Foreign Born by John Herrmann (review)

Sara Kosiba's interest in Lost Generation American writer John Herrmann bears fruit again in the publication (for the first time) of his mid-1920s novel Foreign Born by the Hastings College Press. This follows republication by the same press of Herrmann's 1926 What Happens, which originally appeared from Robert McAlmon's Contact Editions of Paris. What Happens was the subject of a 1927 trial for obscenity when imported copies were confiscated by U.S. Customs officials. Memorably, the book was declared obscene and its confiscation affirmed, although jurors asked to keep their copies! That Herrmann had used the word "masturbation" several times did not help his case.

Herrmann did not make that exact mistake twice, although sexuality is still one major theme in Foreign Born, and although the obscenity prosecution probably did not aid his attempts to find an American publisher for the new novel. In it he returns to his Lansing, Michigan, hometown (renamed "Fairbanks" but noticeably similar in geography, as well as in social and economic life, to the actual Lansing). Herrmann also takes advantage of his German-American background; he was from a well-to-do Lansing family, and this is reflected in the novel's account of the rise, fall, and rise once more of the German-born, U.S.-raised Ernst Weiman. This character, as a young man, makes his father's modest shoe repair shop into the most fashionable and successful shoe store in Fairbanks, and he invests in local institutions. These include a bank and a fictionalized version of R. E. Olds's cutting-edge tech startup, producing that paradigm-busting product, the automobile. (Descriptions of the coming industry by those seeking Ernst's investment are droll in the extreme.) Along the way, Ernst also takes (reluctantly) a wife. He is courted by a German-American girl but is steered toward Anglo-American young women by his friends in the local businessmen's (read "Rotary") club; he eventually marries one such woman. She seems to see him more as a target of economic opportunity than of romantic or erotic desire, and there are many cultural and sexual tensions in the marriage, although these resolve by the end.

The fly in the ointment is the First World War, which makes the by now middle-aged Ernst's reading of a German-sympathizing magazine, very occasional attendance at the local German singing society, and concern for the plight of the German people into grounds for doubting his patriotism. (Kosiba's introduction provides information on actual related happenings in Lansing, including a tar and feathering that is written into the novel, coercive newspaper ads placed by the local Vigilance Committee, and a libel suit.)

Ernst's son, of course, patriotically enlists in the U.S. Army once war is declared. After plot complication that reflects the very seamy underside of wartime anti-German sentiment, Ernst finds his way back into the patriotic good will of the community by posting his son's service star in the store window, flying the flag, buying Liberty Bonds, and the like. In the end all is well—as he continues privately to read the pro-German magazine The Fatherland, now patriotically retitled American Monthly. He has easily misled his friends as to his true feelings and is comfortably successful again. Incidentally, Herrmann later wrote what seems to be a more conventional and less satirical ending, probably in response to publishers' repeated rejections of the novel. In it, Ernst becomes a true patriot. This is the only segment of Foreign Born published during Herrmann's lifetime, in his friend William Carlos Williams's Contact: An American Quarterly Review in 1932. This alternate ending is also included in the Hastings College Press edition.

Kosiba's introduction summarizes several readers' reports included with the novel typescript at the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center in Austin, Texas. Publishers apparently felt that the novel would not be commercially successful and that it lacked the...