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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A nearly forgotten time, July 5, 2001
I enjoyed Werth's book very much. It accomplishes many things: it evokes the hothouse environment of American academia in the mid-20th century, it places Newton Arvin--a respected critic of American literature--in what must have been for him a bewildering nightmare of suspicions and scandal, and it chillingly recalls the hostilities and dangers endured by gay people in the 1950s. I especially enjoyed how Barry Werth explained Arvin's attraction to literary figures such as Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville, and Longfellow, each of whom represented political and historical forces with which Arvin could readily sympathize. (I disagree with another reviewer who complained about Werth's suggestion of a Melville-Hawthorne "romance." Other critics and historians have explored the nature of these two men's friendship, and the suggestion that both men were gay is hardly a new or shattering idea. Anyway, Werth is primarily concerned with Arvin's interest in Melville and Hawthorne as authors and not in the possible romance between the two men.) Arvin was lucky to be surrounded by devoted colleagues and friends, and if he comes off in this book as a cold, selfish intellectual, he nonetheless earned the respect and support of some very distinguished people, including David Lilenthal, Edmund Wilson, and Van Wyck Brooks. He certainly seems an admirable person when compared to the hypocrites in public office who regulated morality in 1950s America. Werth is to be congratulated for doing an excellent job in retrieving a seemingly irretrievable past and for restoring Arvin to the distinguished circle of critics and teachers to which he once belonged.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
At long last, the whole story is told, May 16, 2001
For years ths 1960 scandal involving Smith College faculty and others has been whispered and gossiped about, rarely accurately. Finally, Barry Werth has taken the time and trouble to put all the pieces together, the ruthless behavior of corrupt police, the virtual "reign of terror" the incident engendered, the utter devastation wrought upon the lives and careers of several teachers, most notably the distinguished American literary scholar and critic Newton Arvin. Werth is a skilled researcher, a fine narrator, and above all an honorable and just writer. He makes no judgments, leaving the reader to make his own. It is hard to believe, in this relatively liberated day, that the merest suggestion, the slightest hint of homosexuality, was sufficient to destroy lives, careers, reputations. Even honorable academic institutions like Smith College did not behave admirably in this woeful tale of a monumental miscarriage of justice. Above all, set in the context of his biography, the whole incident ruined the life of a brilliant scholar, teacher, and critic whose fragility rendered him incapable of coping with the barbarism of a biased and inept judicial system. I was there and lived through it: it is, alas, all too true. This is an important book and ought to be on the MUST READ list of every American interested in the preservation of civil liberties.
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10 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The Story of a First Class Rat, April 30, 2001
By A Customer
"The Scarlet Professor" is the story of a rat. A man who betrayed his closest friends and thereby destroyed their careers and changed the course of their lives. Prof. Newton Arvin, when charged with the possession of homoerotic pictures and magazines, "sang like a canary," as they used to say in ganster movies. This puzzled many of his closest friends, veterans of the McCarthy era who managed NOT to name names during the Communist witchhunts of the '50s. And Arvin had many famous friends. One lover was Truman Capote, who was less than half his age. But the flaw in "The Scarlet Professor" might be that Newton comes across as a rat on every page. He was a whining hypochondriac; he was not attractive physically (at least in photos); he was not magnetic in conversation. So what lure did he have? Barry Werth does not address this. "The Scarlet Letter" is a wonderful book to read right now as a reminder of how poorly pre-1960 America treated homosexuals, communists and the mentally ill. It is also a good argument against those who would broaden police searches and seizures. It presents a nice snapshot of life in a women's college as it used to be lived.
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