Thursday, December 26, 2024

My dad looked like Pulitzer Prize winner William A. Swanberg, his 2nd cousin, biographer nonfiction author of 25 books

 Wow - we had his books in my dad's library and my dad mentioned going to visit W.A. Swanberg but I had never seen a photo of him before!

Upon graduation, he found employment as a journalist with such local daily newspapers as the St. Paul Daily News and the Minneapolis Star unsatisfactory, as their staff were shrinking during the Great Depression. Swanberg instead held a succession of low-paying manual labor jobs. After five years he followed a college friend to New York City in September 1935.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._A._Swanberg 

 Swanberg was born in Saint Paul, Minnesota in 1907, and earned his B.A. at the University of Minnesota in 1930.[5]

So  my great-grandmother was his sister - and so his brother-in-law, my great-grandfather, was the supervisor of the carpentry department at University of Minnesota - "head of grounds" as they say.

 https://www.nytimes.com/1992/09/19/arts/william-a-swanberg-dies-at-84-a-pulitzer-winning-biographer.html

Wow he even got a NY Times obit! William A. Swanberg Dies at 84; A Pulitzer-Winning Biographer

 With grudging and only partial help from his father, who wanted his son to be a cabinet maker like himself, Swanberg earned his degree.

 I have a chest in my room that was made by the brother-in-law of W.A. Swanberg's dad, the cabinet maker! They must have been buddies for sure.

1962: Pulitzer Prize for Citizen Hearst (overturned by trustees of Columbia University, who administer the prize, because subject (William Randolph Hearst) failed to meet "eminent example of the biographer's art as specified in the prize definition"[2]

 Wild that he won the Pulitzer by the Trustees rejected it!! If only we had the same standards today for the kleptocrats.

1973: Pulitzer Prize for Luce and His Empire

Wild. Interview with W.A. Swanberg about Theodore Dreiser and Technocracy! Fascinating.

 This was but one example in a succession of Dreiser’s political engagements chronicled in detail for the first time in my edition of his Political Writings. These included Populism and Progressivism around the turn of the nineteenth century, Greenwich Village radicalism in the 1910s and 1920s, Communism and other left-wing causes, and the Technocracy movement in the 1930s, anti-war agitation, and the internationalist “One World” movement in the aftermath of World War II. 

 https://www.press.uillinois.edu/wordpress/man-in-pale-suit-versus-the-abuse-of-corporate-power-theodore-dreiser-in-the-great-depression-by-jude-davies/

 Ironically Swanberg wrote a biography of Pulitzer as well as winning two Pulitzer prizes (but one was taken back by the Columbia University trustees).

Here we have a reprinted and revived come back of an relatively unknown non-fiction book (originally released in 1968) about one of the greatest practical jokers of all time - Gentleman Joe. In the 1880s (one thing I resent is when events that occur in the United States in this era are referred to as "Victorian" - we haven't had a queen here since before 1776) Gentleman Joe unleashed an incredibly complex and relentless prank on Reverend Morgan Dix (the rector of Trinity Parish in NYC) among others.

Fascinating with an extremely sad ending for Gentleman Joe, and a lot of questions left unanswered. Highly recommended.

 That Swanberg book looks like fun

 OK so W.A. Swanberg was my dad's grandmother's brother's son, and therefore my dad's 2nd cousin.

 

 

 So W.A. Swanberg was my second cousin once removed

 fascinating. https://cooperative-individualism.org/duram-james_norman-thomas-as-presidential-conscience-1990-summer.pdf

 

 

 

"First blood : the story of Fort Sumter"
Statement of Responsibility
W.A. Swanberg
Publisher
  • Scribner


Publication Year
  • c1957
Book size
24 cm

 

Jim Fisk;: The career of an improbable rascal Hardcover – January 1, 1959


From the loud and brash 1860's, Jim Fisk stands out as the most brazen financial buccaneer of them all. Short, rotund, merry, and utterly shameless, Fisk contrived with jay Gould and Daniel Drew to cheat Commodore Vanderbilt out of control of the notoriously mismanaged Erie Railroad. This was the tail of an angry lion, but Fisk survived — possibly because of his undeniable charm. He went on to serve as Gould's confederate in the unholy plot to corner the gold market, bringing Black Friday to the stock exchange. lt was a short life if a garish one, for Jim Fisk was only thirty-seven when he was murdered by the lover of his mistress. Josie Mansfield. During his high days the newspapers and the clergy thundered at him; indeed, as Mr. Swanberg says, he seemed “divinely fashioned for the function of giving offense to people of taste." And yet, perhaps because he told good jokes, disliked sham, and was generous with the Erie's money, New York had an affection for this shrewd rogue. And Jim Fisk was no isolated phenomenon; rather, a splendid reflection of the immorality of his time. With zest and good humor, and with unobtrusive scholarship, W. A. Swanberg has recreated Jim Fisk and his era — perhaps the gaudiest in American history. It makes a fascinating story.
 
The interview ends with the trouble from socializing with Cedric Belfrage...
 Terrified that the FBI might trace the source of the leak, the Soviets decided to have nothing more to do with Belfrage. (32) However, the real reason is that another Soviet agent, HAVRE (the true identity of this agent has never been discovered), had reported that Belfrage had failed to give Golos details about the BSC. This suggested to the Soviets he was working as a double agent. (33)

Belfrage also co-edited a left literary magazine, The Clipper, during the Second World War. In the magazine he promoted the work of Orson Welles. According to the authors of Radical Hollywood (2002), he selected Citizen Kane "as the supreme example of what radical innovators could do in Hollywood, the proof that showed the way forward." Belfrage argued that the movie was "as profoundly moving an experience as only this extraordinary and hitherto unexplored media of sound-cinema can afford." Belfrage suggested that progressive figures in Hollywood had been"hoping and trying for a chance like this.... but always the film salesman, speaking through the producer, has the last word." (34)

 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

 

 

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