MCALMON AND THE LOST GENERATION.

by Robert E. Knoll

First edition. Information on Hemingway, Stein, Pound, H.D. Williams and Barnes. Inscribed by Knoll. viii, 396, 2 pages. cloth, dust jacket.. 8vo..

Hardcover

First published October 1, 1976

About the author

During his 40-year career at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln, Robert E. Knoll taught generations of students to enjoy the rich beauty of English language and literature, pioneered a number of innovative teaching initiatives, was an exemplary academic citizen and first-rate scholar. At his retirement in 1990, he was Paula and Woody Varner Professor of English. He also had been a George Holmes Distinguished Professor, an honor conferred only on the university’s most-esteemed faculty. Additionally, he had received a distinguished teaching award from UNL’s College of Arts and Sciences.

Knoll was a specialist in Shakespeare, but he also taught courses in Plains literature, English Renaissance literature, English history, American and British literature between 1922 and 1950, and composition. He was an adviser to the NU Student Council, a precursor the current UNL student government, served on the faculty senate, chaired the Willa Cather centennial festival in 1973 and the Wright Morris centennial festival in 1976. In 1988, he was named Nebraska’s Professor of the Year by the national Council for the Advancement and Support of Education. He was a Fulbright lecturer in Graz, Austria; a Woods fellow; and served a fellowship at Yale University, appointed by the National Endowment for the Humanities. He was a founding member of UNL’s Centennial College, an innovative undergraduate teaching initiative in 1968. He was a founding member and fellow in UNL’s Center for Great Plains Studies.

In 1997, the UNL Alumni Association gave Knoll its “Doc” Elliott Award, conferred on emeritus faculty members in honor of their outstanding record of service and caring to students.

Knoll, a 1943 Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Nebraska, joined the faculty in 1950 as an assistant professor of English; he was tenured and promoted to associate professor in 1957, and promoted to full professor in 1961. He earned his M.A. and Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota in 1947 and 1950 respectively. He served in the U.S. Army from 1943-1946.

Knoll wrote dozens of critical essays, books, television treatments and other scholarly works. He was a scholar of artist-writer Weldon Kees, publishing several books about Kees work and life. He also published works on writers Ben Jonson, Christopher Marlowe and Robert McAlmon. In 1995, he published what has become known as the definitive history of the university, “Prairie University: A History of the University of Nebraska.” Knoll was particularly suited for the task, as both his parents and many members of his family were NU graduates and he was personally acquainted with early NU luminaries such as Louise Pound.

Knoll was exceptionally proud of the university. On the occasion of receiving the CASE professor of the year in 1988, Knoll delivered a lecture in which he described, among many things, his belief in the importance of the university.

Reviews

[J. · Rating 2 out of 5]

"The Gypsy Bar was usually our late night hangout. The patron and the girls knew us well, and knew that we would drink freely and surely stay till four or five in the morning. The girls of the place collected at our table, and indulged in their Burgundian and Rabelaisian humors. Jeannette, a big draught-horse of a girl from Dijon, pranced about like a mare in heat and restrained no remark or impulse which came to her. Alys, sweet and pretty blonde, looked fragile and delicate, but led Jeannette to bawdier vulgarities of speech and action. [James] Joyce, watching, would be amused, but surely there came a time when drink so moved his spirit that he began quoting from his own work or reciting long passages of Dante in rolling and sonorous Italian. I believed that Joyce might have been a priest upon hearing him recite Dante as though saying mass..."

As an affluent influence in the penniless bohemian world of Literary Paris in the twenties, Robert McAlmon was in no danger of having to dine alone. Or of being turned down when it was time for someone to buy a round of drinks. He rose to the occasion every time, it seems.

McAlmon was the sponsor and friend of many in the colorful underworld that included Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Djuna Barnes, and Joyce. Having the wherewithal to enable various one-off and start-up publishing schemes, he found himself in constant demand, and morphed into a would-be-author-turned-publisher. Gertrude Stein, F.Scott Fitzgerald, Wyndham Lewis were all apt to be present at any given dinner party. Notably McAlmon would travel and drink with Hemingway, throughout his Spanish bullfight obsession, during some of that crucial decade.

Hard to pin down just what went on during that storied era, but McAlmon seems to have been best friend, womanizer, cocktail aficionado, observer and writer all in one; he ended up typing the last fifty pages of Joyce's Ulysses for the eyesight impaired author-- the Molly Bloom chapter-- when an accident destroyed the original. McAlmon freely admits he may possibly have juggled some of the elements there, but as he was Joyce's drinking pal, it's not an archiving error but a toss of the dice: "Molly might just as well think this or that a page or two later, or, not at all," he ventured.

Even with that level of drama unfolding, Robt E. Knoll's McAlmon And The Lost Generation manages to be a rough and uneven trip through a chronically disorganized life, lurching from literary scandale to McAlmon's irregular prose efforts and back. McAlmon wrote short stories that were at best heartfelt, nostalgic, and here Knoll fumbles in trying to tie them to the frenetic Parisian circumstances that would later claim their author's time, money, and youth. McAlmon died in obscurity and what Knoll has assembled here doesn't really solve the mystery of how it all came to be.