Customer Reviews

In Dreams Begin Responsibilities and Other Stories

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Delmore Schwartz has unfortunately been forgotten by most people today, and that is a great shame. (An example of this is that Schwartz's student John Berryman has his own entry in the online edition of Encarta; Delmore does not.) I first came into contact with his work in 9th grade, when a teacher suggested I read the Schwartz poem, "The Heavy Bear Who Goes With Me" -- one of his masterpieces, collected in "Summer Knowledge." Later, around the time I read this book,there was a brief surge in Delmore interest with the publication of Jame Atlas' biography of Schwartz and Saul Bellow's "Humboldts Gift", the title character being based on Delmore. Fortunately, this led to reprinting of much of his work. Sadly, it didn't lead to continued general interest.

The title story alone is reason enough to buy "In Dreams..." The brilliant device of having the main character watching a movie of his parents courtship, is was way ahead of its time. The end of the story will linger in your mind. It's heartbreaking and scary and funny.

Schwartz's work deserves a wider audience. I promise you will not be dissapointed if you take the time to read him. The only poet I know who has both a Berryman "Dream Song" and a Lou Reed song dedicated to him can't be too bad, can he?

Five of the stories here are flat-out masterpieces ("In Dreams;" "The World is a Wedding;" "New Year's Eve;" "The Commencement Address;" and "The Track Meet"), while the other 3 are extremely well done, if not as wholly satisfying. This collection should be required reading in every contemporary lit. class. It's got everything: all the themes of struggle, frustration and defeat, responsibility, ambition, all the thoughts that men have thought in every age, and captures its era so perfectly and completely I am in awe. Even though the stories are, in some ways similar (especially "In Dreams," "The Commencement Address," and "The Track Meet"), they are utterly original, beautiful, hallucinatory, profound, funny and heartbreaking. Schwartz -- that great voice speaking out against the crowd -- deserves to be heard at last.

I've never had this experience before, or since. It is autumn of 1964. I am a college freshman, sitting on my bed reading the story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities." My roommate and a few other dorm mates walk into the room and call my name, but I don't hear them, so lost am I in the story. Finally, someone nudges my arm. I look up--and the story, which had been unrolling before my eyes, is gone! I'm back in my college dorm room, no longer in the movie theater in the story. I had not even been aware that I was reading--I was IN the story, I was there, experiencing it, not just reading it--and for a few moments, I didn't know what had happened or where I was. Repeated readings never quite duplicated that first experience, but the story remains very powerful, very moving, very involving.

This collection of stories is graced by two introductions and lives up to every superlative. Irving Howe and biographer James Atlas note for the reader Delmore Schwartz's unfailing ear for the idiom of his parents' generation. Each of the stories is a masterpiece and competes, in terms of quality, with the Schwartz poetry. Having read James Atlas's biography of Delmore Schwartz this reader thinks of tragic waste and pain when thinking of Schwartz. And yet, and yet, when one considers the brilliance of these stories, the fact that his mere existence inspired the wonderful novel HUMBOLDT'S GIFT by Saul Bellow, and that he evoked intense loyality from his students the picture shifts to a life of immense achievement not disproportionate to his evident gift. This New Directions Paperback has a compelling photograph on the cover.

This collection of stories is a minor masterpiece. As other Amazon reviewers have pointed out Schwartz is not much attended to these days, not much read. At one time he seemed to be the great promise of American writing. The sad tale of how he lost it and died young is now a part of his legend. In these stories he shows originality and invention. The unforgettable movie scene in ' In Dreams Begin Responsibilities' where the child watching the courtship of his parents, hearing his father propose yells out at the screen ' Don't do it. Don't do it' is funny and deeply sad at once. Schwarz's Brooklyn world was one in which family frustrations and tensions seem to put reality itself on edge. It is Schwartz after all who is really responsible for the famous ' Paranoids too have real enemies'. Whether the persecutor was himself or not , they got him young. Before this he wrote these wonderful stories which hopefully will have a larger place in the American canon in the years to come.

As an undergraduate English major/graduate in the 70's, I'm surprised we were never exposed to these compelling, albeit, dark stories. I expected these to be more about Jewish culture in NY in the generation prior to the great migration. And that is definitely a subtext, but there none of the ritualistic religious nature that one usually ascribes to the rich tradition of Jewish American literature Rather these stories seemed more tragic than the ebullience that one might expect of group that, at least for some, realized the American dream quicker than any other ethnic group that was involved in the greatest wave in American History. Nevertheless, the wealth and fame that some of these characters momentarily gained- and often lost, seems more of a burden and quite illusory. In this sense Schwartz's works reminded me much of Fitzgerald's "The Great Gatsby," and, to a lesser extent, "Tender is The Night," although not anywhere nearly as opulent or effete. But there is the downward mobility, partially as a result of the great depression, and the unrealistic notion that wealth is a constant, somewhat transcendent state. These stories are usually dark, and rife with alienated and/or broken characters (The Baumann's, Seymour, Rudyard Bell's circle). Perhaps it is the fate that often befalls the children of Type A, high achieving, families (here first generation immigrants- the religious tradition seems secondary), who often feel entitled and lack the drive of their parents, and either become wannabe's artists, and here, cynical intellectuals, in an age (and country?) that had no use for committed, free thinking, intellectuals; or these children of privilege become just lazy and marginally functional wastrels.

There is a lot of anger here, but for exactly what one is never entirely sure. Perhaps poor rearing, a denial of tradition, historical discontinuity...Whatever, Schwartz's character's rank with Kafka's and Camus (Joseph K (of "The Trial"), and Merseault (of "The Stranger") respectively)in their nihilistic self absorption but Schwartz doesn't quite rise to the metaphysical level of the European's mentioned. To read, these stories are engrossing, well crafted, but profoundly depressing. And, unfortunately, like his characters Schwartz a possibly more tragic fall than his characters in later life. It's a shame because Schwartz's prose, and insights into the flimsy nature or the American dream are really only matched by Fitzgerald, but here there is no intimations of a gilded, fanciful, age; rather we see the the dark underbelly of the American "rags to riches" archetype; glimpses that are even as powerful, and relevant, seventy to eighty years later.

It's too bad Schwartz isn't more popular. I find his stories compelling and the characters are fascinating. I must whole-heartedly disagree with the other reviewer of this book. The title story is one of my favorites of all time. It's an experiment that really works. Deeply moving collection.

This is a first-rate collection of short stories. The title story is one of the least successful. Most of the others are rich feasts of character studies.

The best of the stories in here are brilliant. The dialogue is great, as well as the reflective passages. That a mediocre short story writer like Raymond Carver is lauded, while Schwartz is relatively obscure, shows that the cream does NOT rise to the top. I've read passages of these stories a number of times. I can't praise them highly enough.

This is an absolutely fantastic collection of short storys, each one is so presice and refreshing. I recomend it to everyone. His writing is striking, and extremely well written yet underrated.