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1. “Healthy Nerves and Sturdy Physiques”: Remaking the Male Body of Literary Culture in the 1930s
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25 “Healthy Nerves and Sturdy Physiques”: Remaking the Male Body of Literary Culture in the 1930s The Gold-Wilder Controversy Nearly a year after the stock market crash of 1929, Michael Gold, a young radical Communist and author of the much-acclaimed Jews Without Money (1930), attacked Thornton Wilder in the book review columnofthe New Republic. Inaparticularlydamningpassage,Gold labels Wilder “the Emily Post of culture” who writes novels that are “a synthesis of all the chambermaid literature, Sunday-school tracts and boulevard piety” (“Wilder: Prophet of the Genteel Christ” 200). A proponent and theorist of proletarian fiction, Gold dubs Wilder a poet of the “parvenu” leisure classes: Mr. Wilder remains the poet of the small sophisticated class that has recently arisen in America—our genteel bourgeoisie. . . . Thornton Wilder is the perfect flower of the new prosperity. He has all the virtues [Thorstein] Veblen said the leisure class would demand: the air of good breeding, the decorum, priestliness, glossy high finish as against intrinsic qualities, conspicuous inutility, caste feeling, love of the archaic, etc. (ibid., 201–202) 1 26 Pinks, Pansies, and Punks In another passage, Gold mockingly describes Wilder’s The Bridge of San Luis Rey (1928) as “a homosexual bouquet” (198). Gold’s class baiting, inflammatory rhetoric, and explicit references to Wilder ’s supposed effeteness and homosexuality were obvious breaches of literary decorum. These affronts to good taste were deliberate because Gold, a working-class revolutionary, certainly did not want to be thought of as a “gentleman.” Gold’s attempt to épater les bourgeois was successful in the sense that he created a scandal: his scathing review generated an outpouring of vitriolic letters that astounded the staff of the liberal publication. The literary controversy lasted for severalweeks,andEdmundWilson,thenaneditorattheNew Republic , noted that two literary camps quickly emerged: “The people who applauded Gold seemed to be moved by a savage animus; those who defended Wilder protested orpleaded in the tone of personswho had been shocked by the desecration of a dearly beloved thing. Strange cries from the depths arose, illiterate and hardly articulate” (“The LiteraryClassStruggle”535).WilsonalsodescribedtheGold-Wilder caseasoneofthe“mostviolentcontroversieswhichtheliteraryworld has lately known” (ibid.). After seven weeks of vituperative letters, the editors published a statement: “[The] Gold-Wilder controversy is hereby called on account of darkness. No further letters on this subject will be published.”1 Recalling the scandal a few years later, Wilson argued that the Gold-Wilder controversy demonstrated that “the economic crisis would be accompanied by a literary one” (539). The implication was clear: the literary world could no longer ignore the reality of the class struggle and no writers were impervious to attack. Wilder’s biographers and some scholars of the literary Left have noted the importance of the scandal and how it altered the subject matter of Wilder’s future work and reflected the emerging class conflictsin the literary cultureof the1930s.2 However,literary historians have generally focused on the political aspects of the Gold-Wilder controversy and have paid less attention to the gendered aspects of Gold’s rhetoric and the various explicit references to Wilder’s homosexuality and effete masculinity, for example: “it is a newly fashionable literary religion that centers around Jesus Christ, the First [54.198.45.0] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 01:19 GMT) 27 “Healthy Nerves and Sturdy Physiques” British Gentleman. It is a pastel, pastiche, and dilettante religion, without the neurotic blood and fire, a daydream of homosexual figures in graceful gowns moving archaically through the lilies. It is Anglo-Catholicism, that last refuge of the American Literary snob” (“Wilder: Prophet of the Genteel Christ” 200). In this passage, Gold againplacesgreatemphasisonthemalebody.Wilder’ssupposedlyeffeminatebodyislinkedtoCardinalNewman ’sOxfordmovement(“a daydream of homosexual figures in graceful gowns moving archaicallythroughthelilies ”).Gold’scritiqueofWilderalsoextendstothe literary style that his body produces: “Mr. Wilder strains to be spiritual ; but who could reveal any real agonies and exaltations of spirit in this neat, tailor-made rhetoric? It is a great lie. It is death. Its serenity is that of the corpse. Prick it, and it will bleed violet ink and aperitif” (ibid.). In Gold’s rhetoric, Shylock’s famous speech is transformed into homophobic mockery: the homosexual author (“violet ink”) is linked to death, decay, and leisure-culture symbols of the nouveaux riches (“aperitif”). Gold also uses unveiled invective to “out” Thornton Wilder and thus discredit his fiction and, by extension, his presumed political point of view. Wilder, who regarded his sexuality as a private matter, opted not to respond to Gold’s vicious attacks. It is significant...