(Bodenheim's memoir, My Life and Loves in Greenwich Villag...)
Bodenheim's memoir, My Life and Loves in Greenwich Village, released six months after his death in 1954, was ghostwritten by Samuel Roth. He had been paying the down-and-out Bodenheim for his biographical stories about Greenwich Village at the time of the writer's murder.
Maxwell Bodenheim was an American author and poet. Once considered a leading modernist author of the early 20th century, he is credited with introducing the spirit of French naturalism into American literature.
Background
Maxwell Bodenheim was born on May 26, 1895 in Hermanville, Claiborne County, Mississippi, United States. He was a son of Solomon W. Bodenheim and Caroline Bodenheim. The family, which was Jewish and middle-class, moved to Chicago before Maxwell turned ten.
Education
Maxwell Bodenheim was self-educated. Bodenheim would later drop the "er" from his surname sometime in the 1920s.
Career
In 1908 Maxwell Bodenheim joined the United States Army. Just three years later, he was jailed for desertion and later discharged. Before returning to Chicago in 1912, Bodenheim had spent much of the previous year traveling the southwestern United States. After his return, Bodenheim quickly established himself with the crowd at Poetry magazine. Bodenheim’s literary ability and sardonic wit particularly impressed the magazine's founder and editor, Harriet Monroe. For the next four years, Bodenheim stayed in Chicago, publishing his poems in both Poetry and the Little Review. In 1916 he headed for New York and settled in Greenwich Village, where he spent most of his days until his death.
After arriving in New York. Bodenheim began publishing his verse in publications such as the Egoist, Seven Arts, and the New Republic. In 1918, at the age of twenty-five, Bodenheim published Minna and Myself, which was composed of a large number of poems dedicated to Minna Schein, whom he married in November of that same year. Minna and Myself was followed by Advice in 1920 and Introducing Irony in 1922. Bodenheim’s bohemian voice was beginning to emerge with these works, and the latter of the two prompted Louis Grudin to comment in Poetry that Bodenheim had "humiliated nouns and adjectives, stripped them of their old despotisms and loyalties."
The following year, 1923, was one of Bodenheim’s most productive, as he published three works: Against This Age, The Sardonic Ann, and the novel Blackguard. Bodenheim’s star was clearly on the rise, as critics began to take notice of his unusual poetry. Throughout the middle part of the decade, Bodenheim devoted much of his time to writing novels, including Replenishing Jessica (1925), which drew criticism because it was about a rich girl who was obsessed with sex. The publication of The King of Spain in 1928 marked the beginning of a steady decline in Bodenheim’s literary reputation. At the same time, he was becoming a well-known partygoer in Greenwich Village. Even though he was leading a life of self-destruction, Bodenheim continued to take chances with his writing.
With his 1930 effort Bringing Jazz.! he attempted to write poems that incorporated the concept of jazz music, which was popular in Greenwich Village at the time. For example, in "Jazz Kaleidoscope" he tries to mimic the slang of Harlem. By this time, though, Bodenheim had squandered much of the money he had made with his earlier works, and with the dawning of the Great Depression he often had to sleep on the street and beg for his meals. To make matters worse, Minna divorced him in 1938. A year later he married his second wife, Grace Finan, and he did get some help through the Federal Writers’ Project. However, he was cut off in 1940 when it was rumored that he had been associated with the Communist Party during his younger years.
During the last fifteen years of his life, Bodenheim only published two volumes, Lights in the Valley (1942) and Selected Poems, 1914-1944 (1946), which were mostly comprised of his earlier work along with a few newer poems that he had published in various journals and magazines. A diagnosed alcoholic by this time, Boden-heim could no longer contain his bad habits enough to be productive. His life was now in a rapid decline. His second wife died in 1950, and in 1952 he was arrested for vagrancy in Brooklyn. On February 6, 1954 Maxwell and his third wife, Ruth, were killed.
It was rumored that Maxwell Bodenheim had been associated with the Communist Party during his younger years. There is no factual evidence implying that Bodenheim or his third wife, Ruth, were communist sympathizers.
Views
Quotations:
"For me, poetry is an impish attempt to paint the colour of the wind."
"Words are soldiers of fortune hired by different ideas."
Membership
While Maxwell Bodenheim was living in New York City, he was an active member of the Raven Poetry Circle of Greenwich Village.
Personality
Maxwell Bodenheim became an alcoholic after a death of his second wife. His third wife, Ruth, shared his derelict lifestyle. They were homeless and slept on park benches. His fortunes were at a desperately low level. He would sit on the street begging with a sign saying that he was blind, although he could see very well. Ruth contributed to their joint misery by working as a prostitute.
Connections
On November 22, 1918 Maxwell Bodenheim married Minna Schein. They had a son, Solbert, who was born in 1920, and divorced in 1938. In 1939 he married Grace Finan. In 1950 she died. In 1952 Maxwell married Ruth Fagin, a former journalist and 28 years his junior.