Customer Reviews

Republic of Dreams: Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910-1960

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Ross Wetzsteon examines the remarkable life of a handful of distinctive writers and artists that made Greenwich Village for what it was - a refuge for the bohemians that came from all points of the United States from 1910-1960. REPUBLIC OF DREAMS tells the story of the core of writers that drifted in an out of the Village during its most creative and innovative period, and displays an intimate and intense portrait of the most vibrant time in literary and cultural history. Wetzsteon brings the Village alive with the numerous stories that offer a glimpse of the person behind the person, which presents each writer or artist as humanly as possible -- self-absorbed, narcissistic, and always striving to maintain marginality as a means to creativity in their insular middle class upbringing (568). He parallels the difficult and at times, the idiosyncratic experiences that each subject faced to their spontaneous creativity. Hauntingly, their lives mirrored the novels and poems that they wrote may have followed the moniker of "live hard and die young." It is unfortunate that this became true for writers, such as Hart Crane, e.e. cummings, Jackson Pollack, and Dylan Thomas. However, others lived over the age of 50 despite living with their insane demons -- John Gould, Djuna Barnes, and Edna St. Vincent Millay; while others lived the starving artist life - William Carlos Williams and the Eminent Villagers mentioned in chapters six and chapter seven.


REPUBLIC OF DREAMS contains and immense collection of stories that Wetzsteon painstakingly compiled and researched. It is unfortunate that it isn't a complete narrative, but comes close in spite of Wetzsteon's untimely death in 1998, which is mentioned in the Afterword. This could have been volume one of a two volume set due to the enormous content of the book, 619 (569 of narrative) pages. The period in which he presents spans 50 years of Village life, and he does not cover every character that lived within this vicious circle of unrestrained eccentricity and vitality. Despite the number of pages, that should not discount anyone from exploring this important part of Americana. No one can say that these inhabitants of the Village lived a lackluster life, but one that overflowed with great extremity.

The late Ross Westzsteon had crammed this big book with a wonderful amount of love and research and it shows on every page. Republic of Dreams (Greenwich Village: The American Bohemia, 1910-1960) consists of mini-biographies for chapters as it is not so much a history of the Village as it is a history of the significant people who made the Village their home, sometimes briefly and sometime for life. The idea is presented that the Village was only truly the Village as it exists in lore in the 1910s. Three-quarters of the book is devoted to this period and this is the funniest, most touching and most fascinating part of the book. All of the lives covered in this first period intersect creating a true picture of a community of artists, actors, writers, labour leaders, society matrons, anarchists and hangers-on that create a unified whole in the book. The last quarter of the book (covering the next forty years) feels a little uncooked, while still being interesting. This book is an incredible place to spend a number of hours and a great chance to meet the people who made the Village the Village.

Let's dispense with a misconception caused by the title of this excellent collection: the book is not really a traditional "history" of Greenwich Village. As the introduction acknowledges, the nearly 600 pages do not chronicle the neighborhood's events and hangouts, its architecture and commerce, its ethnic diversity and working-class character. Instead, the Ross Wetzteon presents biographical vignettes of "its writers and artists and intellectuals, its radicals and bohemians, eccentrics and prophets," many of whom migrated to Manhattan from elsewhere and created a social and intellectual laboratory. The geographical area known as the Village (along with its summertime counterpart, Provincetown) features largely as a backdrop to a generous sampling of countercultural lives.

With those caveats in mind, then, "Republic of Dreams" is still a must-have for anyone interested in New York history or with the rise of twentieth-century radical politics and social libertarianism. Famous Villagers--from Emma Goldman and Eugene O'Neill to Djuna Barnes and Hart Crane to Delmore Schwartz and Dawn Powell--mix it up with lesser-know eccentrics and crazies, including the Baroness, Harry Kemp, Doris the Dope, and Joe Gould (infamous for an unpublished masterwork that probably never existed). The book also gives extensive attention to the succession of journals--especially The Masses, Mother Earth, Liberator, The Dial, Others, and The Little Review--whose enduring national influence belied their modest circulations, editorial squabbles, precarious finances, and legal troubles.

Wetzteon's biographical chapters include hundreds of hilarious, sordid, and sorrowful memories and anecdotes. There's E. E. Cummings screaming across the Patchin Place courtyard, "Are ya still alive, Djuna?" Robert Clairmont, the original deep-pocketed party monster, complained that "the life of pleasure is hard." Dawn Powell lamented, "A woman needed two lovers, one to comfort her for the torment the other caused her." Surveying the landscape of his friends' unconventional tendencies, William Carlos Williams noted that "intellectuals began to intrude on the terrain opened by the lunatic fringe"--and that fringe is well represented here.

If the book has a weakness, it's that Wetzteon does tend to focus on the dismal shadows of the Village's various subcultures. Somebody who had never been to Manhattan might be forgiven for thinking that bohemianism is composed almost entirely of marital squabbles (and the sexual freedom that often caused them), alcoholic binges, and recurrent homelessness. There is a surfeit of nightmares in the "Republic of Dreams"; all too many of its intellects and artists died young or unhappy--or both. And the lucky survivors of each generation mourn the passing of the Village of their youth; bohemia repeatedly loses out to nostalgia. But, if anything, these stories of the Village's unforgettable residents cumulatively prove that for every counterculture that sinks into oblivion or enters the mainstream, there is a new demimonde ready to take its place.

Way back when America was still a conglomeration of British colonies, Greenwich Village was settled by the rich and merchant class of lower Manhattan as an escape from the recurring ravages of yellow fever and cholera. For this reason Greenwich Village was, essentially, never really mapped out; never really settled in accordance to any public plan. Of course, there was no grid plan either. Perhaps this haphazard beginning is what gave the area its combined flavor of anarchy and refinement. Where else would you find a Washington Square Park whose north end was the home to upper or, at least, bourgiose families, and whose south end was a magnet for immigrants not so rich?

Focusing on what was arguably the Village's heydays, the 50 years from 1910 to 1950, the late Ross Wetzsteon reveals to us a neighborhood as provincial and insular as any New England town in one way, and as forward-looking and worldly in another. REPUBLIC OF DREAMS is a look at the artists and writers, activists and thinkers, who populated this amazing world (e.g. Gould, Pollack, O'Neill, Reed, Sinclair). And, as Wetzsteon demonstrates, the Village sort of became an image for the entire world on the verge of modernism.

Prof. Wetzsteon's style is learned and academic, but far from stuffy or dull. And he peppers the book with anecdotes that are witty and tragic. It is a shame that Prof. Wetzsteon has been taken from us, but at least his REPUBLIC OF DREAMS will be with us for a long while.

Ross Wetzsteon titled the introduction to this book "The Village becomes 'The Village,'" which sums up pretty well the central argument of this impressive collection of biographies. "Republic of Dreams" is not a history of a geographical area -- a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan with a fairly agreed-upon set of boundaries -- but rather a history of a literary, artistic, and intellectual set of ideas summed up by the phrase "Greenwich Village." Though the reader may not come away with a precise idea of what-happened-where for every event and individual he describes ("Republic of Dreams" doesn't even include a map of the Village), she'll certainly have an understanding of how Greenwich Village became the font of creativity and influence that it was, particularly in the first half of the last century.

Most interesting, I thought, was Wetzsteon's depiction of the decline of bohemianism from the Village's "first generation" in the 'teens, through the twenties and thirties, and into the post-war era. Whereas the original Villagers, activists and radicals like Jack Reed, Max Eastman, and Gene O'Neill had a positive set of beliefs and objectives, those who came afterwards often seemed to have little more than a grudge and a sense of entitlement. As Wetzsteon notes in his chapter on Max Bodenheim, "to many Villagers in the twenties -- and this perversion of bohemian ideals continued for decades -- disaffection from the middle class became an end in itself. When rejection by bourgeois society becomes a sign of merit, irresponsibility a sign of authenticity, incapacity a sign of sensitivity, and dismissal a sign of artistic temperament, it's not far to go until failure becomes the ultimate sign of integrity. ... Bodenheim and his ilk turned their outcast status into a racket" (p. 393). I have to admit that as the author chronicled this period, focusing on one rejected, irresponsible, incapable personality after another -- Bodenheim, Wolfe, Gould, Cummings, Thomas -- I found myself skimming the text. But clearly, that too was part of what the Village represented. As the author points out, "after all, in this community, scandalous conduct, anguish, and despair were among the surest signs of genius" (p. 525).

The fact that I didn't enjoy reading through page after page of that shouldn't be seen as a criticism of the author, though. On the contrary, I quite enjoyed Ross Wetzsteon's descriptive skill and obvious affection for his subject. I also appreciated his sense of humor -- while many historians feel the need to maintain (or simulate) Olympian objectivity, Wetzsteon isn't afraid to inject humor or the occasional arch observation into his writing. Given how dry I think this subject could have been -- particularly at this length -- in the hands of a less capable author, Wetzsteon's skill and distinctive authorial voice makes for a much better experience. As I walked the streets of the Village myself for the first time a few weeks ago, my experience was greatly enriched by having "visited" it first with Ross Wetzsteon. Someone more familiar with the area, particularly a current or former resident, would probably get even more out if it.

I have to give this 5 stars too simply because so much of it is useful and illuminating. I acquired it for the purposes of reading about Bohemia which is a mental state that has always been attractive to me. An added side benefit of Wetzsteon's approach, with its chapters that can easily stand alone, is that so many famous artists are thoroughly expounded upon within the spine (and cost) of a single book that it ends up saving you money. I picked up enough about Dylan Thomas, Edna St. Vincent Millay, and Eugene O'Neill that their full biographies will remain on my Wish List for the unforeseeable future. What the author offers here is a shotgun blast of information concerning emblematic figures that made the village the village--or our own Left Bank--during a particular fifty year period. There's was a world not easily recreated and that's how it should be or else we'd all die of malnutrition and alcoholism. The writing is quite good and Wetzsteon managed to pack enough information into these pages where the book become more of an experience than a didactic history lesson.

or student of the history of NY in the 20th century. They were all here and lived within a mile of eachother.

A treasure.