Waldo Frank
Waldo Frank | |
---|---|
Born | Long Branch, New Jersey, USA | August 25, 1889
Died | January 9, 1967 White Plains, New York, USA | (aged 77)
Occupation | Novelist |
Nationality | American |
Waldo David Frank (August 25, 1889 – January 9, 1967) was an American novelist, historian, political activist, and literary critic, who wrote extensively for The New Yorker and The New Republic during the 1920s and 1930s. Frank is best known for his studies of Spanish and Latin American literature and culture and his work is regarded as an intellectual bridge between the two continents.
A radical political activist during the years of the
Biography
Early years
Waldo Frank was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, on August 25, 1889, during his family's summer vacation. He was the youngest of four children to Julius J. Frank, a prosperous Wall Street attorney employed by the Hamburg-Amerika Line,[1] and his wife, the former Helene Rosenberg, who hailed from the American South and was the daughter of a Confederate blockade runner during the American Civil War.[2]
The young Frank grew up on the
Following graduation, Frank worked briefly as a reporter for the
In January 1917, Frank married Margaret Naumburg, a postgraduate pupil of John Dewey.
Literary career
Frank's first published novel, The Unwelcome Man (1917), was a
]In 1916, Frank became associate editor of
In 1921 Frank met and became intense friends with the young writer Jean Toomer. He served as editor for Toomer's first novel, Cane (1923), a modernist work combining poems and associated stories, inspired by his working in the rural South as a school principal at a black school. Toomer became an important figure in the Harlem Renaissance; of mixed-race and majority-white, complex ethnicity, he resisted being classified as a black writer and said he was "an American". They had a falling out and their friendship ended after 1923, due in part to an affair between Toomer and Naumburg.[3]
Frank became a regular contributor to the New Yorker in 1925 under the pseudonym "Search-Light".
Political activity
Frank was an
In 1929 together with fellow writers
By the middle 1930s, Frank had moved close to the
During the United States Presidential election of 1936, Frank was active in the ranks of Professional Groups for Browder and Ford, working in support of the CPUSA ticket.[1] Frank's efforts on behalf of the Communist Party brought him some minor legal trouble when he was arrested together with CPUSA General Secretary Earl Browder when the two were campaigning in Terre Haute, Indiana, on September 30, 1936.[1]
In January 1937, Frank went to Mexico to attend the congress of the League of Revolutionary Artists and Writers.[1] There he interviewed Leon Trotsky,[1] held by the Joseph Stalin-led world Communist movement to be the leader of an international conspiracy to sabotage and overthrow the government of the USSR and the Russian Revolution itself. Upon his return to the United States, Frank suggested in a letter to The New Republic that an international tribunal be established to investigate the merit or lack thereof regarding the charges made by the Soviet against Trotsky.[1] This brought a harsh reply from Earl Browder, leading to a break between Frank and the Communist Party and his denunciation by Browder at the Second Convention of the League of American Writers in June 1937.[1]
Frank largely removed himself from political activity during the 1950s until in the fall of 1959 he visited revolutionary Cuba and was impressed enough to temporarily accept the position of chairman of the
Hispanic cultural studies
Waldo Frank was regarded as a living cultural bridge between North America and Latin America.
Already believing in Hispanic spiritual values, Frank traveled to Spain in 1921. He published his cultural study, Virgin Spain (1926). He had envisioned that there needed to be an organic synthesis of the two Americas: North and South, Anglo and Hispanic. He thought that Spain had achieved a "spiritual synthesis of its warring religions" and could be "an example of wholeness" for the New World.[4] Having also spent time in Spain, writer Ernest Hemingway mocked Frank's ideas in his book, Death in the Afternoon (1932).[5]
Frank's book, Rediscovery of America (1929), also expressed some of his utopian ideas. After this and other books were less commercially successful than he thought they deserved, Frank turned his attention to politics. His thesis about the spiritual strengths of Latin America won him wide acclaim when he toured there in 1929. His lecture tour was organized by the University of Mexico,
It was in South America that Frank's literary influence was greatest. Latin American literary and political figures saw in Frank a possibility for cooperation with the United States. Frank's thought paralleled, in some aspects, the anti-imperialism of the
Based on his travels in the region and continuing studies, Frank published South American Journey in 1943 and Birth of a World: Simon Bolivar in Terms of His Peoples in 1951.[8]
Death and legacy
Waldo Frank died January 9, 1967, in White Plains, New York.
Bibliography
Books
- Frank, Waldo (1917). The unwelcome man : a novel. Boston: Little, Brown.
- — (1919). Our America. New York: Boni & Liveright.
- — (1920). The dark mother : a novel. New York: Boni & Liveright.
- — (1922). City block. Darien, Conn.: Waldo Frank.
- — (1922). Rahab. New York: Boni & Liveright.
- — (1923). Holiday. New York: Boni & Liveright.
- Chalk Face (1924)
- Virgin Spain: Scenes from the Spiritual Drama of a Great People (1926)
- The Rediscovery of America. An Introduction to a Philosophy of American Life (1929)
- Primer mensaje a la América Hispana, (1929) published in Revista de Occidente, (Madrid, 1930)
- South of Us (published in Spanish as América Hispana) (1931)
- Dawn in Russia: The Record of a Journey (1932)
- The Death and Birth of David Markand (1934)
- The Bridegroom Cometh (1938)
- Chart for Rough Water (1940)
- Summer Never Ends (1941)
- The Jew In Our Day (1944)
- Island in the Atlantic (1946)
- The Invaders (1948)
- Birth of a World: Bolivar in Terms of his Peoples (1951)
- Not Heaven (1953)
- Bridgehead: The Drama of Israel (1957)
- The Rediscovery of Man (1958)
- The Prophetic Island: A Portrait of Cuba (1961)
- In the American Jungle, 1925–1936 (1968), collected essays
- Memoirs (1973)
Essays and reporting
- Search-Light (April 4, 1925). "Fez and the Dark Age". The New Yorker. Vol. 1, no. 7. pp. 11–12.
- Search-light (April 18, 1925). "291". Profiles. The New Yorker. Vol. 1, no. 9. pp. 9–10. Alfred Stieglitz.
- — (May 2, 1925). "The new Conquistadores". The New Yorker. Vol. 1, no. 11. pp. 7–8.
- Searchlight (May 23, 1925). "Funny-Legs". Profiles. The New Yorker. Vol. 1, no. 14. pp. 9–10. Charlie Chaplin.
- Search-light (May 30, 1925). "Ennobling our criminals". The New Yorker. Vol. 1, no. 15. p. 21.
- — (June 6, 1925). "In the menagerie". The New Yorker. Vol. 1, no. 16. p. 8.
Footnotes
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u Art Casciato, "Waldo Frank (1889-1967), in Bernard K. Johnpoll and Harvey Klehr (eds.), Biographical Dictionary of the American Left. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1986; pp. 143-144.
- ^ Michael A. Ogorzaly, Waldo Frank, Prophet of Hispanic Regeneration, pg. 14.
- ^ Kathleen Pfeiffer (ed.), Brother Mine: The Correspondence of Jean Toomer and Waldo Frank. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2010; pg. 2.
- ^ a b Ogorzaly, Waldo Frank, Prophet of Hispanic Regeneration, pg. 13.
- ^ Miriam B. Mandel (ed.), A Companion to Hemingway's Death in the Afternoon. Camden House, 2004; pg. 260.
- ^ Frank A. Ninkovich, The Diplomacy of Ideas: U.S. Foreign Policy and Cultural Relations, 1938–1950. Cambridge University Press, 1981; pg. 44.
- ^ Cortesi, Arnold, The New York Times https://timesmachine.nytimes.com/timesmachine/1942/08/03/issue.html
- ^ "Waldo Frank Papers," Special Collections, University of Delaware, www.lib.udel.edu/
Further reading
- William Robert Bittner, The Novels of Waldo Frank, Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1958
- Paul J. Carter, Waldo Frank, New York: Twayne Publishers, 1967
- Arnold Chapman, "Waldo Frank in the Hispanic World: The First Phase", Hispania Vol. 44, No. 4 (Dec., 1961), pp. 626–634, Published by: American Association of Teachers of Spanish and Portuguese
External links
- Waldo Frank Papers Archived March 5, 2016, at the The Newberry Library
- Works by Waldo Frank at Project Gutenberg
- Works by or about Waldo Frank at Internet Archive
- Waldo Frank at Goodreads
- Finding aid to the Waldo Frank papers at the University of Pennsylvania Libraries
- Waldo D. Frank Manuscript and Letters at Dartmouth College Library