Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy: The Tragic Life of an Outsider Artist

by Jim Elledge

While some art historians tend to dismiss Darger as possibly psychotic, Jim Elledge cuts through the cloud of controversy and rediscovers Darger as a damaged and fearful gay man, raised in a world unaware of the consequences of child abuse or gay shame. This thoughtful, sympathetic biography tells the true story of a tragically misunderstood artist. Drawn from fascinating histories of the vice-ridden districts of 1900s Chicago, tens of thousands of pages of primary source material, and Elledge's own work in queer history, Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy also features a full-color reproduction of a never-before-seen canvas from a private gallery in New York, as well as a previously undiscovered photograph of Darger with his lifelong companion William Schloeder, or "Whillie" as Henry affectionately referred to him. Engaging, arresting, and ultimately illuminating, Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy brings alive a complex, brave, and compelling man whose outsider art is both challenging and a triumph over trauma.

Genres: Biography, Art, Nonfiction, History, LGBT, Art History

396 pages, Hardcover

First published July 11, 2013

Reviews

[Felice · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is an amazing story well told and in the end I found it surprisingly moving too. Darger was a rebellious gay boy in the very early 20th century growing up among working class German immigrant people in a section of Chicago. His life was essentially undermined at every point by family members who abandoned him or had him committed to institutions for the "feeble minded," as well as by religious people connected to the Catholic Church who overworked him and daily verbally abused him and harangued to feel worthless.

This story should have ended in death or suicide at an early age. Instead Darger found solace in art which he taught himself, and in writing, which he taught himself. Eventually he wrote several books, including an autobiography and a 15,000 page novel titled In the Realms
of the Unreal. He also did paintings and collages and drawings that a decade after his death are selling in the miilion dollar range. He was completely self taught, had only one friend--an older man --in his life who predeceased him. Darger was totally unconnected to the art, literature or culture of his time, except for a shelf full of children's books that he read, reread and cherished.

Darger's life and his unique Outside Art work asks questions like what is artistry, what is creativity, and how does art work influence a life? Totally unknown in his time, never rising above employment as a janitor or dishwasher, Darger nevertheless had a rich and rewarding interior life of his own creation that we can now partake of -- our own enrichment.

[Christopher Roth · Rating 5 out of 5]

This seems to be the first biography of sorts (following many coffee-table books, some of them heavy with text) of Henry Darger, the impoverished dishwasher who died a veritable hermit in Chicago in 1973 but who proved to be a wildly prolific painter of collage-style murals and author of tens of thousands of pages of wildly inventive fantasy fiction; he is considered one of the premier geniuses of the Outsider Art—well, not movement, in his case, but phenomenon. This biography takes a queer-theory and to some extent psycho-biography approach and is intended, in the first instance, to defend Darger against the initial critical response to his work, still a common interpretation of it, which is that his obsession with sexual violence against children was evidence of Darger's own pedophilic and predatory predilections. Elledge makes it abundantly clear, from research in historical records and from Darger's own voluminous autobiography, that the opposite is true: Darger grew up in orphanages and mental institutions, rejected by his father and branded by the medical establishment as an "invert" because of "self-abuse," which not only meant masturbation but was a euphemism for his participation in—for the most part, victimization by—the excesses of the vice district near his father's West Side Chicago home in the 1890s and 1900s, a pit of live sex shows, prostitution, gay and straight cruising, and rampant child-exploitation that dwarfs anything that could ever be allowed to flourish on such a scale today. In institutions he both formed sexual relationships with other boys and was sexually victimized by older ones. Later in life, Darger formed a long-term love affair with another man, but it could never be made public and it was the focus of a constant internal struggle with his own Catholic faith, which he was never really able to think outside of. Through it all, he poured his emotions into his art, which was mostly kept a secret. Elledge's book sets to rest the theory that Darger's depiction of the girl-soldier heroines of his books with penises was evidence of a life so sheltered by the Church that he did not know the basic differences between boys and girls. In point of fact, and tragically, he probably had seen as much by age 10 of what went on between the legs of grown-ups of both sexes as any adult. Elledge says that in fact Darger's hermaphrodite protagonists, the Vivian Girls, can be seen as stand-ins for the queer identity that Darger was too conflicted to fully adopt consciously—or maybe he did, and that indeed is an interesting question, which we may never answer. I was at first resistant to Elledge's reading, thinking it a modern identity-politics and queer-theory superimposition on the material, and that is indeed a legitimate criticism in places, but by the end of the book I was pretty much on his side.

My only complaint is that there isn't MORE of this book—I would have read it just as eagerly if it were 2 or 3 times longer, which, after 10 years of Elledge's research, I bet it could have been—and that there isn't more of Darger's own material in it. Some of the most chilling and bizarre paintings described in the book are not among those featured in the illustrations, which is frustrating and ridiculous. And there were times when I noted that whole chapters consisted of summaries and quotations lifted straight from Darger's own voluminous autobiography and diaries and I found myself wondering, "Why am I not just reading the autobiography? an exhaustively annotated one?" That, along with the fiction, is what eager consumers of Darger's work, of whom I am one, demand next from those who own the work and are contemplating how much to publish and when. My answer: all of it, and soon. I'm waiting.

[Osman · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m a huge admirer of Darger’s work, so when I saw this book in the library I hastened to take it out, unfortunately it was a disappointment.

The author seeks to rehabilitate Dager’s reputation. Some commentators have labeled him as a probable paedophile, perhaps understandably given a cursory glance at his work, but anyone with a deeper acquaintance with the scant details of his life will know better.

The problem is that the author (a gay man, whose sole expertise seems to be gay culture) just wants to dwell on Darger’s supposed gayness and rehabilitate him as a gay icon. But we really don't know much about him so all speculation is just that. Here we have no new insights into the man. He was a loner, ignored in his lifetime- no one knew him, we can only guess from the clues that he left behind. Obviously, to summarily brand him a murderous pedophile as some have done, solely on the evidence of his art is ridiculous. Elledge deals well with that point. But then goes on to put other tendentious interpretations on him, making the same mistake.

I had little interest in the author's cod-psychological theories. I really wanted to know more about the work and the techniques, but this aspect of Darger's story is only given brief treatment. I got the feeling the author has no Art training. He displays no real appreciation or understanding for the art at all - he insists for example on calling Darger’s paintings ‘canvasses’ (they are water-colours painted on paper). He gives no indication that he knows anything at all regarding the techniques used in their construction.

Those who appreciate Darger would do better to simply look at his art and read his own writings rather than trudge through this vanity piece. There is no logic to the images included in the centre of this book - they seem randomly chosen and they are so tiny as to be useless.

There are certain oddities- for example the author can’t bring himself to name Kiyoko Lerner who is referred to throughout as 'Learner’s wife', or widow- this is just weird- perhaps he has some issue with her (I do too- she massively profited from Darger’s work) but why doesn’t he say so?

Anyway, I found the whole tone of the book annoying in various small ways which built up to irritating effect. There really should be a better biography on Darger.

[Bill · Rating 1 out of 5]

Well, I got about a third of the way through and couldn't go on, which is a shame. Elledge clearly did important research for this book and uncovered new information about Darger and his life. But reading the book you can't tell what's from the research and what's from the author's imagination. His efforts to dramatize the material undermine his good work as well as the case he is trying to make about the artist's sexuality. I've never had patience for fabricated quotes and speculation presented as fact, so I cut my losses with this one.

[Wendy Carranza · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first thing I've read or heard about Darger that made any sense at all about his work (written and art). His life and his childhood were tragic and heartbreaking to read about, but it puts his body of work into context and the images make more sense to me now.

[Sabina Qeleposhi · Rating 5 out of 5]

A painful and reflective read

[Jerry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging read to learn about Darger, but also as a way to understand how far our country has improved in 100+ years in its treatment of marginalized people. The fact that Elledge is a gay author/researcher provides insight and analysis in a way that I appreciate. Rather than treating some of his findings as negative or signs of moral failings, he has empathy and a queer perspective. Check out Jeremy Lybarger's review I edited for a really great analysis: http://bit.ly/18IWmLs

[Rae Waller · Rating 4 out of 5]

After having heard of Henry Darger through cracked.com I've been interested in him for a while, and this seems like a fairly solid account of his life. Most sources seem to dismiss his actual life in favour of his art, but an artist's life and their art are invariably intertwined.

What strikes me first is that Darger reminds me strangely of infamous internet personality Christine Weston Chandler. Both of them made their artwork by cobbling together things from existing sources in one way or another, Darger with his collaging and CWC with her fan-comic creation "Sonichu". Christine is a trans woman, and Darger is argued here to have been a gay man, and while we obviously can't confirm that, I think the evidence does lean to him being queer of some variety (ace, bi, pan, trans, or genderqueer can't be ruled out on the limited evidence we have and the limited knowledge people of the time had about describing the differences). Both have undergone parental neglect and, to some degree, sexual abuse (CWC's being much lesser than Darger's likely was, being sexually harassed by internet trolls). And, while this book doesn't go into it, I definitely get the impression Darger may have been somewhere on the autism spectrum. His fascination with the weather comes off as very much like a special interest (he turned his attempt at an autobiography into a metaphorical accounting through his fictional adventures following a sapient tornado, and the first few pages of his masterwork In the Realms of the Unreal are about the damage wreaked by a massive storm), and as a child he was noted to make hand movements to "pretend it was raining". Apparently his teachers considered these gestures offensive, but I think he was likely stimming. His anger issues and lack of empathy as a child would also support this theory - allegedly he stabbed a teacher in the arm for trying to punish him, and only developed empathy and guilt after that, somewhat later than most children do. As an autistic person myself, I can relate. (I'm surprised that that wasn't what got him institutionalised, to be honest - he was locked up some time later for masturbating, which at the time was considered to be extremely unhealthy.) I might have to find some more primary sources to find out more about that. Honestly, I'm glad Darger never got to witness the internet. Goodness knows what trolls would have made of him during his life.

I agree with this writer that Darger was using his work as an outlet. While he never openly described the abuse he faced, it was certainly going on. Throughout most of Darger's childhood he was unsupervised, and he hints in his own writings at traumatic and probably sexual involvements with adults. The asylum he spent his teenage years in was investigated for some gruesome patient deaths and injuries, including by burning/scalding, and the people running it admitted when questioned to strangling the patients to control them, all of which are motifs which appear in his work. There is no evidence whatsoever to support other biographers' claims that he was a child-killer - if he was, why would he need to draw violence against children when he could just go out and do it, not to mention the pictures potentially being used as evidence against him? It also does seem very likely that the penises he drew on his female characters were some form of identification with them, and not, as has been theorised, a sign he didn't know what naked women looked like. As noted here, he grew up in the brothel/burlesque district, where kids were more or less allowed to run free at the time, so even if he never slept with a woman he should have at least been somewhat aware of their anatomy. With the evidence available we can't be sure if his relationship with Whillie was romantic in nature, but it seems plausible. I strongly disagree with another review claiming Elledge is trying to "normalise" pedophilia by describing sociological patterns of it happening - describing something is not endorsement any more than Darger's paintings were endorsing child massacre, and how else is he supposed to back up his point?

I do have to object, as a genderqueer person, to Elledge persistently referring to the "Vivian girl-boys". They're *girls*, identifying themselves only as girls. While they're drawn with penises, a trans girl is still a girl, and Darger was very likely identifying with women through them, but the characters are still girls. A gay man ought to know better than that. I didn't notice till it was pointed out by another review, but Elledge also persistently refers to Kiyoko Lerner as "Lerner's wife" and not by her name. He refers to other female figures in the book by their names, so why not her? Since he describes her behaviour unflatteringly as unscrupulously profiting from Darger's artwork, is he afraid of being accused of racism for calling out an Asian woman doing so? That's the only reason I can think of. It seems weird either way.

Still, this book is a useful account of Darger's life and a good defence of his intentions with his art. I'm glad to know Darger did indeed have friends during his life, whether his relationship with Whillie was romantic or not, contrary to his usual pop cultural portrayal as a total shut-in. A fair account of a man who deserved so very much better than he had.

[Dna · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blech! I was really looking forward to reading about Darger, but 100 pages into this and I give up. The book stinks of something if you read between the lines, like it's trying to normalize man-boy sex or pedophilia.

[Karyn · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is an interesting exploration into the harsh life of an little known artist that dispels the initial knee jerk reactions of his work by viewers. The biographer provided a view into early 20th century gay male experience, complete with denial and catholic guilt. This rates a 3.5.

[Scotty · Rating 2 out of 5]

i don't understand what the author's hangup with object pronouns is. he is a subject. him is an object. he hit him. not he hit he. most children figure this out before kindergarten.

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Some biographies can evoke wildly different reactions from its readers. I imagine that this is one of that ilk. From the outset, Elledge makes it known, having written two books on homosexual topics, that his major premise is that Henry Darger is homosexual, and that will guide his interpretation throughout the book. Although I appreciate the transparency, marrying himself to this premise leads to, I believe, wildly inappropriate interpretations based on very limited evidence throughout the book. More on this frustration in a moment. However, suffice it to say, when writing about a person’s life, the approach should be inductive, and not deductive, allowing for the person to come to life on his or her own terms rather than through one’s biased lenses.

To be fair, little is known about the reclusive Henry Darger, the outsider artist who worked for years in hospital janitorial and food preparation work. His artwork was not even discovered until after his death and was composed of nearly 25,000 pages of text and remarkable paintings. Indeed, anyone choosing to write about this enigmatic outsider is likely to have several gaps in which there is really no information to fill. However, the author also expressly stated that he took artistic license with various elements of Darger’s history and experience. This led to sometimes unnecessary segues and fantasies that were more the author’s than Darger’s. Although I find Elledge’s research into the sordid area of Chicago in which Henry was raised, the institutions in which he was committed, and general practices and historical findings of the time admirable, information about the times is not the same as information about the individual, and too much license is taken by the author.

In every instance in which Darger is described as homosexual, and I also should state that this is a possibility, very limited information was given a tremendous logical leap. For instance, his relationship with “Whillie”, a lifelong friend, could very well have been platonic and non-sexual. That the two men were in photographs together, that Henry was happy with his friend to the extent that he visited him often, and that they participated in secret societies of Henry’s imagination together, does not equate a homosexual relationship. Additionally, if they were the loves of each other‘s lives, why was there no clear evidence of remarkable despondency when Whillie moved to Austin, Texas? Additionally, forced homosexual intercourse in the form of abuse was clearly experienced by Darger as traumatic. Though desire and trauma can sometimes overlap, it is clear in his subsequent artwork and conversations that he did not fully come to terms with those sexual acts.It is leaps like these that happen throughout the book that are very frustrating and are not foolproof evidence of such a claim.

In fact, several interpretations that suggested homosexuality, equally suggested asexuality and psychosis, these latter two experiences often being synonymous. That Darger was exposed to tremendous physical and sexual trauma is less arguable, and it is quite likely that later psychotic experience, likely reflected as an attempt to articulate disparate and highly conflictual traumatic experiences in his artwork, is related to such trauma. However, no notion of psychiatric disturbance is mentioned in this biography until Darger is in his 70s, and there are more corroborative reports from neighbors. At that point in time, he had also entered into senility, but it is likely that psychotic phenomena were present much earlier. Of course, that he had the nickname “crazy“ in his early employment years is inhumane, but is it possible that perhaps his coworkers observed things about him that might have made them offer this observation?

By definition and classification, outsider art is art that is produced by untrained individuals, many of whom are known to have documented psychiatric disturbances. Darger is no exception, and to ignore this fact and to stretch very limited links to homosexuality for an individual who clearly was in conflict with sexuality, to me, is a crime on the part of the author in this biography. It is not problematic if Henry Darger was gay, nor is it outside of the realm of possibility, but there is far more evidence to suggest asexuality and psychosis that is not even considered in the author’s interpretations of not only his life, but also his artwork.I, unfortunately, leave my experience of this text with agitation.

[Henry Krinkle · Rating 1 out of 5]

Terrible book. I love Darger's work and was very excited to read this, but it didn't live up to any of my expectations. Elledge doesn't seem to understand that his speculation shouldn't be treated as fact. His agenda seems to be to turn Darger into some kind of gay icon. The notion that Darger was a homosexual is an interesting one, but despite Elledge's best efforts there is only circumstantial evidence for this. Unfortunately this doesn't stop him from treating this evidence as fact. He also treats Darger's work as autobiographical. This is always a dangerous assumption to make. Is Anthony Hopkins a Nazi because he portrayed Hitler in a movie? This could have been a great book given the fascinating subject matter. Unfortunately Elledge was more interested in furthering his agenda than telling Darger's story.

[L. G. · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book focuses on the life of Henry Darger, a man who did not have a lot of luck in life. Poor, abused, institutionalized and the list goes on. Jim Elledge, after more than 10 years of research, tries to clear a lot of misconceptions that are being thrown around about Henry Darger. How he might've been a serial killer, an abuser and even a pedophile. This book lays bare Henry's life from his birth to his death, and it is indeed a tragic one. It gave a lot of really interesting but sometimes quite saddening views into the life of this outsider artist.

I found it to be a really worthwhile read and if you want a peep through the keyhole into Henry Dargers' life, then I would highly recommend this.

[Bryant Whelan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Knowing absolutely nothing about the “outsider artist” Henry Darger before reading this book, the title and cover intrigued me enough to purchase it at Sundog Books in Seaside. I think it was because the subtitle referred to a “throwaway life” and I wondered how a. I would not have heard of this artist before (I like and study outsider art) and b. Why was his life described so prominently as “throwaway”?
The answers are here. Darger’s life was sad. There were literally no uplifting moments and the author did not spare details, even making his own assumptions and suppositions to explain what was not known as fact. I stayed with it until the end but it was a hard read.

[Helen L. · Rating 5 out of 5]

American outsider artist Henry Darger died on the North Side of Chicago in 1973, at the age of 81, after a six-month stay in St. Augustine’s Home for the Aged. As his life wound down, his former landlord began cleaning out the room Darger had rented for nearly 40 years. Amid piles of magazines, newspapers, shoes, glasses, and trash of every description was an electrifying collection of watercolors and drawings intended to illustrate a mountainous literary oeuvre. At times relying on clues from this oeuvre, Jim Elledge’s biography Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy: The Tragic Life of an Outsider Artist traces anew the blurred contours of Darger’s life. Elledge convincingly argues that the artist illustrated manuscripts such as "In the Realms of the Unreal" (15,000 and more pages describing the adventures of seven pre-adolescent princess-generals named the Vivian girls) not as “a wish-fulfillment fantasy of torturing and murdering children” but as “a confession of what happened to him and to other children he knew.” In contrast to John M. MacGregor, whose book about Darger concluded that the artist was a serial killer, Elledge trains a sympathetic eye on Darger’s poverty, institutionalization, and exquisite struggle to forge relationships with his father, acquaintances, a likely lover, and the Catholic Church.

An established scholar of gay life in Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century, Elledge not only studied “the usual histories of Chicago from approximately 1880 to the 1930s” in order to prepare the ground for Throwaway Boy, but synthesized scholarship on sexuality studies of the era, “nearly a hundred fifty first-person narratives by gay men in the 1920s and 1930s,” and investigations of poverty and of sexual abuse in asylums such as the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children. Remarkably, Elledge also pursued and won a civil suit against the State of Illinois in order to be allowed to view Darger’s asylum records. They revealed that Darger had been institutionalized at the age of twelve because his father considered him an incurable masturbator. Elledge writes that according to the norms of the day, “[a] man (or boy for that matter) who gave in to his lusts had abandoned his manhood and feminized himself in the process, something that both the father and the physician considered insane.” Thus Darger was labeled “feeble minded” and was committed.

The Cook County Insane Asylum, writes Elledge, was “a poorhouse, a hospital, a mental institution, and a hell hole.” Physical and sexual abuse was widespread there, for many impoverished children had no relatives capable of verifying their well-being, and many other children had been abandoned by wealthy relatives who chose to consider them dead rather than alienate or offend polite society. Inmates were in fact tortured and murdered at the asylum, as an investigation conducted long after Darger had escaped its walls concluded. Passages concerning the young boy’s institutionalization are some of the most powerful of the book and strongly suggest why Darger would have dedicated his talents to exploring the subject of vulnerable children. As Elledge points out, Darger could not have afforded therapy if he had even wanted it, and his manic output may have been a way of channeling vivid memories of the alienation, institutionalization, and--very likely--terror, torture, and rape that had characterized his childhood.

Another of Elledge’s contributions to Darger scholarship is the evidence he presents regarding Darger’s nearly fifty-year relationship with William “Whillie” Schloeder, a night watchman and aimless elder son of a local businessman. Elledge concludes that the relationship was romantic although it was impossible for the men to live together as a couple and although Whillie was commandeered by a sister to move to Texas when Darger was 53. The men remained in close contact, and when Darger was 66 the sister wrote to inform him of Whillie’s death. Darger wrote back, “I feel as if lost in empty space. Now nothing matters too [sic] me at all.” Romantic or not, the relationship between Darger and Whillie, which Elledge reconstructs without sentimentality, also does much to humanize Darger and to attenuate the claim that he was a sociopath and mass murderer.

The book concludes with the threadbare last months and brilliant aftermath of Darger’s life. For readers interested in outsider art, gay history, Chicago at the turn of the twentieth century, or simply the story of a man whose muse spoke eloquently to him in a single room at 851 Webster Street and who was considered a miserable failure by almost everyone who had ever known him, Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy may well be revelatory.

************

Henry Darger, Throwaway Boy: The Tragic Life of an Outsider Artistcontains about 20 color illustrations by Darger. See, for example, The American Folk Art Museum webpage for samples of Darger’s work.

Jim Elledge is currently working on a novel set in the gay communities of Chicago at the turn of the Twentieth Century.

[Jamie Bronstein · Rating 2 out of 5]

While this book is copiously researched, the author clearly had a foregone conclusion in mind and cherry-picked sources to support that conclusion. Well it's possible that Henry was gay, the evidence in this book does not support that hypothesis any more than it supports a number of other hypotheses, including that he was an artist with autism.

[Aabha Sharma · Rating 5 out of 5]

I wish I could take the child Darger in my arms and comfort him, protect him and love him. He would have been an incredible artist eve then, just that his art would have taken a different direction. Much love to Jim elledge for studying and demistifying some of the myths surrounding Darger.

[Jan Mehmedhović · Rating 5 out of 5]

possibly the best book on darger out there today; contextualizes the world he lived in and saves him from the entirely flat reputation of being yet another "crazy" man who just so happened to know how to paint. essential for those interested in him and his work.

[Harrison Rip · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't know much about Darger before and this speculation-filled bio gave me some interesting insights into how it must feel to be a loser your entire life. Poor Henry.

[Jinjer]

mentioned by ogg_steven on Insta

[Danny Fain · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a good emotionally-charged biography. However, a lot of it is overanalysis/assumption; implying a lot of things based on very little facts.

[Mariely · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5

[Abigail · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is a thorough and interesting account of Henry Darger's life. The author dug up some fascinating stuff, so it was kind of unfortunate how often it was mixed with weak speculation.

[eLwYcKe · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a compassionate, glowing biography of Henry Darger. It brings us close to the mind of that troubled man, his life and times.
When I first saw images of his work in print and then in a gallery I was never disturbed. I was certainly enchanted, transported, by his vision.
The atrocities he depicted seemed to me to be an artist bluntly depicting the reality of war.
The strange, hermaphroditic naked children in keeping with the fabulous beasts and gigantic flowers of his fertile imagination.
In this biography we are offered reasons for their existence in Darger’s work and they seem perfectly valid to me and add another layer of fascination.
A life story that has a heartfelt lesson for all of us: every body has hidden depths.

[Sarah Chait]

A gift from my uncle's evil girlfriend before she turned evil

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

A thoroughly devastating but powerful, well-written, and beautifully detailed account of an often misunderstood and even maligned artist. I felt for Henry and wish he could have known more happiness in his time, a tribute to this writer's empathetic portrayal and painstaking research. Can't imagine anyone reading this bio unless they were already interested in Henry Darger, but for those who are, this is a comprehensive reference as well as a fascinating and moving piece of outsider art history.

[James · Rating 5 out of 5]

If someone in the general public has actually heard of any outsider artist, it's likely to be Henry Darger (1892-1973), because of his odd image as well as his disturbing artwork. He's seen as an eccentric loner who, when he was not performing menial hospital jobs for starvation wages, was holed up in his filthy room, writing lengthy fantasy/adventure novels (one of which might well be the longest novel in the English language), and illustrating them with collages, tracings, and watercolor paintings depicting children either romping in meadows filled with enormous flowers and butterflies, or unsuccessfully trying to escape the clutches of maniacal adults who are strangling, raping, crucifying, and disemboweling them.

These children, as often as not, are naked little girls...with penises. Throw in heaping servings of imagery from children's books, pop culture, and Roman Catholicism, and art and cultural critics pronouncing Darger a likely pedophile and child-killer, and you can easily see how he captured the public imagination.

Author Jim Elledge spent a decade trying to get to the truth behind the Darger hype. He discovered that Darger was routinely sexually victimized throughout childhood and adolescence, and that he was sent to the Illinois Asylum for Feeble-Minded Children not for any mental incapacity, but rather for being a chronic masturbator (masturbation then being believed as a cause for homosexuality and insanity). The violence and sexual abuse he suffered and witnessed, both inside and outside of institutions, informed his art. The failure of adults and authority figures, in his childhood, adolescence, and adulthood, to protect him, help him, or even take him seriously, created in him a mounting inner rage, that only got worse as he aged.

The pious Darger was especially mad at God, not only for ignoring his prayers and failing to protect him, but also for creating him as a male rather than a female. Elledge believes that Darger was a homosexual, who felt that if he'd only been born a little girl, then he could've pursued his attraction to men in a manner in which society approved. In Darger's time, gay men were thought to be women with the bodies of men; this, says Elledge, is the explanation for the naked girl-boys in Darger's artwork.

Elledge also believes that Darger had a relationship from 1911 to 1959 with a night-watchman named William Schloeder, who was several years Darger's elder. Though Elledge is pleased that Darger had at least some experience of happiness in an otherwise miserable life, he also briefly speculates that the relationship might actually have started when Darger was eight years of age and Schloeder was already an adult.

That Elledge was able to find enough material on this shadowy fringe-dweller, on trails long since turned cold, to fill a book of almost four-hundred pages, is nothing short of remarkable. Though the book is filled with typos and editing errors that seem to indicate it was rushed into print, it is the product of extensive research, and Elledge provides fascinating asides about Victorian attitudes about masturbation and homosexuality, as well as the gay sub-culture in Chicago in the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-centuries. And while I'm not sure that Elledge read all of the over 30,000 pages that constitute Darger's three principal novels, he clearly read enough of all of those works to draw his conclusions, which, I hope, will lead to a re-appraisal of Darger's sad life and amazing work.

[Alex · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is a beautifully researched account of Darger's life that illuminates the artist's motives, influences, traumas and personal life through a rich blending of Darger's own writings and sociological texts of life and homosexual customs in early 20th Century Chicago. My only critique is the abundance of narrative flourishes that add detail to the story though they could not really be known, which detracts from the fastidious research.

I found this passage that discusses Darger's addition of penises to the nude drawings of the Vivian Girls - the protagonists of his first and second novels at lengths of over 15,000 and 10,000 pages respectively - especially enlightening.

"During the nineteenth century, gay men began theorizing about themselves, analyzing why they were men who were sexually attracted to other men and not to women, and some developed the belief that they were 'a female soul enclosed in a male body,' adopting the hermaphrodite - a physical emblem of the psychological combination of male and female - as a symbol for themselves in art and literature. This is not something that was typically known outside of the gay community at the time, and the few sexologists of the period who investigated it in their works - such as Karl Ulrichs, Richard von Krafft-Ebing, and Havelock Ellis - were closely associated with the gay subculture.
"When Henry uses the phrase 'Vivian Girls,' it's not girls [italicized] that he's actually thinking about but Vivian belles, fairies, pansies, queers, or queens. In fact, in Henry's second novel, which also stars the Vivians, the characters who come in contact with them refer to them as 'fairies' more often than not. This allows Henry to give them an otherworldly cast as well as anchor them in a queer context. Such ambiguity has been a mainstay of gay art and literature for centuries, and Henry tapped into that strategy and made it his own.
"When he depicted the Vivian girls [italicized], Henry was actually creating an image of homosexual boys running from adult men, leading troops against enemy battalions, and undertaking spy missions against the Glandelinians. If we're to understand Henry's vision as a novelist and as an artist clearly and completely, we can't ever think 'girls' when he writes or depicts the 'Vivian girls.' Instead we have to substitute 'girl-boys,' 'gay boys,' or 'imitation little girls' - which was Henry's term - for 'girls.' They are actually the 'Vivian girl-boys.' Henry revealed who [italicized] Angeline, Violet, Joy, Jennie, Catherine, Hettie, and Daisey are in his novel, but he disclosed what [italicized] they are in his illustrations for it." - p.170

[Antony Simpson · Rating 3 out of 5]

From AntonySimpson.com:

I’m going to admit that I’d never heard of Henry Darger before I read Henry Darger, Throw Away Boy.

Henry Darger (1904-1973) was an Chicago-based artist, who was completely unknown in his lifetime. He created pieces of art that depicted children. In some of the art children were innocently enjoying life and in others they were being horrifically tortured. Darger also completed two fantasy manuscripts entitled The Realms and Crazy House. Many critics dubbed Darger as a mentally unstable individual who may have thought about harming children.

But as Jim Elledge uncovers in Henry Darger, Throw Away Boy that couldn’t be farther from the truth. Elledge has spent a decade researching and writing this book which gives a comprehensive insight to the life of Darger. It is well researched, which is indicated by the extensive bibliography and notes sections.

The book starts by describing the poverty, dangerous street life and Darger’s lack of supportive loving parents. Darger’s mother died in childbirth and his father was an alcoholic. It is suspected that Darger was sexually abused on a number of occasions throughout his childhood. This commonplace abuse, did make uncomfortable reading at times. His behaviour, even as a young child was feral which is understandable given the emotional trauma he experienced. His bad behaviour led to his father putting him in a religious mission and later an asylum institution.

Darger escaped the institution and became a Janitor in a hospital. He began to create his art and write his manuscripts, as a way to fictionalise his traumatic childhood experiences. In his manuscripts he wrote about a number of secret societies, all that have one mission: to protect children. He fell in love with a man (Whillie) and continued to work tirelessly on his art over the decades that followed. But after some early criticism, he didn’t feel able to share his work with the world. It wasn’t until after his death that his landlord discovered the work.

Essentially Elledge tells the story of a gay man filled with fear and shame because of societies attitudes towards children, child abuse and gay people. Glossy pages show some of Darger’s work, but more would have been welcome.

Elledge brings Darger’s story to life through his engaging writing style. If you’re into gay art – in all it’s forms, you’ll love Henry Darger, Throw Away Boy .