At this year’s third annual Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books we will celebrate the launch of the fifth volume in the series, “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s. Halfway through the decade!
Volume V, covering 1924, continues to chronicle the private and professional lives of the key figures in the literary world in the fabulous decade of the 1920s.
“Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volume V—1924
You can see how the year ends before the postings on this blog get there!
Like the other four volumes—all available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk—Volume V has a unique dip-in-and-dip-out layout, designed by Lisa Thomson (LisaT2@comcast.net), that makes it easy to find the writers, artists, events and dates you’re most interested in. Find out what Ernest Hemingway was doing 100 years ago on your birth date! What was Virginia Woolf doing this week?! Or read straight through from January 1st through December 31st.
The unique layout of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s
Copies of the first four volumes will be available at the “Such Friends” booth in Writer’s Row at the Festival. Not only can you take advantage of the Festival discount—I’m happy to personally sign your copies!
Thanks to Amazon’s crack delivery system, you will also be able to enter the “Such Friends” raffle to win a free copy of the new “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volume V—1924, when they finally arrive, shortly after the Festival.
If you can’t make it to Highland Park next Saturday between 10 am and 5 pm, or just can’t wait that long, you can order your copies of all five volumes now from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, or by emailing me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com.
See you at the Festival!
“Such Friends” at last year’s Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
The 20-city, month-long Midwest speaking tour of Pulitzer-prize winning poet Edna St. Vincent Millay, about to turn 32, to promote her latest collection, The Harp-Weaver and Other Poems, culminates in her final appearance here on Broadway.
Plymouth Theatre
It’s been a grueling few weeks, but Millay has learned to allow for enough rest to keep going. Audiences have been enthusiastic, but mostly they want to hear her recite,
My candle burns at both ends;
It will not last the night;
But ah, my foes, and oh, my friends—
It gives a lovely light!”
Her new husband—seven months this week!—Dutch businessman Eugene Boissevain, 43, has been encouraging her and whipping up an audience for this final show. But he has missed his new wife terribly. He wrote to her sister, Kay, 27,
Call me up and have dinner, tea, or a cocktail…I’m as lonely as hell…Tell as many people as you can [about the final show]…and make them buy tickets.”
Gene Boissevain and Edna St. Vincent Millay
Gene is thinking it may be worth it to sell off his import business and become Edna’s full-time manager. He’s sure he can get her at least $600 per reading.
Also in tonight’s audience are the dean of Manhattan columnists, FPA (Franklin Pierce Adams), 43, and his date for the evening, novelist Edna Ferber, 38. During the show Frank is thinking that he enjoyed the sausages Ferber made them for dinner more than he’s enjoying this poetry reading. And he would rather read Millay’s poetry on the page than hear her dramatically declaim it.
On their way home, Ferber and Adams stop by the apartment of their friends from frequent lunches at the Algonquin Hotel, playwright George S Kaufman, 34, and his wife, publicist Bea, 29. They spend the rest of the evening gossiping and playing cards with the Kaufmans and another lunch buddy, free-lance writer Dorothy Parker, 30, continuing their conversation that started at lunch.
This summer I will be talking about the literary 1920s in Paris and New York at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about early 20th century supporters of the arts at Osher in the University of Pittsburgh.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Playwrights Marc Connelly, 33, and George S Kaufman, 34, have another hit on their hands.
Their latest Broadway success, Beggar on Horseback, starring Broadway newcomers Spring Byington, 37, and Osgood Perkins, 31, with music by Deems Taylor, 38, just opened to good reviews.
Broadhurst Theatre
But each writer is feeling that it’s time to move on. Kaufman is tired of Connelly’s laid back approach to their work. It seems as though Marc’s girlfriend always has a dead cat to bury.
But Kaufman knows that he needs to collaborate with somebody. So he teamed up with one of their friends from lunches at the Algonquin Hotel, free-lance writer Dorothy Parker, 30, to write a curtain-raiser for Beggar, a little one-act called Business Is Business.
George S Kaufman
What a disaster. She’s obscene. Offensive. She uses language no lady should ever use. And she has sloppy work habits. That’s the end of that, decides Kaufman.
That’s the end of that, decides Parker. Okay, sometimes he can be a bit funny. But there’s not much talent there. Basically, he’s a mess.
Later this month I will be talking about early 20th century supporters of the arts at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Later this month I will be talking about early 20th century supporters of the arts at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Paul Whiteman, 33, is realizing his dream of presenting a classical jazz concert. Back at the beginning of the year he had asked composer George Gershwin, 25, with whom he had collaborated on The Scandals of 1922, to write a piece that could be presented as part of an evening called “An Experiment in Modern Music.” Gershwin felt Whiteman’s deadline was unrealistic, so continually declined.
Aeolian Hall
But when Whiteman found out that a rival impresario was planning a similar concert, Gershwin agreed so they could be the first to give jazz a formal presentation. Even though George had less than six weeks to produce the finished piece.
On a train to Boston, from the sounds of the wheels on the rails, Gershwin got his rhythm. On such a tight schedule, everything about the piece was subject to change up until tonight’s premiere. George wanted to convey the energy of the country so called the concerto American Rhapsody. His brother Ira, 27, after seeing an exhibit of James McNeill Whistler’s Arrangement in Grey and Black, suggested adding color to the title. George changed it to Rhapsody in Blue.
George has performed the piece on an old piano at parties hosted by his friends who lunch regularly at the Algonquin Hotel, American Legion Weekly editor Harold Ross, 31, and his wife, New York Times reporter Jane Grant, also 31.
Poster for “An Experiment in Modern Music”
During rehearsals with Whiteman’s orchestra, his clarinetist Ross Gorman, 33, teased Gershwin by dragging out the opening glissando. George told him to stretch it and wail as much as he could.
Tonight’s “Experiment” has attracted stars of the theatrical as well as musical world: writer and photographer Carl van Vechten, 43; composer Igor Stravinsky, 42; and conductors Victor Herbert, 65, Walter Damrosch, 62, Fritz Kreisler, 49, and Leopold Stokowski, 41. The stated purpose of the evening is educational, so there is an introductory lecture followed by 26 musical movements.
Paul Whiteman Orchestra
Approaching the last two pieces, members of the audience in the uncomfortable, poorly ventilated hall are deciding they’ve experimented enough. Some are heading for the doors when Gershwin quietly walks on stage and sits down at the piano. Gorman begins his slide. The departing audience members come back to their seats.
Gershwin improvises part of the piano solo. All he’d written at this point in the manuscript was, “Wait for nod,” keeping the 23 orchestra musicians waiting for his signal to jump back in.
The piece is finished, and the crowd applauds rapturously, glad that they stuck around.
Their applause is followed by a rousing rendition of Pomp and Circumstance, by Edward Elgar, 66, and then everyone leaves.
N. B. Now that you’ve got that tune in your head, you can listen to Leonard Bernstein and the New York Philharmonic’s version here.
Later this month I will be talking about early 20th century supporters of the arts at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
In Ireland, poet, playwright and co-founder of the Abbey Theatre, William Butler Yeats, 58, is still basking in the glow of his recently awarded Nobel Prize for Literature.
Each time he responds to a friend’s congratulatory message, he makes sure to include,
I consider that this honor has come to me less as an individual than as a representative of Irish literature, it is part of Europe’s welcome to the Free State,”
of which he is a Senator.
The night after the prize was announced—when he and his wife Georgie, 31, celebrated by cooking sausages—there was a posh dinner held at the Shelbourne Hotel in St. Stephen’s Green. The first cable of congratulations came from Yeats’ countryman living in Paris, James Joyce, 41.
Shelbourne Hotel
With the 115,000 Swedish Kroner from the prize, equal to more than £6,000, Yeats is able to help out his sister Lily, 57, who had been admitted to a north London nursing home last summer. Willie’s American friend, lawyer and supporter of the arts John Quinn, 53, had advised him to use the money this way. However, Quinn also strongly advised Yeats to move Lily out of unhealthy London, and not to donate the money or use it to pay off any debt:
Properly invested in good American securities [it] would bring you in 8 % income or $3,200 a year. You ought not to touch the principal under any circumstances.”
Yeats appreciates the advice. But after he has Lily taken care of, he is going to pay off his debts. And those of his father, who died early last year.
*****
In England, the Hogarth Press, operated by Virginia, 41, and Leonard Woolf, 43, has been growing well.
This past year they published 11 titles; five of those were hand-printed on fine paper using their Minerva treadle platen press. That is the largest number they have ever hand-printed in one year, and they will probably not produce that many next year. The Woolfs are primarily interested in publishing books with outstanding content, not works of art that people only look at and admire.
This holiday they are at their country home, Monk’s House in East Sussex. Just about 10 miles away, at Charleston Farmhouse, Virginia’s sister, painter Vanessa Bell, 44, is spending the holiday with her children—Julian, 15, Quentin, 13, and Angelica, just turned five—and, oddly enough, her husband, art critic Clive Bell, 42. The kids have created a special issue of their Charleston Bulletin, featuring, “A life of Vanessa Bell dictated by Virginia Woolf, pictures and spelling by Quentin Bell.”
Charleston Bulletin, Christmas
Angelica’s father, the painter Duncan Grant, 38, is spending the holidays with his parents.
At midnight on New Year’s Eve, the new radio service, the British Broadcasting Corporation, broadcasts the chimes of Big Ben for the first time.
*****
In France, American ex-pat writer Gertrude Stein, 49, and her partner Alice B. Toklas, 46, are pleased that Gertrude’s work has been published more this past year.
She was included in the “Exiles” issue of the American literary magazine, The Little Review, which finally came out this fall. But Gertrude did notice that first place in that issue was given to the young Ernest Hemingway, 24, whom she considers to be one of her proteges. She even agreed to write a review of his Three Stories & Ten Poems, something she never does.
Three Stories & Ten Poems by Ernest Hemingway
Gertrude and Alice receive letters regularly from Hemingway, who is in Toronto where he and his wife went for the birth of their first child in October.
It is clear that the Hemingways are really hating being away from Paris, and he has written to Stein and Toklas that
It was a bad move to come back.”
Ernie asked for tips on where to live in Paris when they return early in the new year.
*****
In America, New York World columnist Heywood Broun, 35, and his wife, journalist Ruth Hale, 36, are throwing their annual New Year’s Eve bash at their brownstone on West 85th Street.
They invite all the literary friends they lunch with regularly at the Algonquin Hotel in midtown: free-lance writer Dorothy Parker, 30; magazine illustrator Neysa McMein, 35; novelist Edna Ferber, 38; fellow World columnist Franklin Pierce Adams, (FPA) 42.
Neysa McMein, left, in her studio with a model
Thanks to her association with the “Round Table,” Neysa recently made it into the papers for her Christmas project delivering toys and turkeys to families on the Lower East Side. She convinced her successful friends, including composer and Broadway producer Irving Berlin, 35, and World editor Herbert Bayard Swope, 41, to donate chauffeured limos to the cause.
Ferber sent her most recent novel, originally called Selina, but changed to So Big, off to her publisher with trepidation a few weeks ago. He wrote back immediately that it was so good he had cried while reading it! It’s going to be serialized in the Woman’s Home Companion.
FPA has been confiding in Edna for months that he is thinking of divorcing his wife. In his column he has even admitted that he was “as low-hearted as ever I was in my life.”
Tonight, he seems to Ferber to be downright giddy and boyish, not feeling guilty at all about the affair he’s been having with English socialite Esther Root, 29. Ferber tells FPA that in his tuxedo he looks as though he is a young boy who has just been confirmed.
I am a confirmed admirer of you,”
he tells her.
This year Broun and Hale have put their five-year-old son Heywood Hale Broun—“Woody”—in charge of the punch bowl, filled with Orange Blossoms–equal parts gin and orange juice with powdered sugar thrown in.
Early in the new year I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20th century patrons of the arts in the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
“Such Friends” once again interrupts its usual chronology of what was happening in the literary world 100 years ago with the solution to your holiday gift giving problems.
What to get for those bookish friends? You know they are fans of Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Woolf—even Gertrude Stein. But what have they read and what haven’t they read?
Betcha they haven’t read this!
“Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volumes I through IV
The four volumes of “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, covering 1920 through 1923, contain fascinating vignettes about the personal lives of the literary characters throughout this decade.
The easy-to-read layout means you can dip in and out of any volume or sit down and read it straight through from January 1 to December 31.
Sample pages from “Such Friends”: The Literary 1920s, Volumes I through IV
Can’t decide which volume to start with? Choose Volume I, covering 1920—think of it as your entry into the network.
But wait! Amazon can’t get it to you on time?! Shame on them!
If you’re of the European persuasion, head on over to Thoor Ballylee, W. B. Yeats’ tower in Co. Galway, and pick up some copies in the bookshop.
And if none of those options work for you, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com. I can send out copies from our vast inventory through the local post office, or, if you live on a Pittsburgh Regional Transit route, hand deliver signed copies in person.
Everyone’s reading “Such Friends”
So one way or another, make “Such Friends” part of your gift giving this year.
Happy holidays!
Early in the new year I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 in the Osher Lifelong Learning program at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20th century supporters of the arts at the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Another gift for your bookish friends, Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com or Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
You are definitely too stuffed to go out and fight your way through Black Friday crowds. Relax. Avoid the crowds and instead go out tomorrow for Small Business Saturday and shop your local bookstore. #smallbizbump
For example. If you are lucky enough to live near Squirrel Hill in Pittsburgh, PA, stop by Riverstone Books on Forbes Avenue.
Riverstone Books merch
Perhaps you are of a more Ohio-an persuasion. Then Pan Yan Bookstore in Tiffin is the place to be.
Pan Yan Bookstore
And if you find yourself on the West Coast of Ireland, stop by Thoor Ballylee, the tower owned by poet and playwright W. B. Yeats, and visit their gift shop.
Thoor Ballylee
At any of those three you will be able to pick up copies of “Such Friend”: The Literary 1920s. They all carry volumes I through IV, covering 1920 through 1923, and in the two American shops the copies are signed—by me!
If none of those locations is convenient, email me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com. If you live on a Pittsburgh Regional Transit bus line I’ll even deliver them myself.
Have a safe holiday weekend and support your local small businesses!
“Such Friends” at the Greater Pittsburgh Festival of Books
P. S. Remember–they make great gifts!
Early in the new year I will be talking about early 20th century supporters of the arts at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Carnegie-Mellon University, and about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Institute at the University of Pittsburgh.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available from me at kaydee@gypsyteacher.com .
When the Ballets Suedois performed part of its repertoire as a preview for an invitation-only audience, including two American writers, John Dos Passos, 27, and Donald Ogden Stewart, about to turn 29, at least two of the sketches went over the heads of the posh crowd.
Century Theatre
Stewart had seen the show in Paris, where it has been a big hit for weeks, so the producers asked him to introduce those two pieces with a funny monologue in front of the curtain at the next performance.
Didn’t work. Fell flatter than a pancake.
But since they have been including another piece from the Paris production, the one-act ballet Within the Quota, by American ex-pats living in Paris Cole Porter, 32, and Gerald Murphy, 35, the show has been doing much better. Even Broadway pros such as producer and composer Irving Berlin, 35, have been coming by. Ballets Suedois will definitely keep the ballet in its tour of the northeastern United States.
Within the Quota
*****
One mile south, in the theatre district, two experienced American playwrights, Marc Connelly, 32, and George S Kaufman, just turned 34, are trying to improve one of their own flops, West of Pittsburgh. Putting their hometown in the title hadn’t helped this dud from last year, so they fixed it up and renamed it The Deep Tangled Wildwood.
Frazee Theatre
Connelly and Kaufman have decided that their mistake this time was asking for and then following advice from all their writer friends who they lunch with regularly at the nearby Algonquin Hotel.
*****
Just two blocks away, Laugh, Clown, Laugh, by this theatre’s namesake, David Belasco, 70, and Tom Cushing, 44, both of whom have had recent Broadway successes, is doing well. Adapted from an Italian play, Ridi, Pagliaccio, the star is veteran actor Lionel Barrymore, 45, playing opposite his new (second) wife, Irene Fenwick, 36, who stands less than five feet tall.
In the New York World, drama critic AlexanderWoollcott, 36, says,
Lionel Barrymore deepens an old conviction that they do not make many actors like him in any one generation.”
Barrymore is hoping for a hit after a few failures, including his disastrous Macbeth of a few years ago.
In the new year, I will be talking about the literary summer of 1923 at the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at the University of Pittsburgh, and early 20th century arts patrons in the Osher program at Carnegie-Mellon University.
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
Frequent readers of this blog will be familiar with one of my favorite early 20th century characters, Irish-American lawyer and supporter of the arts, John Quinn (1870-1924).
For the past few years, Heidelberg University and the Tiffin-Seneca Public Library in Quinn’s hometown of Tiffin, Ohio, have sponsored the John Quinn Lecture Series online.
Next week, I am honored to be the first presenter to give my talk, “Such Friends”: Quinn’s Circle of Artists and Writers, both in-person and online.
John Quinn Lecture Series poster
What? You can’t make it to Tiffin, Ohio?
Good news!
By clicking here, you can register for free to watch my talk on Zoom. You will be sent a link the day before.
Or wait a few weeks and I’ll tell you how to access the video on YouTube.
John Quinn was a tireless supporter of the arts and artists. Come with me next week back to the early days of the last century to spend time with Quinn and his circle of “such friends.”
Manager as Muse, about Scribner’s editor Maxwell Perkins’ relationships with F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway and Thomas Wolfe, is also available on Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk in both print and e-book versions.
SuchFriends Blog 