Background
He was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, the son of Julius J. Frank, a lawyer, and Helene Rosenberg. He grew up in the family brownstone on Manhattan's West Side in an atmosphere of upper-middle-class comfort and cultivation.
(Excerpt from Rahab HE door opened against the drawn chai...)
Excerpt from Rahab HE door opened against the drawn chain, grating against it. In the grey strip a woman's face, very grey, very unexpectant, suddenly was-bright. It measured a man, young, standing at ease. The chain clicked free. 0 it's you, Mr. Sam son. The door opened wide, shut them in. The hall was a long shadow beyond the glow of them standing. He was quiet waiting, not sheer against her: his shaggy coat poured the street's coldness. She was a dim thing about eyes. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.
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(This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)
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( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)
This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923. This book may have occasional imperfections such as missing or blurred pages, poor pictures, errant marks, etc. that were either part of the original artifact, or were introduced by the scanning process. We believe this work is culturally important, and despite the imperfections, have elected to bring it back into print as part of our continuing commitment to the preservation of printed works worldwide. We appreciate your understanding of the imperfections in the preservation process, and hope you enjoy this valuable book. ++++ The below data was compiled from various identification fields in the bibliographic record of this title. This data is provided as an additional tool in helping to ensure edition identification: ++++ Our America Waldo David Frank Boni and Liveright, 1919 National characteristics, American; United States
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(All the world moved gently upward toward the mountain lik...)
All the world moved gently upward toward the mountain like aT ide. The mountain moved downward toward earth, iilled water and spread trees in it. A full-grown boy sat low in a canoe with his hands in the sharp water, and let it drift with the wind. The wind ceased: the wavelets stopped marching up the backs of his hands, there was silence. The boy lay back in his craft that lay in the water, sleepily and tamed by the winds absence. Is mind drowsed but in its sleep walked forth. The mountain became a mood of contemplation. A cloud rose over the mountain faster than the moon. There was to be no moon. A way on all sides of the lake woods murmured. The lake was silence in wide swaying murmur. The woods rolled purple and tumbled black: they mounted atop each other to stark eminence against the sky: they huddled downward into breathing valleys and the suspense of meadows lying with wide eyes. The woods were shredded by noisy rivers: they stumbled over rocks, fdl away. The sky di)ed and the earth found it: the sky too leaped. Leaping away it took the landside with it. All that was left of trees and water and wide-eyed fields was haze, like a longing visioii. (Typographical errors above are due to OCR software and don't occur in the book.) About the Publisher Forgotten Books is a publisher of historical writings, such as: Philosophy, Classics, Science, Religion, History, Folklore and Mythology. Forgotten Books' Classic Reprint Series utilizes the latest technology to regenerate facsimiles of historically important writings. Careful attention has been made to accurately preserve the original format of each page whilst digitally enhancing the aged text. Read books online for free at www.forgottenbooks.org
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He was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, the son of Julius J. Frank, a lawyer, and Helene Rosenberg. He grew up in the family brownstone on Manhattan's West Side in an atmosphere of upper-middle-class comfort and cultivation.
After attending the De Witt Clinton High School in New York from 1902 to 1906, he spent a year at a preparatory school in Lausanne, Switzerland.
In 1907 he entered Yale University, where he won a number of literary prizes. He received concurrent B. A. and M. A. degrees in 1911.
He worked briefly as a ranch hand in Montana and Wyoming and as a reporter for several New York newspapers. He then spent nearly a year in Paris reading Spinoza, Nietzsche, and Freud, absorbing recent avant-garde movements in the arts, and befriending important European writers and artists.
He returned to New York in 1914 and launched his career as an experimental writer and radical cultural critic of the American scene.
In 1916, Frank joined James Oppenheim in founding The Seven Arts and served as an editor, along with Van Wyck Brooks and Randolph Bourne, of the short-lived but influential new journal. Because of its stand against America's entry into World War I, the journal folded under government pressure in 1917.
Frank registered as a pacifist in 1917, the year of his first published novel, The Unwelcome Man, a psychological study of an "outsider" patterned on his own life. After a cross-country tour, he wrote Our America (1919), in which he examined the seemingly contradictory decay and vitality of American life.
In the same year, he worked as an organizer for the Nonpartisan League in Kansas, establishing a lifelong pattern of activism coupled with prolific writing.
Frank reached the peak of his reputation and influence in the 1920's and 1930's. After a trip through the South in 1920 with the black writer Jean Toomer, he wrote The Dark Mother (1920), Rahab (1922), City Block (1922), and Holiday (1923), works that explored themes of American race relations, urban alienation, prostitution, and the quest for faith.
In these novels he extended his narrative experiments toward a greater concern with the psychology of the self, with Freudian analysis, and with a concept of wholeness and harmony with the cosmos that verges on mysticism.
A regular contributor to the New Yorker, the New Republic, and the New Masses, he published several collections of essays and proclamations, including Salvos (1924), Time Exposures (1926), and In the American Jungle (1937). In 1923, Frank inspired a book-length study by Gorham Munson, who praised him as a visionary prophet and "America's most significant novelist. "
Six years later, Frank published what many consider his major critique of American culture, The Re-discovery of America, which had appeared serially in the New Republic in 1927-1928.
In 1929, he traveled and lectured throughout South and Latin America. He maintained his remarkable reputation in Hispanic America, where he traveled often and widely, until his death.
In the next two decades he published The Death and Birth of David Markand (1934), a novel about a disaffected businessman in search of faith; The Bridegroom Cometh (1938); Summer Never Ends (1941); Island in the Atlantic (1946), a historical novel about New York City; The Invaders (1948); and books of cultural and political interpretation, such as America Hispana (1931), Dawn in Russia (1932), Chart for Rough Waters (1940), South American Journey (1943), and The Jew in Our Day (1944).
In 1932, Frank joined Edmund Wilson and fifty other writers and artists in endorsing the Communist party presidential candidate. Calling himself "a philosophical social revolutionary, " Frank supported a number of radical political causes during the Great Depression. As chairman of a committee of writers investigating conditions in Harlan County, Kentucky, in 1932, he was jailed and beaten by vigilantes; he also led a protest against the assault on the bonus marchers in Washington, addressed the American Writers' Congress in 1935, and the next year traveled widely in support of Earl Browder, the Communist party candidate for president.
In the late 1930's, he was also associated with the Group Theatre in New York, and in 1937 he visited Mexico as the guest of the government.
Frank lectured throughout the United States in 1947, and in 1951 published a study of Simon Bolivar, Birth of a World. He was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1952 but encountered increasing hostility for his political views. He published Bridgehead (1957), a book of impressions of Israel, and The Rediscovery of Man (1958), which presented his argument for a "deep revolution" in man's relation to himself, others, and the cosmos.
In 1960 he chaired the Fair Play for Cuba Committee and the next year wrote Cuba: Prophetic Island. A prolific, wide-ranging writer whose interests reflect the experiences of twentieth-century American intellectuals, Frank was neglected and isolated in the last decades of his life.
Once at the center of a vital American movement, he was virtually forgotten at his death. In his Memoirs (1973) he expressed a deep sense of failure, particularly because his fiction never won the recognition he believed it deserved.
He died in White Plains, New York.
(This book was digitized and reprinted from the collection...)
(Excerpt from Rahab HE door opened against the drawn chai...)
(All the world moved gently upward toward the mountain lik...)
( This is a reproduction of a book published before 1923....)
In 1932, Frank joined Edmund Wilson and fifty other writers and artists in endorsing the Communist party presidential candidate.
He was elected to the National Institute of Arts and Letters in 1952 but encountered increasing hostility for his political views.
On December 20, 1916, Frank married Margaret Naumberg, the founder of the Walden School; they had one child.
In 1926, the year of Frank's divorce from Margaret Naumberg, Virgin Spain appeared, the first of a number of books interpreting the history and culture of Spanish-speaking countries. In March of the following year, he married Alma Magoon; they had two children.
Frank divorced Alma Magoon in 1943 and that August married Jean Klempner; they had two children.