Louis Adamic

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Louis Adamic
Austro-Hungarian Empire (present-day Slovenia)
DiedSeptember 4, 1951(1951-09-04) (aged 53)
Riegelsville, New Jersey, United States
NationalityYugoslav
Occupation(s)Author, translator
AwardsAnisfield-Wolf Book Award for From Many Lands

Louis Adamic

Slovene-American author and translator, mostly known for writing about and advocating for ethnic diversity of the United States.[5]

Background

Praproče Manor, birthplace of Louis Adamic

Louis Adamic was born at Praproče Mansion in

Austro-Hungarian Empire). He was baptized Alojzij Adamič.[6] The oldest son of the peasants Anton and Ana Adamič,[7] he was given a limited childhood education at the city school and, in 1909, entered the primary school at Ljubljana. Early in his third year he joined a secret students' political club associated with the Yugoslav Nationalistic Movement that had recently sprung up in the South-Slavic provinces of Austria-Hungary
.

Swept up in a bloody demonstration in November 1913, Adamic was briefly jailed, expelled from school, and barred from any government educational institution. He was admitted to the Jesuit school in Ljubljana, but was unable to bring himself to go. "No more school for me. I was going to America," Adamic wrote. "I did not know how, but I knew that I would go."[8]

On December 31, 1913, at the age of 15, Adamic emigrated to the United States. [9]

He finally settled in a heavily ethnic

United States citizen in 1918 as Louis Adamic.[10]

Career

Adamic first worked as a

First World War.[citation needed
] After the war he worked as a journalist and professional writer.

All of Adamic's writings are based on his labor experiences in America and his former life in Slovenia. He achieved national acclaim in America in 1934 with his book The Native's Return, which was a bestseller directed against King Alexander's regime in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia. This book gave many Americans their first real knowledge of the Balkans. In it, Adamic predicted that America would prosper by eventually "going left", i.e. adopting socialism.

He received the

Marshal Tito. From 1949 he was a corresponding member of the Slovenian Academy of Sciences and Arts
.

From 1940 onwards he served as editor of the magazine Common Ground. Adamic was the author of Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in America (1931); Laughing in the Jungle: The Autobiography of an Immigrant in America (1932); The Native's Return: An American Immigrant Visits Yugoslavia and Discovers His Old Country (1934); Grandsons: A Story of American Lives (1935, novel); Cradle of Life: The Story of One Man's Beginnings (1936, novel); The House in Antigua (1937, travel); My America (1938); From Many Lands (1940); Two-Way Passage (1941); What's Your Name? (1942); My Native Land (1943); Nation of Nations (1945); and The Eagle and the Root (1950). Maxim Lieber was his literary agent, 1930–1931 and in 1946. In 1941, Adamic won the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for From Many Lands.[11]

Adamic was strongly opposed to the foreign policy followed by British Prime Minister

libel. Harper and Brothers admitted the statement was untrue and Adamic also withdrew the claim and apologised; a substantial sum of damages was paid,[12] reported by the Daily Express as £5,000.[13] As of 2011 the copy of Dinner at the White House in the British Library is held in the Suppressed Safe collection, inaccessible to readers.[14]

His support for the Tito regime led to him being targeted[how?] by Nevada Senator Pat McCarran, who between May and September 1949, chaired a subcommittee to expose Soviet sympathizers among ethnic communities.[15]

Death

In 1951, he was found shot in his home in the Riegelsville section of Pohatcong Township, New Jersey, with his house burning and with a rifle in his hand.[16] It was supposed by assistant Hunterdon County physician Dr. John Fuhrmann to be suicide. However, State Police Lieutenant J.J. Harris implied that foul play was a possibility.[16] Found in Adamic's pocket by the police was a newspaper clipping of a story headlined "Adamic Red Spy, Woman Charges."[16]

Herbert Heisel, Hunterdon County Prosecutor, claimed that there was no reason to contradict the initial report of a suicide after further investigative and laboratory reports.[17]

Soviet Bloc.[19]

Anton Smole, of

anti-Stalinist Left. Included in these claims is a reported visit to Adamic's farmhouse in October of 1949 from an unknown man who warned him to stop submitting magazine articles that were friendly to Yugoslavia. Reportedly, Adamic had also been beaten severely on a California beach sometime in 1951, and left with the warning that he would be murdered if he continued writing about Yugoslavia.[20]

Ethel Sharp, Adamic's typist, claimed he had told her of an incident in October of 1950 in which four unidentified men visited Adamic's home and threateningly inquired about the progress of The Eagle and the Root. However, Adamic was apparently unfazed by the visit. The episode had not been reported to the authorities.[20]

In 1957, Howard L. Yowell, the then-current owner of the house where Adamic died, found $12,350 cash in a tin box within a wall of the farmhouse. The Flemington Police speculated that the money had belonged to Adamic.[21]

Legacy

According to John McAleer's

Edgar Award-winning Rex Stout: A Biography (1977), it was the influence of Adamic that led Rex Stout to make his fictional detective Nero Wolfe a native of Montenegro, in what was then Yugoslavia.[22] Stout and Adamic were friends and frequent political allies, and Stout expressed uncertainty to McAleer about the circumstances of Adamic's death. In any case, the demise seems to have inspired Stout's 1954 novel The Black Mountain
, in which Nero Wolfe returns to his homeland to hunt down the killers of an old friend.

Writings

Louis Adamic in 1930 lecture poster

Articles in Harper's Magazine:

  • "Racketeers and Organized Labor" (1930)
  • "Sabotage" (1930)
  • "Tragic Towns of New England" (1931)
  • "The Land of Promise" (1931)
  • "The Collapse of Organized Labor" (1931)
  • "Wedding in Carniola" (1932)
  • "Home Again from America," (1932)[23]
  • "Death in Carniola" (1933)
  • "Thirty Million New Americans" (1934)
  • "Education on a Mountain" (1936)
  • "Aliens and Alien-Baiters" (1936)
  • "The Millvale Apparition" (1938)
  • "Death in Front of the Church" (1943)

Books:

Translator:

  • Yugoslav Proverbs (1923)
  • Yerney's Justice by Ivan Cankar (1926)
  • Struggle by anonymous Yugoslav informants (1934)
  • Yugoslavia and Italy by Josip Broz Tito (1944)
  • Liberation. Death to Fascism! Liberty to the People! Picture Story of the Yugoslav People's Epic Struggle against the Enemy—To Win Unity and a Decent Future, 1941–1945 (1945)
Adamic wrote a biography of Robinson Jeffers (here in 1937, photographed by Carl Van Vechten, via Library of Congress)

Author:

Notes

  1. Literary Digest: "My name is pronounced in this country (America) exactly as the word Adamic, pertaining to Adam: a-dam′-ik."[1][2]
    His original surname was Adamič, pronounced in Slovenian a-DAH-mich.
  2. Austro-Hungarian Empire, which did not allow 15-year-old boys to leave the country, because they were to enter the army.[3] The correct year is written in the register of births of the Parish of Žalna.[4]

References

  1. Newspapers.com. Open access icon
  2. ^ Funk, C. E. (1936) What's the Name, Please?: A guide to the correct pronunciation of current prominent names, Funk & Wagnalls Company, Digitized February 12, 2010
  3. ^ "Unknown". Slavistična revija. 30. Slavistično društvo v Ljubljani, Inštitut za slovenski jezik, Inštitut za literaturo, 1982: 352. 1982.
  4. COBISS 14064129
    .
  5. ISBN 9780838640029
  6. ^ Taufbuch. Žalna. 1846–1900. p. 219. Retrieved November 26, 2022.
  7. doi:10.1093/anb/9780198606697.article.1600006
    . Retrieved August 22, 2022.
  8. ^ Adamic, Louis. Laughing in the Jungle: The Autobiography of an Immigrant in America. New York and London: Harper & Brothers, 1932. Reprinted by Arno Press and The New York Times, 1969; pp. 10–35.
  9. ^ In his author's note to his autobiography, Laughing in the Jungle (1932), Adamic describes himself as being "a boy of fourteen and a half" in 1913, when he left his native country for America (p. ix). "Late in the afternoon of the last day of 1913 I was examined for entry into the United States, with about a hundred other immigrants who had come on the Niagara (p. 43).
  10. ^ "LOUIS ADAMIČ, Slovene-American author and translator..." January 1898.
  11. ^ "From Many Lands". Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards. Retrieved May 22, 2022.
  12. The Manchester Guardian
    , January 16, 1947, p. 3.
  13. ^ "Libel on Churchill – damages £5,000", Daily Express, January 16, 1947, p. 3.
  14. ^ "The SS Suppressed Safe Collection of the British Library". Scissors & Paste Bibliographies. Retrieved October 12, 2011.
  15. ^ John P. Enyeart, "Revolutionizing Cultural Pluralism: The Political Odyssey of Louis Adamic, 1932-1951", Journal of American Ethnic History, 34:3, (Spring 2015), pp. 58-90
  16. ^
    ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved January 25, 2023.
  17. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved January 25, 2023.
  18. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved January 25, 2023.
  19. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved January 25, 2023.
  20. ^
    ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved January 25, 2023.
  21. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved January 25, 2023.
  22. ^ For more information see the origins section of the article on Nero Wolfe.
  23. ^ Adamic, Louis (October 1932). "Home Again From America". Harper's Magazine. Retrieved June 25, 2020.

External links

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