A Life of Kenneth Rexroth by Linda Hamalian, and: Kenneth Rexroth and James Laughlin: Selected Letters ed. by Lee Bartlett, and: The Relevance of Rexroth by Ken Knabb (review)

Essay Reviews A Life of Kenneth Rexroth. By Linda Hamalian. (New York: Norton, 1991, 444 pages, $25.00.) Kenneth Rexroth andJames Laughlin: SelectedLetters. Edited by Lee Bartlett. (New York: Norton, 1991. 292 pages, $27.50.) The Relevance of Rexroth. By Ken Knabb. (Berkeley: Bureau of Public Secrets, 1990. 88 pages, $5.00.) Regarding Kenneth Rexroth, Eliot Weinberger once commented: “For those who were dismissed or neglected in life, death becomes the primary condition for immortality. The English Dept, never misses a funeral.” And despite some able commentary on him in the 1980s, Rexroth’s enormous accomplishments have gone largely unrecognized; he remains a non-canonical figure. This neglect is a puzzling and bitter fact, but three new books—Linda Hamalian’s A Life of Kenneth Rexroth, Lee Barlett’s Kenneth Rexroth and James Laughlin: Selected Letters, and Ken Knabb’s The Relevance of Rexroth—should stimulate interest in the man and his work. Hamalian’s book focuses fresh attention on Rexroth’smarriages and philosophical concerns; Bartlett’sedition of his letters details Rexroth’s cultural erudition and his role in James Laughlin’s publishing at New Directions; Knabb’s book is a brief study of Rexroth’s poetry and criticism. Linda Hamalian approaches Rexroth sympathetically in her biography, but she is also willing to explore his contradictions and complexities. Such work is a major contribution toward demystifying and understanding a subject who can­ not be easily reduced. His early life reads like the stuff of fiction, particularly as he recounts it in An AutobiographicalNovel. According toJames Laughlin, much of the autobiography isfiction, and New Directions was forced to append novel to the title in order to avoid libel suits. Hamalian does not seriously question the verisimilitude ofthe book, as she uses it as a source to unravel some ofthe events of his early life. Fortunately she uses other sources as well, such as Rexroth’s letters and poetry, interviews with many who knew him, and criticism ofhis early work. Hamalian covers Rexroth’s early childhood, pointing out that he came from a background of Midwest radicalism. By age thirteen both his parents had died, and after a brief experience in high school, Rexroth became active in bohemian circles. Hamalian describes Rexroth’sexposure to the heady intellec­ tual, artistic, and political life of Chicago in the 1920s. After trips to New York, 122 WesternAmerican Literature Paris, and Mexico, and formative experiences as a cook and wrangler out West, and as a novice at Holy Cross Monastery in New York, Rexroth finally returned to Chicago where he met and married Andrée Schafer in 1927. When Rexroth and Andrée arrived in San Francisco in 1927, the city had virtually no literary activity. Hamalian recounts their early days in the city, Andrée’swork as an artist, Rexroth’swork as a labor organizer and writerfor the WPA, and his first substantial publications as a poet in Bluesand An “Objectivist’s” Anthology. When Rexroth’s marriage with Andrée began to fail, the biography be­ comes more complex. Hamalian discusses the contradiction between Rexroth’s belief in sacramental marriage and the way he actually behaved in his mar­ riages. In his second marriage to Marie Cass, Hamalian points out that “If Rexroth regarded matrimony as holy and sacred, it was not obvious in the pattern of his daily life and the demands he placed on Marie, whose role was to serve him, support him financially and emotionally, nurture him and his artistic aspirations” (168). While Hamalian raises the issue of this fascinating conflict between Rexroth’s philosophical commitments and everyday life, she does not press her investigation far enough. Why is it that Marie continued to subject herself to Rexroth’s poor treatment? Further speculation by Hamalian might have given us a better understanding of why such patterns of behavior seemed to persist in Rexroth’s two subsequent marriages as well. In spite of the fact that Rexroth became widely published and extremely active in literary groups, founding the nucleus of the San Francisco Renais­ sance, he earned little income and was plagued with constant financial anxi­ eties. Rexroth relied a great deal on Marthe Larsen, his third wife, for the same kind of...