Man from Babel

The autobiography of Eugene Jolas, available for the first time nearly half a century after his death in 1952, is the story of a man who, as the editor of the expatriate American literary magazine __transition__, was the first publisher of James Joyce’s __Finnegans Wake__ and other signal works of the modernist period. Jolas’s memoir provides often comical and compelling details about such leading modernist figures as Joyce, Stein, Hemingway, Breton, and Gide, and about the political, aesthetic, and social concerns of the Surrealists, Expressionists, and other literary figures during the 1920s and 1930s. __Man from Babel__ both enriches and challenges our view of international modernism and the historical avant-garde. Born in New Jersey of immigrant parents, Jolas moved back to France with them at the age of two. He grew up in the borderland of Lorraine and later lived in Paris, Berlin, London, and New York, where he pursued a career as a journalist and aspiring poet. As an American press officer after the war, Jolas was actively involved in the denazification of German intellectual life. A champion of the international avant-garde, he continually sought translinguistic, transcultural, and suprapolitical bridges that would transform Western culture into a unified continuum. Compiled and edited from Jolas’s drafts and illustrated with contemporary photographs, this memoir not only reveals the multicultural concerns of the man from Babel, as Jolas saw himself, but also illuminates an entire literary and historical era.

The autobiography of Eugene Jolas, available for the first time nearly half a century after his death in 1952, is the story of a man who, as the editor of the expatriate American literary magazine transition, was the first publisher of James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake and other signal works of the modernist period. Jolas’s memoir provides often comical and compelling details about such leading modernist figures as Joyce, Stein, Hemingway, Breton, and Gide, and about the political, aesthetic, and social concerns of the Surrealists, Expressionists, and other literary figures during the 1920s and 1930s. Man from Babel both enriches and challenges our view of international modernism and the historical avant-garde.

Born in New Jersey of immigrant parents, Jolas moved back to France with them at the age of two. He grew up in the borderland of Lorraine and later lived in Paris, Berlin, London, and New York, where he pursued a career as a journalist and aspiring poet. As an American press officer after the war, Jolas was actively involved in the denazification of German intellectual life. A champion of the international avant-garde, he continually sought translinguistic, transcultural, and suprapolitical bridges that would transform Western culture into a unified continuum.

Compiled and edited from Jolas’s drafts and illustrated with contemporary photographs, this memoir not only reveals the multicultural concerns of the man from Babel, as Jolas saw himself, but also illuminates an entire literary and historical era.

Andreas Kramer is lecturer in German, Department of European Languages, Goldsmiths, University of London. Rainer Rumold is associate professor of German literature and critical thought at Northwestern University, has written books on Gottfried Benn, German Expressionism, and Helmut Heissenbüttel. He is co-editor (with Marjorie Perloff) of the series Avant-Garde and Modernism Studies.

The autobiography of Eugene Jolas, available for the first time nearly half a century after his death in 1952, is the story of a man who, as the editor of the expatriate American literary magazine transition, was the first publisher of James Joyce's Finnegans Wake and other signal works of the modernist period. Jolas's memoir provides often comical and compelling details about such leading modernist figures as Joyce, Stein, Hemingway, Breton, and Gide, and about the political, aesthetic, and social concerns of the Surrealists, the Expressionists, and other literary figures during the 1920s and 1930s. Man from Babel both enriches and challenges our view of international modernism and the historical avant-garde Contents 7 List of Illustrations 9 Introduction 11 Acknowledgments 33 Note on the Text 35 Prologue 41 1. European Frontier World 44 2. Immigrant into Neo-American 58 3. Roving Reporter 81 4. Return to the Old World 93 5. Reporter in Paris 105 6. Voyages of Discovery 127 7. Quest for New Words 147 8. Gog and Magog 175 9. Ananke Strikes the Poet 200 10. In the Maelstrom 219 11. Journey Through Rubbleland 255 12. News from Babel 267 13. The Frontierless World 299 Epilogue 310 Notes to Front Matter 315 Notes to Man from Babel 321 Index 359