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Uphill with Archie: A Son's Journey

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The "Uphill" in Uphill with Archie refers to Uphill Farm, the MacLeish family home in Conway, Mass., and with the book's opening paragraph, it's like we're there with the author, William MacLeish, and his father, Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Archibald MacLeish, surrounded by leather- and cloth-bound books in the book room of the house, a crackling fire in the fireplace while a cold northeasterly wind blows outside. His father shows William the final draft of a poem he's dedicated to his son.

But all was not idyllic cultured bliss at Uphill Farm. There was a certain stoicism that suppressed expressions of anger, frustration and despair, and dictated that "Even positive emotions were not allowed out, unless fully under control...." As a result, it was not until his parents died (Archie died in 1982, at the age of 90) that William was able to look at his "darker impulses."

Indeed, the traits William MacLeish believes his father passed on to him include, "a fascination with language and its rhythms, the need for control, and an unlimited capacity for worry...."

For years, William confesses, he basked in the glow of his father's fame, growing up in a life of privilege. But the glow also cast a shadow, as William struggled to overcome being known as his father's son.

Eventually, he would come into his own as a writer and his capable hand is evident here, with eloquent phrases, such as, "I can say that since no one lives without bleeding, those who write about lives are apt to come upon some scabs."

Growing up, William's choice of friends was restricted to sons of the socially prominent, many of whom lived at a distance, which often left him with nothing better to do on a rainy day than read books.

Archie was first a successful lawyer who turned down a partnership in a prestigious law firm because he had a "central belief that he was born to be a poet." Setting off to Paris to dedicate his life to writing poetry, he was displeased with what came out when he arrived and started to write. So he stopped writing for several months and read the works of the world's most renowned poets.

In good company as a poet in the 1920s and '30s, Archie often consulted his peers, among them Ezra Pound, who encouraged him to learn Arabic and Gaelic to discover a fresh perspective. But some of the best advice for poets is perhaps found in MacLeish's work itself, as in "Ars Poetica," which appeared in 1926: "A poem should be wordless./ As the flight of birds."

During his time in Paris, Archie's aunt wrote to report she had checked with her literary contacts in regards to his poetic talent and had found none who would support him; encouraging him to return to the law. Meanwhile, Archie's father provided financial support in the form of the same allowance he had provided Archie while Archie was in law school.

Paris in the 1920s boasted a wealth of creative talent, with the likes of Picasso, Stravinsky, Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and an Irish teacher named James Joyce who was plying publishers with a manuscript of a novel called Ulysses that no one wanted. Even Joyce's wife seemed to be convinced he had chosen the wrong profession, and reportedly mocked and ridiculed him.

After five years in Paris came the recognition from critics that Archie called "the itch of notice." Proclaiming "I am a poet. The rest can wait," he and his young family headed back to the United States.

When at home, Archie wrote in a one-room saltbox with fieldstone walls almost daily from 7 a.m. till noon, starting over at the beginning of the poem each day, with a good day resulting in a few lines of advancement. After the October 1929 stock market crash, he took a job writing for the newly founded Fortune magazine, while keeping time to do his own writing.

Despite his success, MacLeish was envious of his friend Ernest Hemingway, the only artist he knew that was making enough to survive from his craft in the '30s. The relationship between the two men would become strained amidst accusations MacLeish had sold out by going to Fortune, culminating in an argument while sailing off Key West. They resolved to put ashore to settle the matter, but Hemingway set sail again as MacLeish waded into shore, returning only to retrieve him on Hemingway's wife's insistence.

Later, Archie would claim that during his time at Fortune he had, "produced more good poems than at any other time in my life. So it was pretty hard for me to assume that that was selling out." In fact, in 1936 The New York Times called him "the most influential poet writing in America today."

He would go on to become a professor at Harvard, teaching the likes of Robert Bly and Jonathan Kozol.

William's self-esteem suffered from the emptiness left by a father who was rarely home - or who was emotionally detached when he was - a situation made worse by his schoolmates, who told him poets are sissies.

Eventually he would find himself though, a process described beautifully in a depiction of how, when in his fifties, while out running as part of a week-long retreat, he saw an image of the former child he was come out of the bushes and run ahead: "Then he slowed, let me catch up, and melted into my chest."

William's own experience is most interesting, including a hilarious incident involving protestors at Yale when he was in charge of External Affairs at the university.

By the time you've finished the book, you'll feel as if you've known him deeply and there is wisdom in this honest portrait of the writer's life for all who read it.

Uphill With Archie is a beautiful read, and an important one. Archibald MacLeish was a singular man, one who played a large role in his age of American History, as poet, statesman, and influential thinker. Reading Uphill, one is brought back into an age which is directly relevant to our own, and so the book succeeds as a fascinating document in American History. It also succeeds wonderfully as the story of a son (the author) growing up in the presence of a man larger than life, who had friends like Louis Frankfurter and Clark Clifford, whose personality burned so bright that others nearby seemed either illumined by it, or merely silhouetted. It is a powerful tale of one man's growing older, and one man's growing up.
William MacLeish is a fluent and graceful writer, and this book was a fine companion for several day's reading.

Bill MacLeish is much too hard on himself, especially for someone who had already lived for nearly seventy years by the time he got around to writing this book, perhaps as a way of not just honoring his famous father, the poet Archibald MacLeish, but to exorcise some personal demons. The author, whose father lived to be nearly ninety, became so used to living in his father's shadow that he he had trouble recognizing his own not inconsiderable accomplishments. Indeed, even after Archie died, Bill felt guilty about inheriting his share of the family fortune, about being comfortably wealthy as a result.

"Memoir writing," the author comments, "is better left to the accomplished masochist, which must the the one reason I have kept with it." He tells of "laughing, snorthing, cursing, and sobbing" as he worked at writing this book. As a memoirist myself, I must agree, but not completely. Because writing the kind of book MacLeish has written must, ultimately, help. If it didn't, then Bill MacLeish is definitely too hard on himself. Because this is a beautiful book - both as a tribute to his father, whom he obviously loved very much and, later in life, even got to tell him so, something many adult sons never quite get around to doing, much to their everlasting regret.

Having said all these things, I have to confess that it took me more than a hundred pages to really get into this memoir, mostly because there was - at least from my point of view - way too much family history here, particularly about earlier generations of MacLeishes. I only began to get interested when Bill MacLeish began to tell more about his own life. Because, while I know who Archibald MacLeish was, and even studied some of his poems and plays in college oh so many years ago, I really remember almost nothing of them now. Which is not what his son wants to hear, I know, but there it is. Bill M quotes Shelley's "Ozymandias" at the end of his narrative, in talking about the fleetingness of fame and fortune, so I think he will understand. He spent many years trying to figure out what to do with his life, noting that his father and brother, Ken, were the writers in the family, and apparently didn't feel he could ever possibly compare - or compete. The fact is though Bill MacLeish is one hell of a good writer. And there was one line toward the end of the book that really made me chuckle, because it's indicative of what all serious writers do, and shows how preoccupied they can become when they are in the throes of writing something -

"When I'm in the middle of my writing, I can walk right past Elizabeth [his wife] and not see her. This riles her, as does my penchant for letting my attention sag in mid-conversation while the writing mind nibbles, like the mice in our walls, on bits of sentences."

Bingo! Bill MacLeish. You are a writer and you always have been, and UPHILL WITH ARCHIE is a damn fine piece of work. I wish you well, and thank you for writing not just your father's story, but your own. - Tim Bazzett, author of SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA and BOOKLOVER, coming in September 2010