Kenneth Burke in Greenwich Village: Conversing with the Moderns, 1915–1931

Preface

Preface A BOOK ABOUT Kenneth Burke in the 1920s should probably be written in the form of a collage rather than as a formal academic essay. Not only would collage as form be appropriate to a discussion that centers around the concept of literary modernism, but an effective collage would suggest something of the complexity of Burke's personal and professional story, the complexity of a compelling personality and mind caught in a web of conflicting and cooperating personalities and ideas. Collage being beyond my abilities, however, readers will I hope be satisfied with more-or-less-linear narrative about Kenneth Burke's activities in the period from 1915 (when, fresh from high school, he arrived in the New York City area) to 1931, when he placed for publication his critical and theoretical book Counter-Statement and his experimental novel Towards a Better Life, and when the economic crisis of the Depression and a confluence of related intellectual developments shifted Burke's concerns fundamentally and finally away from narrowly aesthetic concerns. A key figure in the articulation of modernist ideology, Burke in his poetry, in his short fiction (The White Oxen, and Other Stories), in the critical essays he wrote for The Dial, and in Counter-Statement and Towards a Better Life was contributing to the discussion about the nature of modernism that was being conducted in New York during those years. This book is an effort to understand how Burke's earliest work emerged through a dialogue with the other shapers of modernism who congregated with him in Greenwich Village before and after the Great War. These others included people like the leftists of The Masses, Eugene O'Neill and the other members of The Provincetown Players who were inventing a new American drama, the artists and writers associated with Alfred Stieglitz's art gallery "291," the poets known as the "Others," the literary nationalists of the political left, right, and center, and the leaders of the variety of literary magazines that made modernism such a various and contested term-most notably XVll Copyrighted Material Preface The Dial, Secession, and Broom, but also Others, The Little Review, Contact, Smart Set, The New Republic, and any number of others. The only trace of a collage to be found will be in the related materials-Burke letters, unpublished poetry, essays on this or that development, a map of Greenwich Village, photographs-that appear from time to time within most of the chapters. This book will interest two overlapping groups of readers. As a rhetorician by profession, I am writing to my colleagues in English, Rhetoric, Speech Communication, Communications, and related areas who have for many years found Burke's insights into rhetoric and critical theory compelling and captivating. In addition, as a contributor here to the vigorous current scholarship now going on in modernist studies, I am attempting to recover in the person of Burke some of the full variety that existed within the modernist moment. I hope that both groups of readers will be understanding if one or the other find themselves reading background explanations, particularly in chapter 1, that seem to them unnecessary but that seem to me required if I am to find a broad readership. For their indispensable assistance with this project I am indebted to a great many people knowledgeable and gracious and patient. Foremost have been Charlie Mann and Sandy Stelts and the other staff members associated with the Rare Books Room and the Kenneth Burke Papers at Pattee Library at Penn State; many, many thanks to them for teaching me so much and for making it so comfortable for me to work on this project. Evelyn Feldman and her staff at the Rosenbach Museum in Philadelphia and Patricia Willis and her colleagues at the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale made working in their wonderful facilities both productive and pleasurable. Librarians at Princeton University, the University of Pennsylvania, Brown University, the Newberry Library in Chicago, the Cincinnati Public Library, and the Lilly Library at Indiana University (in particular Rebecca Campbell Cape) made my work much easier as well. H. Lewis Ulman (Ohio State) and Kathryn Flannery (Indiana ) graciously helped me to secure copies of relevant materials, and John Logie saved me a trip to Chicago by checking out some matters there for me. Bertha Ihnet of the Ohio State University Archives graciously helped me locate information about Burke's Columbus connections. Many of my colleagues at Penn State have gratified me by...