Blackguard

by Maxwell Bodenheim, Gary D. MacFadden (Narrator)

Carl Felman is a young man who, at the start of the story, is returning to his parents’ home following an extended absence. He stole money from his parents before leaving home, did a stint in the army, and spent some time traveling America as a hobo. Carl fancies himself a poet, but has had no training in writing. During the story he finds his poetic voice, but also uncovers a personality that is at odds with the world he tries to describe.

Originally published in 1923.
Public Domain (P)2024 Gary D. MacFadden

Audible Audio

First published January 28, 2010

About the author

Maxwell Bodenheim was an American poet and novelist. A literary figure in Chicago, he later went to New York where he became known as the King of Greenwich Village Bohemians. His writing brought him international notoriety during the Jazz Age of the 1920s.

Reviews

[Patrick · Rating 3 out of 5]

Maxwell Bodenheim (1892-1954) cut a memorable Boho figure in Chicago and New York between the World Wars, but spiraled downward to a Cornell Woolrich finish, murdered along with his wife in a Manhattan flophouse in 1954. All 14 of his novels, of which Blackguard was the first, were published in a burst between 1923 and 1933.

Blackguard is an interesting, not completely successful performance, but I am glad to have read it. It has status as a Chicago novel and a Jewish proletarian novel, but the main thrust is the interior life of a disaffected, talentless young poet, Carl Felman, whose high self-regard and low regard for everything and everyone else does capture a mood of the times (which would repeat 40 years later in the Sixties), even if Carl is not always the most pleasant fellow to spend time with.