The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal (Stonewall Book Award Winner)

Read THE SCARLET PROFESSOR, an engrossing true storyabout a college professor embroiled in a sex scandal . . . Newtown Arvin published groundbreaking literary studies in his 37 years at Smith College, and he cultivated friendships with the likes of Lillian Helman and Truman Capote . . . a social radical and closeted homosexual, he somehow survived McCarthyism.But in September of 1960, his apartment was raided and his collection of erotica was confiscated . . . it was then that histroubles began . . . he was brought to trial, and in doingso, he also named names of other so-called pornographers.I found this part of the book particularly fascinating, in thatit helped give me a better feel for America's moral fanaticismduring that time period . . . even if you're not a fan of biographies, you might find yourself pleasantly surprisedif you give this one a chance.There were many memorable passages; among them:The following day he [Newton] wrote to her again:"I realize how good I ought (and must) be to you inorder to make you happy and keep you by me. I wishthat I could be a god and a saint and a knight and agood companion for your sake." If Arvin was to fail asa husband, it would not be for want of trying.[from his journal] Reading of student papers, bluebooks,etc. a form of torture, though inescapable at best. Whatgives the extra turn of the screw is, of course, the debased English in which most of them are written. Reading them is a matter of rubbing an iron file over one's teeth, or holding urine in one's mouth, or having the racket of a bulldozer in one's ear for an hour or two onend. Physical tiredness inevitably ensues.The sudden seizure of his secret history completed theshattering of Arvin's world. When he saw police returningwith the slender volumes, opening them, flipping throughtheir limited pages--beginning to decipher the penciledhieroglyphics that unlocked his innermost life--it was as ifthere was nothing left of him to take or preserve. He was in utter panic, shaking his face fallen.

I enjoyed Werth's book very much. It accomplishes many things: it evokes the hothouse environment of American academia in the mid-20th century, it places Newton Arvin--a respected critic of American literature--in what must have been for him a bewildering nightmare of suspicions and scandal, and it chillingly recalls the hostilities and dangers endured by gay people in the 1950s. I especially enjoyed how Barry Werth explained Arvin's attraction to literary figures such as Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville, and Longfellow, each of whom represented political and historical forces with which Arvin could readily sympathize. (I disagree with another reviewer who complained about Werth's suggestion of a Melville-Hawthorne "romance." Other critics and historians have explored the nature of these two men's friendship, and the suggestion that both men were gay is hardly a new or shattering idea. Anyway, Werth is primarily concerned with Arvin's interest in Melville and Hawthorne as authors and not in the possible romance between the two men.)Arvin was lucky to be surrounded by devoted colleagues and friends, and if he comes off in this book as a cold, selfish intellectual, he nonetheless earned the respect and support of some very distinguished people, including David Lilenthal, Edmund Wilson, and Van Wyck Brooks. He certainly seems an admirable person when compared to the hypocrites in public office who regulated morality in 1950s America. Werth is to be congratulated for doing an excellent job in retrieving a seemingly irretrievable past and for restoring Arvin to the distinguished circle of critics and teachers to which he once belonged.

Newton Arvin, a professor at Smith College for Women, could have fallen from grace during the McCarthy years, because he had a pinko history. He could have been ostracized because of his divorce in 1940. But he avoided scandal from his divorce and his politics, only to fall hard to it in 1960, when he was arrested for possessing pornography. Arvin still has a fine reputation among students of literary history because of a series of biographies of nineteenth century American writers, but now is otherwise obscure. His story is told in _The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal_ (Nan A. Talese / Doubleday) by Barry Werth. This is a biography that seamlessly weaves together Arvin's literary interests and the hidden parts of his life, producing a memorable picture of a loner trying to make his own way in a hostile land. It is also a fine summary of an episode of regrettable American repression.Arvin grew up in Valparaiso, a backwater of Indiana, and knew he was different from other boys. He went on to Harvard, and then to teaching literature at Smith. What he loved was reading and working earnestly on critical biographies of Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville, and Longfellow. Werth's book shows how in successive examination of these giants, Arvin was also examining himself, coming to a better understanding of his own quiet secret life. Arvin didn't really get an understanding of his own homosexuality until he was in his forties. Of course he kept the secret from most others, but revealing it to himself initially overwhelmed him with shame. The panic and depression he felt over it would color his frequent psychiatric hospitalizations all through his life; he would go through rounds of electroconvulsive therapy. He eventually allowed this part of his personality to express itself in cruising, in the New York Bath scene, and in taking lovers such as Truman Capote. What brought Arvin down was a postal campaign against "pornographic filth in the family mailbox." The idea seems quaint and stupid now, although we fret over the same issues on the Internet, but the Massachusetts police became adept at making porno arrests as a political favor for politicians who wanted to look good in the papers. The self-righteous police arrested Arvin in 1960 for simply possessing homosexual pornography, and his world collapsed. It didn't matter, of course, that in a few years, owning pornography would no longer be a crime (and some of the examples of the items for which Arvin was arrested, illustrated in the book, look positively wholesome). He was an intellectual asset to Smith, which treated him compassionately, and his many friends found ways to support him, but to the end of his life, he remained a solitary, brilliant man who cultivated loneliness.He found redemption again in writing, and worked on his memoir, which was never published, but which Werth has been able to study, along with the diaries. Worth's research has enabl

For years ths 1960 scandal involving Smith College faculty and others has been whispered and gossiped about, rarely accurately. Finally, Barry Werth has taken the time and trouble to put all the pieces together, the ruthless behavior of corrupt police, the virtual "reign of terror" the incident engendered, the utter devastation wrought upon the lives and careers of several teachers, most notably the distinguished American literary scholar and critic Newton Arvin. Werth is a skilled researcher, a fine narrator, and above all an honorable and just writer. He makes no judgments, leaving the reader to make his own. It is hard to believe, in this relatively liberated day, that the merest suggestion, the slightest hint of homosexuality, was sufficient to destroy lives, careers, reputations. Even honorable academic institutions like Smith College did not behave admirably in this woeful tale of a monumental miscarriage of justice. Above all, set in the context of his biography, the whole incident ruined the life of a brilliant scholar, teacher, and critic whose fragility rendered him incapable of coping with the barbarism of a biased and inept judicial system. I was there and lived through it: it is, alas, all too true. This is an important book and ought to be on the MUST READ list of every American interested in the preservation of civil liberties.

Arvin is the professor I look back on as the most influential of my college years. Teaching wasn't something he did with ease. I'm one of the students for whom the depth and breadth of his scholarship and the excitement he conveyed led to a life-long interest in 19th century American prose and fiction. He managed to continue teaching and writing while under enormous pressure -- certainly much greater than I knew about while I was his admiring student. I rate Mr. Werth's book highly simply because of its subject and look forward to reading it. Perhaps I'll find something in it which justifes a really awful title.