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Trial balance: the collected short stories of William March, William March, University of Press, 1987, , 506 pages. Collects the Alabama writer's short stories, including "The Little Wife," "Mist on the Meadow," "Happy Jack," "Personal Letter," "The Funeral," and "Dirty Emma".

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It Was Like My Trying to Have a Tender-Hearted Nature A Novella and Stories, Diane Williams, Sep 19, 2007, Fiction, 132 pages. This work by Diane Williams delves into the strange relationships of men and women. From marital betrayal to spousal abuse and unrelenting desire, Williams illuminates the ....

Flight from Stonewycke , Michael R. Phillips, Judith Pella, 1985, , 256 pages. Volume 2..

99 Fables , William March, Apr 25, 2011, Fiction, 226 pages. “March has picked up where and Don Marquis left off, prick- ing vanities and exposing antics of chronic phonies. . . . Here are damning truths about the Noblest Animal ....

The Looking-glass , William March, 1943, Authors, American, 346 pages. .

Devil make a third , Douglas Fields Bailey, 1989, Social Science, 385 pages. .

A William March Omnibus , William March, 1956, , 397 pages. .

The Tanager, Volume 23, Issue 4 , , 1948, , . .

Trial balance , Herbert Cole Coombs, Dec 31, 1981, Biography & Autobiography, 341 pages. .

The dry well stories, Marlin Barton, May 21, 2001, Fiction, 219 pages. This collection brings together the author's twelve best stories, all set in the same small Southern community in Alabama. The world of these stories covers five generations of ....

Why I Don't Write Like Franz Kafka , William S. Wilson, May 1, 2002, Fiction, 133 pages. Nearly 25 years later, FC2 is proud to reissue this classic collection of short fiction by William S. Wilson that seems even more relevant today..

Tongues of Flame , Mary Ward Brown, Aug 30, 1993, Fiction, 184 pages. These beautifully crafted stories depict the changing relationships between black and white southerners, the impact of the civil rights movement, and the emergence of the New ....

The Little Wife and Other Stories , William March, 1935, , 313 pages. .

The Tallons , William March, 1936, , 350 pages. . Is It Sexual Harassment Yet? , Cris Mazza, 1998, Fiction, 224 pages. .

Reviews were plentiful and positive; Roy S. Simmonds lists 31 reviews in his William March: An Annotated Checklist.[1] Among the more notable reviewers are , who, in his review of the book in The New Republic, famously claimed that March "is understandably the most underrated of all contemporary American writers of fiction."[2] Marjorie Farber, in The Kenyon Review, claims to be "greatly under the spell of William March" and states that the collection presents an "astonishing...variety of quiet desperation and low misery and high comedy."[3]

March grew up in rural Alabama in a family so poor that he could not finish high school, and did not get a high school equivalency until he was 20. He later studied law, but was again unable to afford finishing his studies. In 1917, while working in a Manhattan law office, he volunteered for the US Marines and saw action in World War I, for which he was decorated with some of the highest honors—the French , the American Distinguished Service Cross and the Navy Cross. After the war he again worked in a law office before embarking on a financially successful business career. He also began writing, first short stories, then in 1933 a novel based on his war experiences, Company K. Literary success eluded him. His last novel, , was published in 1954, the year March died. It became a bestseller, but he never saw his story adapted first for the stage and then for film. Only Company K and The Bad Seed are still in print.

William March was born William Edward Campbell, in Florida, where his father worked as a "timber cruiser", his job to estimate which stands of trees were big enough for lumber companies to invest in a saw mill in the area. He was the eldest son of eleven children (two of whom died in infancy), and grew up in and around Mobile, Alabama.[1] His father was an occasional heavy drinker who had a fondness for reciting poetry (especially Edgar Allan Poe's) at the dinner table.[2] His mother, whose maiden name was Susan March, was probably better educated and taught the children to read and write; in the eyes of her family, she had married beneath herself.[3] Neither of them seemed to have supported young March's literary efforts; he later stated he had composed a 10,000 line poem at the age of 12 but had burned the manuscript. Having 8 other siblings, March was afforded no privileges; by the time he was 14 the family moved to Lockhart, Alabama, preventing him from going to high school (Lockhart would later become the imaginary Hodgetown, Pearl County, in March's 1936 novel The Tallons[4]). Instead, March received occasional schooling, probably in one-room edifices then common in sawmill towns.[5] He found employment in the office of a lumber mill.[6]

Two years later March had returned to Mobile and found employment in a local law office. By 1913, he had saved enough money to take a high school course at Valparaiso University in , which allowed him to enroll at the to study law. He thrived as a student but lacked the necessary tuition to complete his law degree. In the fall of 1916, he moved to New York. There he lived in a small boarding house in Brooklyn, finding work as a clerk in the Manhattan law firm of Nevins, Brett and Kellog, and attending plays.[7]

On June 5, 1917, March registered for military service, a little over a month after the U.S. entered World War I. He volunteered for the U.S. Marines on July 25, and after completing his training on Parris Island was shipped to France in February 1918.[8] Along with two other future World War I literary figures, John W. Thomason (Fix Bayonets) and (What Price Glory?),[citation needed] March embarked on USS Von Steuben at . March reached France in March 1918, serving as a sergeant in Co F, 2nd Battalion, 5th Marines, 4th Brigade of Marines, Second Division of the U.S. Army Expeditionary Force.[9]

March's company took part in every major engagement in which American troops were involved, incurring heavy casualties. As a member of the 5th Marines, March saw his first action on the old Verdun battlefield near Les Eparges, and shortly afterwards at Belleau Wood, where he was wounded in the head and shoulder.[10] He returned to the front in time for the offensive at Soissons and the Battle of Saint-Mihiel. March was twice promoted and had attained the rank of sergeant when he was assigned to French troops in the Blanc Mont area, on "statistical duties".[11] During the assault on Blanc Mont, which started on 3 October, March "left a shelter to rescue wounded", and the next day, "during a counterattack, the enemy having advanced to within 300 meters of the first aid station, he immediately entered the engagement and though wounded refused to be evacuated until the Germans were thrown back".[12] As a result of his actions, March received the French Croix de Guerre with Palm and the Army Distinguished Service Cross for valor[11] (the Distinguished Service Cross is the second highest Army decoration, next only to the Medal of Honor). A curious detail emerges from the account of his war experiences that would find its way into his fiction: though it appears he was never gassed badly enough to be hospitalized for it, upon his return from the war he told people that he was and that he only had a short time to live; a number of characters in Company K suffer and die after mustard gas attacks.[13] Roy Simmonds, March's biographer, locates what he calls the "two worlds of William March" (the title of his biography) in this period: throughout his life, March appears to have mixed reality with imagined memory, telling supposedly historical anecdotes that may not have been true. An experience March told a number of times included his jumping into a bomb crater to take shelter and coming face to face with a young German soldier, whom he instantly bayoneted; this anecdote found its way into Company K.[14]

During the operations in Blanc Mont region, October 3–4, 1918, he left a shelter to rescue the wounded. On October 5, during a counter-attack, the enemy having advanced to within 300 meters of the first aid station, he immediately entered the engagement and though wounded refused to be evacuated until the Germans were thrown back.[15]

The Distinguished Service Cross is presented to William E. Campbell, Sergeant, U.S. Marine Corps, for extraordinary heroism while serving with the 43d Company, 5th Regiment (Marines), 2d Division, A.E.F. in action near Blanc Mont, France, October 3–5, 1918. On October 3 and 4, while detailed on statistical work, Sergeant Campbell voluntarily assisted in giving first aid to the wounded. On October 5, when the enemy advanced within 300 yards of the dressing station, he took up a position in the lines, helping in defense. Although twice wounded, he remained in action under heavy fire until the enemy had been repulsed.[16]

When the Navy Cross, the United States Navy's second highest award for valor after the Medal of Honor, was established in 1919, March received that award as well (326 Marines who had previously received the Army Distinguished Service Cross in World War I would receive the Navy Cross for the same action). March's citation for the Navy Cross reads similar to that for the Army Distinguished Service Cross.[17]

In 1919, March returned to civilian life, but experienced bouts of anxiety and depression, a common occurrence with returning veterans.[19] The aforementioned experience, of having bayoneted a young, blond German soldier, is recounted in Company K, there attributed to Private Manuel Burt; March suffered hysterical attacks at different moments in his life related to the throat and the eyes.[20] He rarely spoke of his own war experiences or awards, though he was later noted to always take his medals with him and to tell war stories on occasion.[21]

March stayed for a few weeks with his family in Tuscaloosa, then found work at a law firm in Mobile. Soon, however, he became the personal secretary of John B. Waterman, of whose newly founded and quickly growing shipping company, the Waterman Steamship Corporation, he eventually became vice-president. In 1924 he was promoted to traffic manager. In 1926, the company opened up an office in Memphis, Tennessee, which March supervised; he spent two years in Memphis and became involved in the local theater scene. All the while he traveled the country on business trips, often accompanied by his friend and business associate J.P. Case. This associate recalls that March's rooms were usually littered with papers and books, many of them on : March was reading , , and intensively. In 1928, March moved again, to New York, where he took creative writing classes at and began writing short stories.[22]

March settled on his pseudonym after sending out a number of different stories under different pseudonyms; the one that got published first decided his literary name. "The Holly Wreath" was his first publication; it appeared under the name of William March in The Forum, a literary magazine from New York, in September 1929. The Forum would publish more of his stories, as did Prairie Schooner, Contempo: A Review of Books and Personalities, and other literary magazines. His stories were included in two annual anthologies of short fiction, Edward O'Brien's The Best American Short Stories and the O. Henry Prize Stories, in 1930, 1931, and 1932. In all, he published some twenty stories; four of them were vignettes that were to be included in his first novel.[23]

March finished his first novel, Company K while living in New York; it was published in January 1933 by Harrison Smith & Robert Haas. Encompassing much of his war time experience, it was an instant success and went through three printings. By this time March was already living in , Germany; he was now Waterman's senior traffic manager and was sent to Germany to help open up the European market.[23] In Hamburg he finished his second novel, Come in at the Door, his first novel of the "Pearl County" series of novels and short stories, set in the mythical towns of Hodgetown, Baycity, and Reedyville. In Hamburg he witnessed the rise of and the Nazi regime and wrote a prophetic short story, "Personal Letter", which expressed anxiety over the political future of Germany and the world. March was fearful to publish the story, as he was already well-established as an anti-militarist author and was afraid to place his German friends and associates in undue peril.[24] It was later published in Trial Balance: The Collected Short Stories of William March.[23]

Two years later, following a move to London, March finished his third novel, The Tallons, the second in his "Pearl County" series. Reviews in the UK were generally positive, more so than in the United States.[25] Psychological problems that had already bothered him in Germany worsened in London, and he became a patient of Edward Glover, who was able to cure March's throat paralysis, diagnosing it as a hysterical condition.[26] (March dedicated The Tallons to him, "as a slight recompense for the gray hairs I have put in his head".[27]) While in London he became acquainted with a number of literary characters, leaving more of his Waterman work to his subordinates.[28] In 1937, he returned to the US and within two years resigned his position to concentrate more on his writing, which by then was a full-time occupation; he had been paid partly in stock and could live well off the dividends.[29] 1937, Simmonds notes, was an important year--it marked the high point of his productivity as a short-story writer, and the magazine The American Mercury took up Company K for a reprinting.[30] In 1943, he completed his most ambitious and critically acclaimed novel, The Looking-Glass, the final book in his "Pearl County" series;[31] Bert Hitchcock, literature professor at Auburn, called it March's "finest literary achievement."[32]

Harcourt published a March collection, Trial Balance: The Collected Short Stories of William March, in 1945, and according to Marjorie Farber, in The Kenyon Review, the stories pack "big ideas...elaborately in tiny anecdotal satires". March, she says, is "the dramatist of ideas, titles, puns--a comedian's Comedian, bearing perhaps the same relation to fiction as Stevens bears to poetry. But all the same it's astonishing what variety of quiet desperation and low misery and high comedy he manages to encompass in this book. Let's skip his defects, shall we? I haven't nearly room enough for all his virtues."[33] This critical acclaim notwithstanding, in 1947, after years of depression from his experiences in the war and a continuing bout of writer's block, March suffered a nervous breakdown. He briefly returned to Mobile to recuperate and made many return visits to New York to settle his affairs. On one such visit in 1949, March happened upon the gallery of New York art dealer , which proved to be a turning point in his life.[34] Perls, accustomed to dealing with creative personalities, accepted March in a way he had not felt since his days of therapy in London.[35] Through Perls, March was able to talk openly about his creative process, using Perls as a sounding board to his ideas. Perls also introduced March to a world of other artists. In the works of and notably Chaim Soutine, March found a kinship and connection, as March and Soutine both displayed paranoid and schizophrenic tendencies. March returned Perls' friendship with a steady acquisition of works by Soutine, Picasso, Georges Rouault, and Joseph Glasco. March continued this friendship with routine visits to New York between 1949 and 1953, until ailing health prevented him from further travels.[36]

In late 1950, March permanently left Mobile and purchased a Creole cottage on Dumaine Street in the French Quarter of New Orleans. It was here that he composed his last two novels, October Island and The Bad Seed. March viewed the latter novel as a meager accomplishment, but it gained the most praise and success of any of his novels,[b] selling more than a million copies in one year,[38] launching a long-running Broadway hit penned by the Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright and a 1956 movie directed by Mervyn LeRoy.[39]

On March 25, 1954, March suffered a mild heart attack and was still recovering when The Bad Seed was published on April 8, and he was able to read many of the book's positive reviews. He was discharged from the hospital on April 24, but after only three weeks, on the night of May 15, 1954, he died in his sleep of a second and more severe heart attack, aged 60.[39]

The time comes in the life of each of us when we realize that death awaits us as it awaits others, that we will receive at the end neither preference nor exemption. It is then, in that disturbed moment, that we know life is an adventure with an ending, not a succession of bright days that go on forever. Sometimes the knowledge come with the repudiation and quick revolt that such injustice awaits us, sometimes with fear that dries the mouth and closes the eyes for an instant, sometimes with servile weariness, an acquiescence more dreadful than fear. The knowledge that my own end was near came with pain, and afterwards astonishment, with the conventional heart attack, from which, I've been told, I've made an excellent recovery.[39]

March's novels are psychological character studies that intertwine his own personal torment—deriving presumably from childhood trauma as well as from his war experiences—with the conflicts spawned by class, family, sexual, and racial matters.[40] March's characters, through no fault of their own, tend to be victims of chance. He writes that freedom can only be obtained by being true to one's nature and humanity.[15]

Commenting on March's complete body of work, British-American journalist and broadcaster Alistair Cooke wrote that March was "the most underrated of all contemporary American writers of fiction", citing the author's unique style as "classic modern" and stating that March was "the unrecognized genius of our time."[41] Cooke himself championed the anthology A William March Omnibus, which was published two years after March died.[42] As of 2009[update], only The Bad Seed and Company K are still in print.[c]

The Bad Seed, published in April 1954, was a critical and commercial success, and introduced Rhoda Penmark, an eight-year-old sociopath and burgeoning . The novel became an instant bestseller and was widely praised by critics for its use of suspense and horror.[52] James Kelley writes, for Book Review, "The Bad Seed scores a direct hit, either as exposition of a problem or as a work of art. Venturing a prediction and a glance over the shoulder: no more satisfactory novel will be written in 1954 or has turned up in recent memory."[53] Although March lived long enough to see the critical praise bestowed upon the novel and hear of its commercial success,[54] he died before the novel's full impact became apparent. It went on to sell more than a million copies,[38] was nominated for the 1955 National Book Award,[citation needed] adapted into a successful and long-running Broadway play by Maxwell Anderson,[38] and was adapted for film twice, in 1956 (directed by Mervyn Leroy)[38] and in 1985 (directed by ).

March was an accomplished short story writer and published four collections of stories. The Filipino poet and critic José García Villa regarded March as "the greatest short story writer America has produced."[55] He won four O. Henry Awards for his short stories, tied for the most wins by any author up until that time. Trial Balance: The Collected Short Stories of William March collects many of March's short stories from his entire career. The book was published in 1987 by the University of Alabama Press, with an introduction by Rosemary Canfield-Reisman. None of March's story collections are currently in print.

Six years after March's death, his 99 Fables were published by the University of Alabama Press.[57] March's fables follow those of Aesop: according to a review in The New York Times Book Review, "Mr. March ... has picked up where Aesop and Don Marquis left off."[58] Allen King, however, reviewing the book for the South Atlantic Bulletin, said the fables are "platitudinous" and offer no new insights into the nature of man.[59] The cover won an award at the 1960 Southern Books Competition;[60] the book is not currently in print.

Of paramount importance to scholars is Roy S. Simmonds's 1984 "definitive biography of March",[61] The Two Worlds of William March. Simmonds continued the work of his friend Lawrence William Jones, who had been working on a March biography but died in a car accident. Simmonds had only a passing knowledge of March's writing, but became increasingly interested in finishing Jones' work after having read through many of the papers that Jones had left behind, notably the 43-page memoir "Bill March" by New Orleans journalist Clint Bolton.[62]

Although March had intimated that he wished for no biography to be written,[55] the Campbell family, after having read the completed manuscript, gave their approval, though grudgingly, it seems.[63] The biography received positive reviews, with one reviewer calling it "a critical study that is a judicious record of March's life and a fine tribute to his literary achievement",[43] and closes on a note of praise:

The cruel irony of his death, coming at the moment it did, deprived him of the immense satisfaction of the worldwide recognition he would have enjoyed following the success of The Bad Seed. Now March has been almost forgotten. His reputation, however, if little known at present, remains established and secure. Those of us who know, love, and admire his work live in the belief that one day March will be recognized as one of the most remarkable, talented, and shamefully neglected writers that America has produced in this or in any other century.[64]

A documentary film on March entitled William March/Company K (2004) was made by Robert Clem; it includes excerpts from Clem's feature adaptation of Company K and focuses on the effects of March's painful war experience on his later life.[66] The documentary was shown at Birmingham, Alabama's Sidewalk Moving Picture Festival[67] and aired on PBS in 2004.[68] http://kgarch.org/hk8.pdf http://kgarch.org/10hj.pdf http://kgarch.org/3ak.pdf http://kgarch.org/2jh.pdf http://kgarch.org/hhf.pdf http://kgarch.org/ag2.pdf http://kgarch.org/j5j.pdf http://kgarch.org/11j2.pdf http://kgarch.org/nk.pdf http://kgarch.org/7hb.pdf http://kgarch.org/139d.pdf http://kgarch.org/m09.pdf http://kgarch.org/107m.pdf http://kgarch.org/16k.pdf http://kgarch.org/jj5.pdf http://kgarch.org/b8b.pdf http://kgarch.org/26f.pdf http://kgarch.org/5ca.pdf http://kgarch.org/n37.pdf http://kgarch.org/l2b.pdf http://kgarch.org/57f.pdf http://kgarch.org/9al.pdf