From Noon to Starry Night: A Life of Walt Whitman [Paperback]

Philip Callow (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 1, 1996

In From Noon to Starry Night, published on the 100th anniversary of Walt Whitman's death, the great poet of democracy has at last found his biographer. Philip Callow brings to Whitman's extraordinary life the skills and sensitivities of novelist, poet, and biographer. Here is the life of America's poet—beguiling, surprising, in some ways magical—a wonderfully detailed portrait, lyrically told. More successfully than any earlier biography, Callow's has captured Whitman's elusive truth. Drawing upon a broad range of sources, and quoting liberally from Whitman's poems, Callow has re-created the poet's life in all its roundness and intricate corners, "smiling evasively in his thicket of identities." Tradesman, teacher, buccaneer journalist, suddenly a poet; a man who loved crowds yet was fundamentally a solitary, with a sexual fluidity that remains a riddle to this day, Whitman was, Callow observes, a democrat who set out to imagine the life of the average man in average circumstances changed into something grand and heroic. "The sheer certainty of his voice can still astonish us,'' the author writes. He has brought Whitman alive again in this perceptive and evocative biography. With 8 pages of photographs.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

In an interesting and well-written biography, Callow ( Vincent Van Gogh ) attempts to illuminate Walt Whitman's life (1819-1892) by focusing primarily on the poet's experiences before the Civil War. Drawing heavily on earlier works by Gay Wilson Allen and Justin Kaplan, Callow adds a historical sketch of early-19th-century America to show how the nation Whitman celebrated so eloquently in Leaves of Grass formed his complex personality. The poet loved crowds but was by nature solitary; highly cultured, he identified with the unlettered; and he concealed in his daily life the buoyant sexuality expressed in his work. Only in his poetry, the author contends, could Whitman resolve these contradictions. Laced throughout with ample quotations that reveal Whitman's poetic genius, this admiring but objective portrait will interest both scholars and general readers.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Kirkus Reviews

Here, Callow (Son and Lover, 1975) finds Walt Whitman to be mysterious, evasive, contradictory--a ``psychological oddity'' whose very confessions, revelations, and disclosures created a ``thicket of identities'' that further obscured his real self. Callow repeats the familiar story: the deprived boyhood, the ragged but devoted family, the constant moving about to earn a living, from teacher to journalist, mostly in New York; then the sudden bursting into poetry, into song. The author traces Whitman's self-education in the theater, opera, painting, astronomy, geology, and phrenology; his friendships with artists, with Emerson and Thoreau; his knowledge of Dickens and Carlyle--all to be assimilated into his poetry. In Whitman's protean personality, Callow sees myriad contradictions: between his being visionary and practical; between his proletarian tastes and elitist friends; between his love of crowds and of solitude; between his poetry and his journalism; between his affirmation of life and his preoccupation with death; between his obsession with cleanliness and the squalor in which he often lived; between his Quaker background and his celebration of sexuality, which Callow dismisses as a ``weird sexual fluidity.'' But, ironically, the major contradiction belongs to Callow himself: Although he sees Whitman as America's ``first genuine voice,'' he explains the poetry by quoting English writers (Blake, Shelley, D.H. Lawrence) whom Whitman didn't read, while quoting only sparingly from the poet's own candid and engaging letters. A simplified and derivative summary of the life and works, no substitute for the inspired biographies by Gay Wilson Allen (The Solitary Singer, 1985) and Justin Kaplan (Walt Whitman, 1980), or for Whitman himself, especially in the brilliantly edited selected letters (1990). (Eight pages of photographs--not seen.) -- Copyright ©1992, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 411 pages
• Publisher: Ivan R Dee (August 1, 1996)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1566631335
• ISBN-13: 978-1566631334
• Product Dimensions: 8.7 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,852,123 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

2 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Very Good Book, April 4, 2001

By 

Mike McArdle (San Antonio, TX USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: From Noon to Starry Night: A Life of Walt Whitman (Hardcover)

This is a very well writen book that both informs and entertains. I am a Walt Whitman fan so it was naturaly intersting to me, but even a non-fan would love this insitful work. I say it is a must have for all serious Whitman fans.