MAXWELL BODENHEIM

   Two Forgotten Novels

Jim Burns

I’ve written about Maxwell Bodenheim before, but the recent appearance of reprints of two of his novels, one from the 1920s, the other from the 1930s, provides an opportunity for me to say a little more about him. He’s one of those writers who admittedly exercises a fascination that derives as much from his life, and its ups and mostly downs, as it does from what he wrote. But Bodenheim was for a time a productive writer. Between 1923 and 1934 he published thirteen novels, and between 1920 and 1942 at least nine collections of poetry, with a Selected Poems in 1946. In addition, he contributed dozens of articles, reviews and poems to various magazines in the 1920s and 1930s.

I’m not about to assert that everything Bodenheim wrote is now of equal interest. It isn’t, and he was a variable writer in terms of the quality of his work. And yet, I’ve usually found that, at his best, he could produce passages of, for example, good descriptive writing: “The room had a curlicued brass bed with high rods, a dark Brussels carpet worn to grey threads and holes in places,  little blue china spittoons, an old-fashioned trunk with a steeply humped top and a huge lock. Masculine and feminine visualities gave the room a neutral, insincere air – trousers over a corset; razor besides fresh trimmings for a bonnet; suspenders dangling over a woman’s white, ruffled drawers”.

That excerpt from Georgie May, published in 1928, and dealing with the bleak, downward spiral in the life of a prostitute, aptly captures the seediness of her existence. It’s a city novel, with references to “a block of three and four storey coops; brick walls painted in dull reds, greys, and browns; lunch-rooms, dry-goods stores, barber shops, second-hand furniture emporiums, their wares piled high upon the sidewalk”.

Again, it emphasises the declining fortunes of a woman who is slowly realising that the odds are stacked against her and there is only one way out of the situation she is in. It’s melodramatic, and Bodenheim obviously didn’t intend it to be any other way. Was he thinking of it from the point of view of Hollywood adapting it for the screen, with the most direct references to how Georgie May earns her money suitably toned down? He did visit the film capital at one point in the 1930s, but without persuading filmmakers to take an interest in his books.

The two novels recently reprinted – Blackguard (1923) and New York Madness (1933) -  are worth a consideration, even if neither of them can be said to be first rate.  Blackguard is, like so many first novels, autobiographical in that its hero Carl Felman, like Bodenheim, returns home after a period  in the army. He has ambitions to be a poet, something that his parents fail to understand. His father urges him to “go out and get a regular job, like other men”. Carl does find employment as a “lineman’s helper for the telephone company”, much to his mother’s disgust. She thinks he should be in a respectable white-collar job, and says, “Here we sent him to high school for four years and his only ambition is to work as a common labourer”.

But Carl perseveres with his writing, has poems published in a Chicago magazine, and begins to mix with the local intelligentsia. Blackguard has some value from the point of view of literary history in that several of the characters described are based on people in the literary bohemia of the city, among them Margaret Anderson, editor of the Little Review.  It was in Chicago that Bodenheim began to establish a reputation as a poet. And as someone who seemed determined to engineer his own downfall by falling out with the kind of people who were likely to assist him in obtaining critical approval for his poetry. There are some lively memories of him in his Chicago days in Ben Hecht’s Letters from Bohemia. It was Hecht who came up with a useful comment on Bodenheim’s novels: “They were hack work with flashes of tenderness, wit, and truth in them, and some verbal fireworks in every chapter”.

Jack B. Moore, Bodenheim’s biographer and an academic prepared to give his work serious attention, was of the opinion that New York Madness (1933) was his worst book. And I have to admit that I wasn’t impressed when I read it. As I’ve indicated, none of his novels reaches anywhere near perfection, but those virtues that Hecht referred to save most of them from total imperfection. While New York Madness may not be completely imperfect it has too little in its writing to save it from sliding into that category. The characters are hard to believe in, and the story contrived. The language is mostly routine, with little of the “verbal fireworks” that Hecht spoke of. It does have some social relevance from being set in the Depression years of the 1930s, with the police clashing with communist demonstrators, and there are occasional descriptive passages that add a little colour to the narrative, as with those relating to “The Rendezvous”, a popular night club in Greenwich Village.

Bodenheim describes how a jazz group alternates with poets, singers, dancers and other entertainers. In particular he refers to a poet who years before “had achieved a flitting prominence when one of the ‘seriously cultural’ magazines in New York had awarded him its annual poetry prize, on the strength of a rambling, awkward, blustering poem reminiscent of Walt Whitman and entitled ‘Warm Evenings Have Existed in Nebraska’. Since then he had trudged and drudged in a relative obscurity, fighting against starvation, vermin in cheap rooming houses, indifference and ridicule’ “.  This is clearly a mocking reference to Eli Siegel and his poem “Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana”, which was given the annual poetry prize by The Nation in 1925. Bodenheim was less than fair to Siegel, whose work was admired by William Carlos Williams and Kenneth Rexroth.

It’s interesting, too, to consider Bodenheim’s attitude towards the Communist Party. His novel, Slow Vision, views it in a reasonably positive light, but in New York Madness a character who is sympathetic towards communist ideas, is less sure about the Party: “he considered the party to be still an impossible joke in this country – an organisation run by sentimental humanitarians, shouting, crude gallery-players, self-servers, educated windbags, completely out of touch with the American proletariat; and prominent literary converts with large zealously guarded bank accounts, and easily dispensed indignations. Under such a leadership, he felt that the rank and file of American communists could only march over the cliff to the inevitable slaughter. The soil was still too barren in America, which would undoubtedly be the last fortress to fall in any worldwide revolution”.

Did those comments reflect Bodenheim’s own attitude? And was he actually ever a member of the Communist Party?  According to Jack B. Moore, Bodenheim was dismissed from the Federal Writers Project in 1940 “for having fraudulently signed an affidavit that he was not a Communist”, which suggests that he may have been a member, if only for a short time, and possibly not looked on too kindly by Party bureaucrats. As Ben Hecht put it: “He not only angered the police but disturbed, equally, the Communist Party leaders of New York…..the truth is that Bogie was the sort of Communist who would have been booted out of Moscow, overnight”.    

It can be asked why it was thought necessary to bring out new editions of both novels? From a personal point of view I welcome them, but then, I’m someone who has for many years been fascinated by Bodenheim and the bohemian milieu he was part of. As for his work, it isn’t all bad and there are poems and parts of his flawed novels still well worth reading. 

NOTES

Blackguard. Legare Street Press, Berkeley, 2022.

New York Madness. Tough Poets Press, Arlington, 2025.

There have been various editions of Georgie May since it was published in 1928. The one I used was published by Lancer Books, New York, 1956.

Two other recent Bodenheim publications are Bughouse Dope : Selected Essays and Articles, edited by Paul Maher (Tough Poets Press, 2024) and Isolated Wanderer : The Maxwell Bodenheim Reader, edited by Paul Maher. The latter is a curious publication, with no details about the date, publisher, etc., shown. It was, presumably, privately published.

Maxwell Bodenheim by Jack B. Moore was published by Twayne Publishers, New York, 1970. It is, as far as I know, the only published book-length critical survey of Bodenheim’s work.

Ben Hecht’s Letters from Bohemia was published by Hammond, Hammond and Company, London, 1965.

Eli Siegel’s Hot Afternoons Have Been in Montana : Poems by Eli Siegel was published by Definition Press, New York, 1958.  

My review of Bughouse Dope was published in Northern Review of Books in July 2024. Readers might also like to refer to my article on Bodenheim in Radicals, Beats and Beboppers, Penniless Press, Warrington, 2011.