1 William Carlos Williams in the 1930s Robert L.G. Tucker University College London English Language and Literature Ph.D. 2 I, Robert L.G. Tucker, confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 3 Abstract The subject of this thesis is William Carlos Williams and the circle of writers around him in the 1930s. During this decade Williams was a key figure in the formation of an alternative left-wing American canon, and active in a group that included Nathanael West, Louis Zukofsky and Kenneth Burke. This thesis explores the political and aesthetic grounds on which that canon was constructed. The assumption that Williams was already a successful writer after Spring and All (1923) has often led to a disproportionate emphasis on his poetry and the ‘modernist’ aspects of his aesthetics. This thesis makes the case for the significance of Williams’ 1930s prose writings in the growth of the Proletarian Literature movement, and challenges the assumption that ‘Marxist’ literature of the 1930s was at odds with ‘modernist’ literature of the 1920s. I investigate the key concepts of Williams’ own aesthetic philosophy, ‘Objectivism,’ ‘Pragmatism,’ ‘Contact,’ and ‘Localism,’ and show how these concepts became politicized during the 1930s. By exploring the relationship between art and politics, and the ways in which Williams was radicalized by the Great Depression, this thesis attempts to expand critical notions of ‘radicalism’ to include a broader New Deal alliance between traditional democratic liberalism and Marxist economic determinism. Focusing on concepts of ‘Nativism’ and ‘Americanism,’ this thesis also charts America’s burgeoning cultural nationalism during the 1930s, and demonstrates how America’s founding values were challenged by political, economic and social upheaval in the wake of the Depression. By locating Williams’ desire for radical economic change within the context of the Jeffersonian movement, I demonstrate how a historical assessment of America’s past led Williams and the writers mentioned above to question America’s attitudes towards individualism, the redistribution of wealth, the forces of corruption and plutocracy, and the effectiveness of democracy to bring about social justice. 4 Table of Contents Acknowledgements............................................................................................ p. 6. List of Abbreviations.......................................................................................... p. 7 Introduction....................................................................................................... p. 9 i.i. A Native Literature........................................................................................ p. 18 i.ii. Marxism and Pragmatism............................................................................. p. 45 Chapter 1. Williams and the Little Magazines of the 1930s......................... p. 67 1.1. Blues: Literary Radicalism in 1929............................................................. p. 74 1.2. Pagany: A Change of Form......................................................................... p. 101 1.3. White Mule: An Unconventional Middle-Ground....................................... p. 113 Chapter 2. The Politics of Medicine................................................................ p. 126 2.1. Positivism and Pragmatism in Medicine...................................................... p. 128 2.2. The Institution of Medicine.......................................................................... p. 142 Figure 1............................................................................................................... p. 149 Chapter 3. Contact: Williams and Nathanael West....................................... p. 153 3.1. The American Jungle................................................................................... p. 156 3.2. Miss Lonelyhearts........................................................................................ p. 171 3.3. Native Violence............................................................................................ p. 182 5 Chapter 4. An Ambiguous Past: The Founding Fathers and Social Credit.................................................................................................................. p. 197 4.1. The American Grain..................................................................................... p. 199 4.2. George Washington in the 1930s................................................................. p. 217 4.3. Washington, Whiggery and Isolationism..................................................... p. 233 Chapter 5. Objectivism: Williams, Pound, Zukofsky.................................... p. 245 5.1. Objectivism: History and Myth.................................................................... p. 249 5.2. Objectivism and Anti-Semitism................................................ p. 271 5.3. Objectivism and the Documentary Aesthetic.............................................. p. 284 Conclusion.......................................................................................................... p. 300 Appendices......................................................................................................... p. 307 Bibliography........................................................................................................ p. 317 6 Acknowledgements I would like to thank the British Association of American Studies, for their generous support of my archival research, and for offering me the Malcolm Bradbury Prize which afforded me the opportunity to study in America. Without it, I almost certainly would not have been able to write this thesis. I would also like to thank the University College London English Department and the Arts and Humanities Research Council for their support. I would like to thank Adrienne Sharp and all the staff of the Beineke Library for their assistance during my stay at Yale. I would also like to thank James Maynard, and all the staff at the Poetry Collection, at SUNY, Buffalo, whose valuable insight into the Williams archives at Buffalo was a great help to me in my studies. I would also like to acknowledge Declan Springs of New Directions Press and I would like to thank New Directions and the Estates of Paul H. and William Eric Williams for granting permission to print Williams’ Democratic Party Poem. I’m very thankful to Leith Johnson, archivist at the Wesleyan Library, for assisting me with my research into Gorham Munson, as well as, David Pavelich and the staff at the Regenstein Library, Chicago. I would like to thank Alan Marshall of Kings College London for his decisive contribution in reshaping this thesis. I would like to thank Ian Copestake, Christopher MacGowan, and all the kind and generous members of the William Carlos Williams Society for their inspiration and encouragement. Most of all I would like to thank my wonderful supervisors, Kasia Boddy, whose constant guidance and support was the foundation of this thesis, and Mark Ford, for giving me the direction and focus that I needed. 7 List of Abbreviations People EP Ezra Pound GA George Antheil KB Kenneth Burke LZ Louis Zukofsky NW Nathanael West RJ Richard Johns WCW William Carlos Williams Works A Autobiography of William Carlos Williams ARI A Recognizable Image CPI William Carlos Williams: Collected Poems, Volume I EK The Embodiment of Knowledge FD The Farmer’s Daughters ITAG In the American Grain IWWP I Wanted to Write a Poem HP The Humane Particulars: The Collected Letters of William Carlos Williams and Kenneth Burke ML Many Loves SE Selected Essays of William Carlos Williams 8 SL Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams STS Something to Say: William Carlos Williams on Younger Poets WCW/LZ The Correspondence of William Carlos Williams and Louis Zukofsky EP/LZ Selected Letters of Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky WM White Mule Introduction The subject of this thesis is the politics and poetics of William Carlos Williams and the literary circles that he engaged with from 1929 to 1939. These circles can be divided into a number of separate categories. First, there are specific writers who influenced and were influenced by Williams, in particular Louis Zukofsky, Ezra Pound, Nathanael West and Kenneth Burke. Secondly, there are the publishing ventures that Williams supported and often helped to fund, such as the Objectivist Press, the Alcestis Press, and towards the end of the 1930s, New Directions. Thirdly, there are the little magazines that Williams edited and whose editorial policies he often shaped, such as Blues, Pagany, Contact, Blast, not to mention the many little magazines that Williams contributed to, such as New Masses, Anvil and Partisan Review to name but a few. Finally, there are the literary movements that Williams was involved in: in this study I shall focus on two in particular – ‘Objectivism’ and the ‘Proletarian Literature’ movement. The purpose of this study is twofold. First and foremost this thesis is a work about Williams himself. I wish to show, through a study of the writers, magazines and movements that he engaged with during the 1930s, that we must revise our conception of Williams as the modernist poet typified by Spring and All, an apolitical poet of formal experimentation, to something quite different, a writer of great influence in America, in prose as much as poetry, in ‘proletarian literature’ as much