackballing such masters as H. L. Mencken, F. Scott Fitzgerald, and T. S. Eliot (before his exile to England left him unqualified). This makes a great addition to a personal reference shelf, particularly with the complete list of all current and deceased members at the back of the book. An ample collection of photographs dispersed throughout the volume renders this a treasure for the culturati. Allen Weakland

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 346 pages
• Publisher: Columbia University Press (May 15, 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0231102488
• ISBN-13: 978-0231102483
• Product Dimensions: 10.2 x 7.3 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,318,387 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)