The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal

by Barry Werth

During his thirty-seven years at Smith College, Newton Arvin published groundbreaking studies of Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville, and Longfellow that stand today as models of scholarship and psychological acuity. He cultivated friendships with the likes of Edmund Wilson and Lillian Hellman and became mentor to Truman Capote. A social radical and closeted homosexual, the circumspect Arvin nevertheless survived McCarthyism. But in September 1960 his apartment was raided, and his cache of beefcake erotica was confiscated, plunging him into confusion and despair and provoking his panicked betrayal of several friends.

An utterly absorbing chronicle, The Scarlet Professor deftly captures the essence of a conflicted man and offers a provocative and unsettling look at American moral fanaticism.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, History, LGBT, Gay, Literature, Queer

352 pages, Paperback

First published March 5, 2001

Reviews

[Cat · Rating 3 out of 5]

I picked this book up after reading Arvin's classic bio of Herman Melville (which is itself worth checking out). Werth's treatment of the tale is reminiscent of the genre of non fiction I like to call "The Expanded New Yorker Article". That's fine, I love the New Yorker, but the weakness endemic to the genre is the feeling that 150 pages would suffice (and you're reading a three hundred page book). Regardless, I read the whole book and don't regret it.

Werth's treatment of Arvin's tortured feelings about his own homosexuality are sad. Arvin's own betrayal of his friends and lovers at the hands of the authorities is pathetic. The fact that the "Homosexual Scandal of Smith College" (of which Arvin was the primary figure) dates to 1960 is astonishing.

It's impossible not to have sympathy for the man, but the bottom line is that he snitched on his comrades(i.e. he named names and testified for the prosecution in a co-defendant's appeal), and that taints his legacy.

[David · Rating 4 out of 5]

Newton Arvin, though a central figure in the early days of American literary studies, is not important enough or interesting enough to warrant a full-scale biography based solely on his accomplishments as a scholar and long-time professor at Smith College. Therefore, it is Arvin's life as a closeted homosexual and the scandal that ignominiously outed him that give this book its raison d'être. While Arvin himself is not always a sympathetic figure (when arrested, he was quick to try to save himself by outing others), this is nevertheless a moving story well told. Biographer Berry Werth makes skillful use of an awesome paper trail; Arvin and his circle all seem to have been navel-gazing pack rats.

[Michael Joe Armijo · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Literary World revisited...

This book was given to me as a gift so I felt an urge to read it right away. It was a B+. It's about the literary life of Newton Arvin who was shattered by a scandal in 1960. I was born in 1959 so it was interesting to me to read of what was going on at the time. It ventures into the closeted homosexual literary elite. This book gave me other book ideas that I really want to read like: The Scarlet Letter by Hawthorne, Letters & Leadership by Van Wyck Brooks, Roderick Hudson by Henry James, Leaves of Grass by Walt Whitman, Memoirs of Hecate County by Edmund Wilson, Other Voices, Other Rooms by Truman Capote, and other books that were actually written by Newton Arvin. This book is a great book for any aspiring writer and/or a lover of literature. A few lines that captured me in the book that will give you a flavor for it are:
It seems our worst fears are always more than justified.
I shan't advise you. If I were you I would follow my impulse or interest, and get to work.
He recoiled from loving and from being loved, which, taken away, left little worth living for.
He felt more trapped in Northampton...which, if nothing else, had made small-town life easier to bear by fostering certain illusions: stability, permanence, and a sense of home.
He craved solitude, a place of his own as a tranquil and sacred abbey.
'You know how much I love you'...'It is a luxury only to allow oneself to SAY it from time to time.'
...if I ever really began a 'letter' to you it could have no imaginable end--or even beginning--for it would just have to circle for ever and ever, like a great wheel, about the one central fact...
Like most of us aging and lonely people, what he wants is it get away from HIMSELF & unfortunately you take yourself wherever you go!
In short, there are sunny days, and there is memory, and--hardest of all--there is choice.
...the deepest betrayals usually came not from one's enemies but from one's friends and associates.

[Vincent Desjardins · Rating 4 out of 5]

For much of his life, Newton Arvin (born in 1900) was a respected literary critic and award-winning author. But Arvin lived a tortured and repressed existence. His greatest fear was that the public would find out about his homosexual desires. His career as a professor at Smith college, where he had taught for almost 40 years, came to an end when the police raided his apartment and found a stash of pornography (really not much more than a collection of muscle magazines). The injustices commited against Arvin by an unscrupulous police force were shameful and are a powerful reminder of the tenuousness of our right to privacy. There are lots of supporting characters who pop up throughout the book - Truman Capote whom Arvin mentored (and became lovers with) and Carson McCullers who became a good friend. Arvin kept copious journals and was a prolific letter writer. The book makes good use of these documents, giving us a feel for the tortured mindset of this talented individual and helping to successfully bring to life a sad chapter of recent history. While Arvin himself is not always a sympathetic character, his predicament is one many will identify with, and if nothing else the book is a fascinating look at the Puritan mores and attitudes of our society.

[Fredrik · Rating 4 out of 5]

Reading Notes

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(Frederic) Newton Arvin (August 23, 1900[1] – March 21, 1963)
US literary critic and academic. He achieved national recognition for his studies of individual nineteenth-century American authors. After teaching at Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts, for 38 years, he was forced into retirement in 1960 after pleading guilty to charges stemming from the possession of pictures of semi-nude males that the law deemed pornographic.Arvin was also one of the first lovers of the author Truman Capote.
In 1939 he became a trustee of Yaddo, the artist colony in Saratoga Springs, New York, where he was also a frequent writer-in-residence. There in the summer of 1946 he met and began a two-year affair with the young Truman Capote. Newton addressed him as "Precious Spooky" in amorous letters that went on to discuss literary matters. In 1948 Capote dedicated his novel Other Voices, Other Rooms to Arvin, and he later described how much he learned from Arvin saying: "Newton was my Harvard".
Arvin came to national attention with the publication in 1950 of Herman Melville, a critical biography of the novelist. It won the second annual National Book Award for Nonfiction in 1951.

• Hawthorne (Boston: Little, Brown, 1929)
• Whitman (NY: Macmillan Company, 1938).
• Herman Melville (NY: Sloane 1950)
• Longfellow: His Life and Work (Boston: Little, Brown, 1963)
• Daniel Aaron and Sylvan Schendler, eds., American Pantheon: Essays (NY: Delacorte Press 1966).
• "Individualism and American Writers" in The Nation, October 14, 1931.
• "Religion and the Intellectuals" in Partisan Review, January, 1950.
• "Our Country and Our Culture" in Partisan Review, May 1952.

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Edward Washburn (“Ned”) Spofford
Spofford is chiefly remembered for his association with noted English professor and critic Newton Arvin (1900-63) and the scandal Arvin provoked at Smith College in 1959-60.
A brilliant student at Amherst College, from which he graduated summa cum laude, Spofford was offered a position at Smith College by Helen Bacon in the spring of 1956. He was beloved by students who, on his 29th birthday filled his office with forsythia and flowers. He completed his master’s thesis, “Suggestion and Didacticism in the Georgics of Virgil,” in 1958 and in 1959 was accepted for graduate work at Harvard beginning in the fall of 1960. 
In the meantime, Arvin, twice Spofford’s age and a former lover of Truman Capote, pursued Spofford in hopes of establishing a relationship. Spofford could not return Arvin’s desire, but the two maintained a civilized and sympathetic relationship. When Arvin’s apartment was searched by three Massachusetts state troopers, a local police officer, and a United States postal inspector (Postmaster-General Arthur E. Summerfield was on a crusade against pornography) they found gay-oriented magazines and Arvin’s diaries detailing homosexual encounters. Arrested for possessing homosexual pornography, Arvin panicked,  and gave up the names of other gay faculty friends, including Spofford. Spofford’s apartment was searched without a warrant and he was arrested on September 2, 1960 for the possession of another man's pornography. He and Arvin shared a jail cell overnight. Helen Bacon, herself untenured at the time, immediately raised Spofford’s bail by cashing in her war bonds, brought him home, enlisted help from the AAUP, and accompanied him at his hearing the next day. At his September 20 trial before the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.,  he accepted, along with the other defendants, a plea bargain of suspended jail terms and fines but no prison time and no trial. Spofford and his English colleague Raymond Joel Dorius (1919-2006) were allowed to accept the deal and yet still plead “not guilty” in order to appeal his case. 
Spofford was sentenced to one year in the Massachusetts House of Corrections and fined $1000 for possessing obscene photographs and literature. Again, Helen Bacon paid his costs as he was released upon appeal. Angry at the invasion of her colleague’s apartment without warning, she encouraged Spofford to make a public fight.  The Smith Classics Department and the college tenure and promotion committee voted to retain Spofford, despite the concerns of other faculty at the notoriety the case had caused and frankly, his sexual behavior. On February 17, 1961, the trustees allowed Arvin to retire at half-pay, but despite the public protests instigated by Bacon and other faculty and students, Spofford and Dorius were not retained. Bacon continued to work on their behalf: She sponsored a faculty expression of regret at the trustees’ action, which passed unanimously and she employed the AAUP to secure a full year’s severance pay for both Spofford and Dorius. Given tenure in 1961, she nevertheless moved that year to Barnard.
    Spofford soon left Northampton for Cambridge. Cedric Whitman, the chair of the Classics Department, told him “If you are guilty, we will set up a committee to deal with it. No guilt, no committee.” In 1963, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court overturned the convictions of all three defendants, ruling that the searches were unconstitutional because the authorities had no warrant and failed to define obscenity.
Spofford completed all the coursework at Harvard for a doctorate and won a Harvard fellowship to Italy to revise his dissertation on Virgil's treatment of farming communities.  When he returned to America in 1964 his doctoral committee  was prepared to accept the dissertation, but Spofford, ever the perfectionist, refused to submit it and left Harvard without a degree. He was given an appointment by Cornell and though an ABD,  tenure in 1970, but abruptly quit and moved to San Francisco, where Dorius had taken a position at San Francisco State. Recognizing his his unique talents as a teaching professor, Stanford appointed Spofford a visiting lecturer at Stanford  to further their graduate students' immersion in Latin literature. In 1974 he suffered a nervous breakdown, “a delayed reaction to the events of 1960” (Werth, 302) and briefly stopped teaching.  He was hospitalized three times in the 1970s but in 1981 fashioned his dissertation work on the Georgics into a 63-page book that went largely unnoticed. Spofford retired in 1988 to live the rest of his life alone in Palo Alto, reading, listening to music, and enjoying the company of friends until his death at 81. 
A shy man, Spofford had a lively sense of humor and enjoyed discussing classical music and opera, but the hunt, arrest, trial, and sentence had altered him. He never fully recovered his composure, despite the admiration of undergraduate and graduate students at Cornell, Stanford, and Yale, who were deeply appreciative of his thoughtful mentoring. He provided a model of close reading of Virgil, Lucretius, and Horace for his students, many of whom kept in touch with him until he died. 
n 2002, Smith recognized but did not apologize for the injustice to its professors and created a lecture series and a small scholarship: The Dorius-Spofford Fund for the Study of Civil Liberties and Freedom of Expression and the Newton Arvin Prize in American Studies. 

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Raymond Joel Dorius (January 4, 1919 – February 14, 2006)
Dorius left the United States after the scandal and worked as a professor at the University of Hamburg in West Germany. In 1964 he returned to the United States and taught as a professor at San Francisco State University. He died of bone marrow cancer at his home in San Francisco, California, in 2006.

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Arvin’s apartment: 45 Prospect St, Northampton, MA 01060
(Look it up on Google Maps.)

(From a realty site.) Once the home of Newton Arvin and known as the "JR Trumbull House", this stately Victorian 4-family with one unit on each floor and one in the walk out lower level. All brick with slate roof. Each unit has its own enclosed rear porch and there are nice views from the upper floors. Nice location on a quiet side street yet close to town. Great rental history. Updated kitchens, some with granite counters, updated baths. 2 separate detached 2-car garage to provide additional rental income or for storage.

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“Tormented Man”
—by Leonard Baskin, color woodcut on paper, 1953
Hung in Arvin’s Northampton, MA, apartment, a gift from the artist. Sylvia Plath comments on it and Arvin’s apartment in her diaries. (See below.)

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Leonard Baskin (August 15, 1922 – June 3, 2000)
An American sculptor, draughtsman and graphic artist, as well as founder of the Gehenna Press (1942–2000). One of America's first fine arts presses, it went on to become "one of the most important and comprehensive art presses of the world", often featuring the work of poets, such as Sylvia Plath, Ted Hughes, Anthony Hecht, and James Baldwin side by side with Baskin's bold, stark, energetic and often dramatic black-and-white prints.[1] Called a "Sculptor of Stark Memorials" by the New York Times, Baskin is also known for his wood, limestone, bronze, and large-scale woodblock prints, which ranged from naturalistic to fanciful, and were frequently grotesque, featuring bloated figures or humans merging with animals.[2] "His monumental bronze sculpture, The Funeral Cortege, graces the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Memorial in Washington, D.C."
In 1974, Baskin moved with his family to Britain, to Lurley Manor, near Tiverton, Devon, to be close to his friend Ted Hughes, for whom he had illustrated the poetry volume Crow published in 1970.[8] Baskin and Hughes collaborated on several further works, including A Primer of Birds, published by Gehenna Press in 1981.[7] Other poets who collaborated with the Gehenna Press included James Baldwin, Anthony Hecht, Ruth Fainlight, and Anne Halley.[9] Sylvia Plath dedicated "Sculptor" to Leonard Baskin in her work, The Colossus and Other Poems (1960).

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Sylvia Plath thought the art looked like Arvin.

In Plath’s 1957 journal: “Last night, weary, up the old blind Gothic stairwell to Arvin’s for drinks. Arvin, bald head pink, eyes and mouth dry slits, as on some carved Rubicund masks.”

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[FOR A PHOTO FOUND ONLINE]
Truman Capote (center) Newton Arvin (right) and Christopher Isherwood, Nantucket, 1947.

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The Palmer Raids 
A series of raids conducted in November 1919 and January 1920 by the United States Department of Justice under the administration of President Woodrow Wilson to capture and arrest suspected socialists, especially anarchists and communists, and deport them from the United States. The raids particularly targeted Italian immigrants and Eastern European Jewish immigrants with alleged leftist ties, with particular focus on Italian anarchists and immigrant leftist labor activists. The raids and arrests occurred under the leadership of United States Attorney General A. Mitchell Palmer, with 6,000 people arrested across 36 cities. Though 556 foreign citizens were deported, including a number of prominent leftist leaders, Palmer's efforts were largely frustrated by officials at the U.S. Department of Labor, which had authority for deportations and objected to Palmer's methods.
The Palmer Raids occurred in the larger context of the First Red Scare, a period of reactionary fear of communists in the U.S. in the years immediately following World War I and the successful Russian Revolution. There were strikes that garnered national attention, and prompted race riots in more than 30 cities, as well as two sets of bombings in April and June 1919, including one bomb mailed to Palmer's home in response to his policy of politically motivated mass arrests and deportations.

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WORD
epicene (EHP•ih•seen)
Having characteristics of both sexes or no characteristics of either sex; of indeterminate sex. Ex: "Photographs of an epicene young man..."

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BOOK
"Letters and Leadership"

Van Wyck Brooks

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Van Wyck Brooks (February 16, 1886 – May 2, 1963)
US literary critic, biographer & historian.

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WORD
bossism
A situation in which a political party is controlled by party managers.


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WORD

catchpenny
Using sensationalism or cheapness for appeal. Ex: “A catchpenny newspaper.”

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David Eli Lilienthal (July 8, 1899 – January 15, 1981)
US attorney and public administrator, best known for his presidential appointment to head Tennessee Valley Authority and later the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC). He had practiced public utility law and led the Wisconsin Public Utilities Commission.
Later he was co-author with Dean Acheson (later Secretary of State) of the 1946 Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, which outlined possible methods for international control of nuclear weapons. As chair of the AEC, he was one of the pioneers in civilian management of nuclear power resources.

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Moon Motor Car Company (1905 – 1930)
A US automobile company that was located in St. Louis, Missouri. The company had a venerable reputation among the buying public, as it was known for fully assembled, easily affordable mid-level cars using high-quality parts. Often this meant the manufacturing process required more human intervention, leading to operating losses. The company was founded by carriage maker Joseph W. Moon. Moon produced both cars and trucks.

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WORD
scut
Routine and often menial labor. Probably from medical argot scut: junior intern.

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WORD
hornbook
A one-volume treatise summarizing the law in a specific field. Ex. "A high demand for hornbooks that are quick and easy to use."

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WORD
countenance
Admit as acceptable or possible. Ex. “He was reluctant to countenance the use of force"

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WORD
coraggio
Courage, bravery, fearlessness. Also, “coraggio da leone” (the courage of a lion).

[Robert Fieseler · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great use of diaries, publications, notes, etc. to crack the inner world of a real person.

[Hubert · Rating 5 out of 5]

An extremely engaging overview of the life of Newton Arvin, a longtime professor of American literature at Smith College. Focuses on the interweaving between Arvin's work on the major literary characters in American (Hawthorne, Melville, Emerson, Longfellow); and his own personal struggles as a closeted gay man in the recalcitrant strait-laced milieu of pre-60s America. Author Barry Werth argues that the shame and insecurity Arvin (and other homosexuals) endured would lead him to pursue life choices that were either dishonest (an early marriage to a former female student that would end in divorce) or secretive (a number of liaisons, most famously with Truman Capote, but later in life with other closeted colleagues at Smith).

Though his interpersonal relationships provided him some intermittent joy, for much of his life he suffered from depression brought upon by his introversion (which he felt, likely accurately, necessary for him to do his scholarly work). He was admitted to the local Northampton state mental institution, a private sanitarium in White Plains, NY, and the famous McLean Hospital west of Boston at various points in his life.

The centerpiece of the book revolves around his arrest on the charge of trafficking gay erotica, part of an effort by the then-postmaster general to clamp down on distribution of illicit materials. Author Werth proceeds on a day by day telling of the lead-up not only to his plea hearing, but also of the actions and thoughts of his friends whom he gave up to the local police in a panic. Though it's important to understand this "scandal" in the context of the puritan post-War, I was more interested in his scholarly life, his ability to attack tough questions and engage the prominent figures of American letters, and his ability to string together prose of a 'je ne sais quoi' quality.

The biography smartly provides a window into the core issues of American culture of the day: the relations between small and big towns, Midwest and East Coast establishment, reserve versus flamboyance, and academic culture and politics. Also cool to read about was Yaddo Colony, where Arvin spent significant amounts of time working (and meeting Capote and other key writers of the day, including Porter and McCullers).

Though it can be rather to read, especially the last 2/3, when Arvin's health takes a serious decline, I think Arvin (and I sense this from the author) can be seen as a hero of sorts - unable to truly be himself in the public eye, having to hide and pretend, and yet, he lived the life that he was meant to live - that of a dedicated scholar who was respected by close friends and colleagues.

[Tacy Pearce · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite my chagrin at gravitating toward a story about scandal, this book was excellent, and I would definitely recommend it to anyone. It was interesting and well-written. I particularly loved hearing more about Arvin’s various biographies and how, as the author stated, he found catharsis in researching and writing about people like Hawthorne, Melville, and Longfellow as he uncovered some of their struggles and their darkness. Indeed, as he felt less alone I have no doubt the author of this book also experienced catharsis in researching Arvin, and he so masterfully passed on that experience to the reader. Well done! I say read it!

[Clara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Required reading for a history class I'm taking this semester. I think I might have enjoyed this more if I'd been able to take my time with it. The subject matter is very intense (content warnings: multiple suicide attempts, suicide, extended discussion of depression and hospitalization for mental health problems, homophobia and forced outing), and reading it in two big chunks over the course of a week was very draining for me.

[Mary K · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a fairly interesting book but I found myself not caring to continue at the end of chapter after chapter, putting it down and picking it up weeks later, and repeating that process so often that I finally gave up and stopped reading. I didn’t finish the book

[Find Me Reading Always · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow! As an historian, I spend my days working with history related materials so I typically shy away from history non-fiction. The topic of this book drew me in but the amazing writing and compelling subject kept me reading. Well done!

[Darla Ebert · Rating 2 out of 5]

This was not a very interesting read (for me), although well-researched .

[Brendan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Well written, though drags in a few portions. Overall an important telling of how different things were for gay people not so very long again.

[R.J. Gilmour · Rating 5 out of 5]

Just finished reading Barry Werth's The Scarlett Professor: Newton Arvin a Life Shattered by Scandal (New York: Nan A. Talese, 2001). At the same time I picked up the only book on Yaddo in the TPL system, Micki McGee's, Yaddo: Making American Culture (New York: The New York Public Library & Columbia University Press, 2008). The Yaddo book, an edited collection based on an exhibition at the New York Public Library includes a collection of essays about Yaddo and some of the luminaries who resided there over the years, including not surprisingly an essay by Werth on Arvin.

Reading about Arvin's life and the lives of gay men before Stonewall brought back memories of many of the men I knew through my first boyfriend many years ago. He was twenty years my senior and most of his friends were ten to twenty years older than him, so I had the rare privilege of meeting men who had lived in a world defined by duplicity and fear of exposure. While it is hard for us to understand how men like Arvin coped with the confines of the closet and how they defined themselves without late twentieth-century concepts of identity, Werth tries his best to shed light on the world of salons and cliques in his biography of Arvin. Maybe it is part of aging but looking back to understand the worlds that came before is becoming more and more important and there is something intoxicating about the worlds that suffered in the hushed closets before Stonewall. The story Werth relates is important and the people he weaves into the narrative of Arvin need to be told. Like most biographers he offers a wealth of information on his subject and the world in which he moved while never quite transporting the reader to that world. There are some beautiful bits of writing in the book " Oscar Wilde described it as "that deep physical affection that is as pure as it is perfect...repeatedly exists between an elder and a younger man, when the elder man has intellect, and the younger man has all the joy, hope and glamour") but they come from the authors and writers who were part of Arvin's world (Brinnin refers to Capote as a "dance of bees", a lovely phrase), including some lovely descriptions by Truman Capote. Too often Werth's writing is mired by the confines of the medium slipping into psychobiography, what Fulford terms pathography, or a more journalistic true crime form (in the vein of Ann Rule, although it never rises to that of In Cold Blood) that provides a drama or tension that stands in marked contrast to the life of his subject. At times Arvin's life is lost to the detail of the biographer/journalist who wants to explain how Arvin's life was affected by events beyond his control. Indeed sections of the book are cordoned off by days to detail the events leading up to Arvin's arrest for the possession of pictures of naked guys. It is important that these stories be told but the manner in which Werth relates them often is directly at odds with the life that Arvin lead. Each night I found myself wanting to return to the world before Stonewall, to the world inhabited by Arvin and his friends (and indeed Arvin's view of that world changed) but found myself always a tad disappointed with Werth's ability to bring that world alive. It may be the nature of the medium, however there have been books which trade in biographical subjects that can rise above the medium, crafting a more subtle and engaging view of such an important person (any of Natalie Zemon Davis's books, anything by Christopher Benfey and Irene Gammel's Baroness Elsa). There is room in the future for more interesting studies of the intersecting worlds that are created by men from different social backgrounds seeking sex with men in the period prior to Stonewall.

[Beesley · Rating 3 out of 5]

It's fitting that I finished reading this book on a day when the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision and a non-decision that advanced LGBTQ rights in the U.S.A. If you have moments of thinking that the United States has not progressed much over the last 50 to 100 years, this book will remind you of just how much some things here have progressed. It is a depressing account of a brilliant and talented scholar and critic whose life was in many ways ruined by the closet and by the idiotic discrimination and censorship that ran rampant in the United States during his lifetime. Although the book is well written, it made a better long article than book, and it included too much tedious detail about the life of a man who in many ways was unlikeable and not terribly interesting. I found the legal case involved in the story to be the most interesting part of it, but it received less attention that the details of the subject's life.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

This a very sad tale about a literary critic genius who is gay and cannot come to terms with this and whose times, the first half of the twentieth century cannot come to terms with homosexuality. For his first forty years he does not recognize the issue. Once he does he ends up in psychiatric hospitals having electro shock therapy. In his later years he is arrested for possession of pornography. It makes up pause and wonder how far we have come from those times in the not so distant past. If there is something positive to say, perhaps celibacy, allows that energy to go into work which may in term be better for it.

[Christopher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Four stars for the quality, though not a 'fun' read. Even before the historically important tragedy and injustice of Newton Arvin, Ned Spofford, and Joel Dorius', amongst others, arrest and downfall over privately owned gay erotica and porn, Arvin was a consistently self-tormenting guy. I am curious to read, and would have liked in the biography itself, more of Arvin's own work. For all of his self loathing, Arvin was at his peak one of the premiere American lit critics and biographers of Melville, Whitman, Hawthorne, and Longfellow.

[Dawn Faucher · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read