Customer Reviews

Life of Kenneth Rexroth

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Linda Hamalian doesn't like Kenneth Rexroth and that is why everything is wrong about this book. Hamalian comes across like a jilted lover bent on exacting revenge by making a demon of a man who, in my view, doesn't come across as any worse than many artists... Rexroth was a poet who occasionally behaved very badly, and wasn't above sinning every once in a while. So what?
My first reaction to Hamalian's book is "why did you take the time to write what you wrote" but then, I have my theory... her preface describing her youthful idolatry of Rexroth is revealing. She is angry because when she was more naive and didn't know Rexroth's personal flaws, she built him up in her imagination as a quasi-saint, the master poet who had lived a noble life and captured it all in poetry. Upon undertaking research for the biography she discovered he was just a man with many flaws who tried his best but made many mistakes in life...

This vision - of the disappointed fan who has come to see that her idol is not perfect, but a mere mortal - colors her entire narrative. She indulges deeply and frequently in speculation, attributing motives and thoughts to people to explain events. To make thing worse, her judgments of the human character are incredibly shallow; her unfounded, speculative judgments are generally simplistic, popular psychoanalytic cliches to explain and "rationalize" (whatever that word means) the actions taken by people in this book ... Further, when she is at her most critical and judgmental, she often is caught writing without footnotes or citing as sources of her information people who are simply not reliable... people who were Rexroth's enemies in life. She dwells on Rexroth's three failed marriages, describing Rexroth over and over as a philandering monster and his wives, each an enduring saint faultless in Hamalian's narrative. Hamalian goes out of her way to build a case that Rexroth was a monster and a pig.

Hamalian has not written the kind of biography that is appropriate for a poet of significant production. There is almost no engagement with Rexroth's work. Hamalian's engagement with Rexroth's writing is superficial, as if there is a sacred dividing line between biography and literary criticism that must never be crossed. Instead, it is just an gossipy domestic soap opera of who did what to whom and who said what and who slept with whom first and who is mad at whom and for what. The fact that the main character of this book happens to write and publish poetry is completely secondary. This is just the domestic drama of a bad husband, bad father, and n'er-do-well who has a hard time being polite to his peers. It could just as easily be the biography of a school teacher, dog groomer, or jazz musician.

Despite Hamalian's annoying, immature, in fact rude, presence, this book is still a page turner because Rexroth shines through somehow. Rexroth lived a great life and in many ways was a great man, a great citizen, and a great artist. Rexroth was a witness to an extraordinary century and had the sensitivity and perception to understand and describe that century in his writings. If you are familiar with Rexroth's literary output, this narrative can be an illuminating supplement. It is astonishing to me how much of the marvel that was Rexroth still refuses to be destroyed by the biographer.