The Harold Letters, 1928-1943: The Making of an American Intellectual [Paperback]

Clement Greenberg (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 2003

Spirited youthful letters that trace the making of a great critic whose taste would shape the art world of his time

Clement Greenberg was, and remains, America's most perceptive, prescient, and influential art critic. More than any other writer, it was he who charted the course through the early years of Abstract Expressionism, and whose taste and judgment established the reputations of such art stars as Pollock, de Kooning, and David Smith.

Before all that, however, he was a young man burning to become an intellectual, who went forth to experience art and culture-and a lot of life and love along the way. His closest confidant during these youthful years was Harold Lazarus, a classmate at Syracuse University and a future professor of English. From 1928, when both were nineteen, until 1943, they exchanged honest, funny, and intimate letters, and now Greenberg's widow has gathered together his side of the correspondence. The result is intellectual history on-the-hoof, a raw and candid account of Greenberg's thoughts and fears, his prodigious reading and culture watching, his army years and mental breakdown, his unquenchable curiosity and artistic appetite.

Here, in The Harold Letters, is the rare opportunity to join a great tastemaker as he grapples with his own understanding of life and the arts amidst the social, political, and cultural turbulence of the 1930s. Above all, here is all the passion and pain of being twentysomething with a dream to follow and a world to conquer-anytime, anywhere.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Legendary modernist art critic Greenberg (Art & Culture, etc.) was known for his harsh opinions. Indeed, one characteristic anecdote tells of his condemning some work by the painter Morris Louis, whereupon Louis destroyed all of the reviled canvases in despair. Despite his undeniable role in advancing a generation of American abstract expressionists from Jackson Pollock to Frank Stella, Greenberg's destructive urges overwhelm this collection of letters, edited by his widow, Janice Van Horne. Addressed over 15 years to a gay former college roommate of Greenberg's from Syracuse University, these letters are as macho as Hemingway and often twice as full of themselves. In one 1939 letter about Auden's work, Greenberg has "to admit to myself that my latest poems are better than his, on a higher level" and that Wallace Stevens is "a numbskull with paltry ideas." (An appendix presents some of Greenberg's doggerel.) Page after page brims with the sort of sexist, homophobic and anti-Semitic observations that were common in the era, and only the most patient readers will wade through them in order to reach vitriolic gems like "Curse the [Partisan Review editors Dwight and Janice] Macdonalds & the people like them who have no personal lives and fail to recognize them in others." The editing here ("to create a story of appropriate length and accessibility") leaves Greenberg's correspondent little more than the object of conjecture. Yet there is a sort of grim fascination in seeing the underside of a great critic's apparatus, and these letters do form a portrait of the critic as a bright and angry young man. (June)
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

About the Author

Clement Greenberg (1904-1994) was a lifelong New Yorker. His works include Art and Culture and the four-volume Collected Essays and Criticism, 1939-1969.

Product Details

• Paperback: 336 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint; Export Ed edition (August 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582432392
• ISBN-13: 978-1582432397
• Product Dimensions: 7.8 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,571,297 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars confessions of an angry young man, August 1, 2003

By A Customer

This review is from: The Harold Letters 1928-1943: The Making of an American Intellectual (Hardcover)

Anyone curious to learn more about the (in)famous art critic Clement Greenberg will be intrigued by this collection, which documents his letters to his friend Harold Lazarus between 1928-43. Unfortunately, few of Harold's replies are extant, thus we are only privy to one side of the correspondance. We are presented with the fascinating portrait nonetheless; of an ambitious and extremely well-read young man, although not a particularly pleasant one.

Readers of Greenberg's criticism will be surprised by the tone of the letters; they are passionately and often carelessly written, possessing none of the clarity and composure of his professional writing. He admits at one point to Harold that he never read over his letters after having written them, and this would perhaps explain the rather uncompromising attitudes displayed in them.

Like many intellectuals, Greenberg was prone to bouts of depression and dissatisfaction with life in general. His lethargy and unwillingness to get a job was evident early on, noting in 1928, "it is becoming increasingly apparent that a literary life is only compatible with leisure." It was this aristocratic life of luxury which he undoubtedly aspired towards, noting a year later "I can't get enthusiastic about things that haven't any pleasure in them." (Coincidentally Greenberg's theories would later bemoan the decline of aristocratic patronage in the arts.)

One gets the impression that Greenberg thought himself the only man on earth who wasn't enthralled with the notion of working for a living. His stubborn selfishness is also evident in the way he writes of his relations to others. For instance, after the break-up of his first marriage, he complained of having to contribute time or money to the upbringing of his son Danny- it is unsurprising that the boy grew up to be a deeply troubled young man. He spoke coldly of his father and treated his step-mother with contempt due to her lack of intellectual pedigree. Even his Partisan Review colleagues did not escape his barbed comments ("Preserve culture from Jews. Hitler's almost right", he writes in 1940.) Most curiously, however, is how Greenberg "dropped" Harold in the 1940s after having corresponded so intimately with him for 15 years. It is sadly typical of his heartlessness towards others.

Nonetheless, there are elements of humour throughout- Greenberg's constant references to his increasing baldness, for instance, as well as worries over his manhood (his poolside colleagues were "twice the size" it seems- oh dear.) This humour helps to alleviate the reader from enduring Greenberg's obsessions and prejudices, and make the collection just about worth the effort.

Writing of his ex-wife in 1939, Greenberg unwittingly describes himself in a nutshell: "She is positively the most selfish and heartless woman I've a clear conception of. The lack of a sense of responsibility and reciprocity to her fellow mortals, the easy motives for her acts- the fact that she requires so little motive to justify her cruelty." As a professional critic Greenberg would later emphasise how life was more important than art- that one should be a good citizen before being a good artist or writer. It's just a pity that, given the evidence here, he didn't always apply these high standards to himself.