Secret Historian: The Life and Times of Samuel Steward, Professor, Tattoo Artist, and Sexual Renegade by justin spring Page B
Authors: justin spring
Tags: Literary, General, Gay Studies, Social Science, Biography & Autobiography, Psychology, Literary Criticism, Gay & Lesbian, 20th Century, Biography, Education, Authors; American, Art, Artists; Architects; Photographers, Pornography, Teaching Methods & Materials, Human Sexuality, Educators, College teachers, College teachers - Illinois - Chicago, Gay authors, Novelists; American - 20th century, Sexology - Research - United States - History - 20th century, Body Art & Tattooing, Gay authors - United States, Steward; Samuel M, Tattoo artists, Pornography - United States - History - 20th century, Novelists; American, Authors; American - 20th century, Tattoo artists - New York (State) - New York, Sexology, Poets; American, Poets; American - 20th century
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Paul Morand had all agreed to recommend Steward for a Guggenheim, and Steward began to think he had a chance of winning it. He wrote to Stein that he was developing a new novel, one based on the myth of Hero and Leander.
•
In his 1938 Christmas letter, Steward gave Stein some surprising news: “I have finished a novel about Chicago but I do not know whether it is good, it will need a lot of revision.” He also noted, “I have completely stopped drinking for awhile…I will need all my wits about me for [teaching] Beowulf and anyway I want to start doing some more writing right away.” In February, when Steward learned that his application for the Guggenheim had survived a first round of cuts, Wilder congratulated him on getting that far, then asked to know more about Steward’s new “hard-boiled” novel: “What do you mean—hardboiled novel? Did you write a novel or did you pu[bli]sh a novel?”
The “hardboiled” novel was not the respectable Hero and Leander project Steward had proposed in his Guggenheim application, but rather a violent sexual tale set in the Chicago underworld, using “all the dirty words there were and then some.” He intended to offer this dark, homoerotic novel of murder and sexual dismemberment to Jack Kahane, publisher of Obelisk Press in Paris, before traveling on to Stein at Bilignin.
He wrote to Stein,
The novel…is all about Chicago and it is very hard and not tender at all and I can’t tell whether it is good or bad…But something else has happened to me and it is a very worthwhile thing. Before, I was always trying not to be lonely and to be happy and all of a sudden it came to me that I should not struggle against feeling lonely…so I have just opened my arms to it and embraced it and become resigned to that particular thing and what is the result. I am feeling much better and feeling urges within myself and that is a wonderful good sign…the novel is imperfect but I will fix that.
But as winter turned to spring, he wrote her again with bad news: “The Ides of March in sooth was a blighted day…For we did not get the Goog, * no, neither Wendell nor myself…It was funny, I sat and looked at the letter for ten minutes, and then everything was over. But to thee much gratitude for helping.”
Though disappointed, Steward continued to revise his Chicago novel and to make plans for his trip to France, booking passage on the Normandie even while writing Stein, “I have a strange feeling…there may be a war before [I arrive].” Wilder meanwhile responded to Steward’s Guggenheim news (again misspelling his name “Stewart”) with “Forgive a hasty [post]card…All 3 of my protégés lost out in the Guggenheim this year. Hmm, that’s what I get for having a play fail on Broadway. Last year 2 of my protégés won.”
•
“I met [William] Saroyan on the way over,” Steward wrote to Stein in Bilignin immediately upon his arrival in Paris that June. “He was all you said of him, he was very annoying but it makes an amusing story.” Steward had loved his passage over on the ultra-French Normandie , for its appointments had seemed lavish to him, even from his berth in third class. After settling in at the Hotel de Nice on Rue des Beaux Arts, he rented a typewriter “to do two or three solid weeks of writing,” he wrote Stein, “because Paris brings it out in me.” In fact, encouraged by the success of his 1937 visit, Steward had returned to Paris with the idea of establishing himself there as a writer—even as questions of income, academic career, and, above all, the looming world war seemed destined to thwart his plans. He had high hopes that Obelisk Press would welcome his shocking new manuscript; after all, Parker Tyler and Charles Henri Ford had published The Young and Evil with Kahane, even though it had been appallingly bad. Steward had met both young men through Benjamin Musser, hated their work, and felt sure his novel would do better, if
•
In his 1938 Christmas letter, Steward gave Stein some surprising news: “I have finished a novel about Chicago but I do not know whether it is good, it will need a lot of revision.” He also noted, “I have completely stopped drinking for awhile…I will need all my wits about me for [teaching] Beowulf and anyway I want to start doing some more writing right away.” In February, when Steward learned that his application for the Guggenheim had survived a first round of cuts, Wilder congratulated him on getting that far, then asked to know more about Steward’s new “hard-boiled” novel: “What do you mean—hardboiled novel? Did you write a novel or did you pu[bli]sh a novel?”
The “hardboiled” novel was not the respectable Hero and Leander project Steward had proposed in his Guggenheim application, but rather a violent sexual tale set in the Chicago underworld, using “all the dirty words there were and then some.” He intended to offer this dark, homoerotic novel of murder and sexual dismemberment to Jack Kahane, publisher of Obelisk Press in Paris, before traveling on to Stein at Bilignin.
He wrote to Stein,
The novel…is all about Chicago and it is very hard and not tender at all and I can’t tell whether it is good or bad…But something else has happened to me and it is a very worthwhile thing. Before, I was always trying not to be lonely and to be happy and all of a sudden it came to me that I should not struggle against feeling lonely…so I have just opened my arms to it and embraced it and become resigned to that particular thing and what is the result. I am feeling much better and feeling urges within myself and that is a wonderful good sign…the novel is imperfect but I will fix that.
But as winter turned to spring, he wrote her again with bad news: “The Ides of March in sooth was a blighted day…For we did not get the Goog, * no, neither Wendell nor myself…It was funny, I sat and looked at the letter for ten minutes, and then everything was over. But to thee much gratitude for helping.”
Though disappointed, Steward continued to revise his Chicago novel and to make plans for his trip to France, booking passage on the Normandie even while writing Stein, “I have a strange feeling…there may be a war before [I arrive].” Wilder meanwhile responded to Steward’s Guggenheim news (again misspelling his name “Stewart”) with “Forgive a hasty [post]card…All 3 of my protégés lost out in the Guggenheim this year. Hmm, that’s what I get for having a play fail on Broadway. Last year 2 of my protégés won.”
•
“I met [William] Saroyan on the way over,” Steward wrote to Stein in Bilignin immediately upon his arrival in Paris that June. “He was all you said of him, he was very annoying but it makes an amusing story.” Steward had loved his passage over on the ultra-French Normandie , for its appointments had seemed lavish to him, even from his berth in third class. After settling in at the Hotel de Nice on Rue des Beaux Arts, he rented a typewriter “to do two or three solid weeks of writing,” he wrote Stein, “because Paris brings it out in me.” In fact, encouraged by the success of his 1937 visit, Steward had returned to Paris with the idea of establishing himself there as a writer—even as questions of income, academic career, and, above all, the looming world war seemed destined to thwart his plans. He had high hopes that Obelisk Press would welcome his shocking new manuscript; after all, Parker Tyler and Charles Henri Ford had published The Young and Evil with Kahane, even though it had been appallingly bad. Steward had met both young men through Benjamin Musser, hated their work, and felt sure his novel would do better, if
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