Randall Jarrell and His Age

313 Pages·2003·1.3 MB·English

by  Stephen Burt

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Randall Jarrell
and His Age
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Photo courtesy of the Randall Jarrell Collection, Special Collections Division
of Jackson Library, The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
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Randall Jarrell
and His Age
Stephen Burt
columbia university press
new york
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Columbia University Press
Publishers Since 1893
New York Chichester, West Sussex
Copyright © 2002 Columbia University Press
All rights reserved
My deepest thanks to Mary von Schrader Jarrell for permission to quote from previously
unpublished writings by Randall Jarrell. My thanks as well to Farrar, Straus & Giroux and
to Faber and Faber for permission to quote from The Complete Poemsby Randall Jarrell
and from Notebookby Robert Lowell.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Burt, Stephen.
Randall Jarrell and his age / Stephen Burt.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0–231–12594–1 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Jarrell, Randall, 1914–1965. 2. United States—Intellectual life—20th century.
3. Poets, American—20th century—Bibliography. 4. Critics—United States—
Biography. I. Title.
PS3519.A86 Z596 2002
811'.52—dc21 2002071257
∞
Columbia University Press books are printed
on permanent and durable acid-free paper.
Printed in the United States of America
c 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
p 10 9 9 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
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to Jessica Bennett
...say: “I am yours,
Be mine!”
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contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction xi
Antechapter: Randall Jarrell’s Life 1
Chapter 1: Jarrell’s Interpersonal Style 21
Chapter 2: Institutions, Professions, Criticism 52
Chapter 3: Psychology and Psychoanalysis 85
Chapter 4: Time and Memory 118
Chapter 5: Childhood and Youth 145
Chapter 6: Men, Women, Children, Families 182
Conclusion: “What We See and Feel and Are” 219
Notes 237
Bibliography 263
Index 277
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acknowledgments
No large research project—certainly none I could undertake—could bear fruit
without the help and forbearance of many people; those thanked here are only
some of them.
First of all I thank Mary Jarrell for the many kinds of help she has made avail-
able, in letters, in person and over the phone, and additionally through her pub-
lished writings. Without her assistance this book could not exist. Having spent
month after month in and around the Berg Collection of the New York Public
Library, I owe much to it and to its staff, and especially to Stephen Crook. I am
also indebted to the staff and resources of other manuscript collections: to the
Library of Congress, to the University of North Carolina-Greensboro, to the
Beinecke Library and the Yale Review manuscript files at Yale, to the Houghton
Library at Harvard, and to Kate Donahue and the University of Minnesota.
Langdon Hammer advised the dissertation from which this book hatched
and offered as much help as any student could wish. Jennifer Crewe, my editor
at Columbia, provided important support and advice, as did Columbia’s two
anonymous readers. My student Hannah Brooks-Motl proofread the whole
work at a late stage, fixed glitches, and removed a truly startling number of semi-
colons. I am also grateful for comments, readings, advice, and assistance from
Tim Alborn, Leslie Brisman, John Burt, David Bromwich, Suzanne Ferguson,
Richard Flynn, Nick Halpern, John Hollander, James Longenbach, Jenn