Delmore Schwartz: The Life of an American Poet

James Atlas provides an impressive description of Delmore Schwartz, the brilliant and precociously honored midcentury poet. He also captures the sad theme of the poet's life, his decline in health and talent and funtioning. Atlas' faithful and unnerving accuracy in portrait of DS's personal and professional universe as it was destroyed by what today would be termed bipolar disorder is, inadvertently, an excellent and objective case study. The developing paranoia of Schwartz's thinking, the disordering of his emotions, the ever brilliant but increasingly errant opinions and behavior over time eventually destroyed him, reduced him to obscurity, and brought him into conflict with those most interested in helping him, such as Saul Bellow. Atlas has a first rate understanding of the literary currents of that era, and of the academic environments where Schwartz also sojourned from time to time, and plants Delmore Schwartz firmly in those vibrant milieu. Also of his interest is his ability to convey Delmore's rather characteristic fascination, expressed in letters and conversation, with the personal lives of his various progenitors, such as T.S. Elliot. A great deal of incidental information is treated smoothly, and in paragraph after paragraph this book gives a personalized, immediate portrait of Delmore's daily goings on, his magical conversation, his idiosyncratic relations with others, his reactions to reviews, his illogical feuds and love affairs, his personal musings and anticipated vendettas. This books is as entertaining and captive as a good novel. So accurately a portrayal of real life by the moment, it seems to stand alone, even from its subject matter, the fatally gifted Delmore Schwartz, who lived out the American dream of self-destructing genius. For an understanding of that era, as well as a subtle, unnerving study of the disintegrative effect of bipolar disorder before there was any good standard treatment, the book is essential reading and should be studied not only by students of literature but of abnormal behavior. Damon LaBarbera, Ph.D.

Delmore Schwartz's legacy has become the one he dreaded most-that he never lived up to his potential, despite his early successes. Considered one of the most promising of the intellectual Partisan Review gang of 1930's New York, after his warmly received debut with the poetry and prose collection "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities," Delmore started a long alienating decline into drinking, drugs and paranoia. James Atlas writes with great appreciation for Delmore's talent and personality, but also honestly addresses the flaws that drove him to destruction. I read this biography after reading Saul Bellow's excellent "Humboldt's Gift," which includes the thinly fictionalized retelling of Delmore's breakdown. In his book, Atlas recreates the era Delmore helped to define, by showing the relationships between him and other leading figures of his times. Delmore had contacts that ranged from TS Eliot to Lou Reed, and for a time he was considered the voice of his generation. Atlas supports the true genius Delmore was, despite the poet's emotional problems. Atlas never patronizes or makes excuses for his subject in this cautionary tale.