Robert Penn Warren:: A Biography

by Joseph Blotner

Telling a story that reflects the main current of American literary activity, with many significant acquaintances adding richness along the way--including Allen Tate, Albert Erskine, Katherine Anne Porter, and Andrew Lytle--this biography offers an in-depth profile of Robert Penn Warren--the man and the artist. 16 pp. of photos. 544 pp. Print ads. 20,000 print.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Southern Gothic, Race, Politics, Reference, American

585 pages, Hardcover

First published February 11, 1997

About the author

From The University of Virginia Profiles

Joseph Blotner and the 'Unexpected Life'

Nov. 6, 2007 — When poet and novelist Robert Penn Warren heard of the death of his friend John Crowe Ransom, he said that Ransom's life was in the end his chief work of art. The same can be said of Warren biographer Joseph Blotner, the former University of Virginia faculty member who made a career of turning lives into art.

Blotner is best known as the biographer of two of America's greatest writers, Warren and William Faulkner. He also wrote indispensable scholarly works, including the "Modern American Political Novel" and the "Fiction of J.D. Salinger." Blotner edited the Library of America editions of Faulkner's novels and short stories, and received accolades that ranged from Guggenheim fellowships to membership in the French Legion of Honor for his work in Southern literature and in particular his Faulkner scholarship.

Blotner, along with English professor Frederick Gwynn and English department chairman Floyd Stovall, persuaded then-University President Colgate Darden to hire Faulkner as U.Va.'s writer-in-residence in 1957.

Once Faulkner was on board, Blotner and Gwynn coordinated thousands of requests for the writer's time, and Blotner and Faulkner became friends in the course of the author's two residencies, in 1957 and 1958. A result of their friendship was one of the greatest literary biographies in American letters about one of the most inscrutable subjects imaginable.

A prisoner of war

Blotner took a somewhat circuitous route to academic stardom. Born in Scotch Plains, N.J., in 1923, he was an only child who attended public schools and then Drew University as an undergraduate.

World War II interrupted the young Blotner's studies. He served as a bombardier aboard a B-17 Flying Fortress. On his sixth bombing mission over Frankfurt, Germany, his plane was shot down. Blotner was held in a German prisoner-of-war camp for 6 1/2 months until Gen. George S. Patton's Third Army liberated the camp on April 29, 1945.

Blotner's account of the POW camps was bleak. "We didn't have enough to eat," he recalled. "We made three different forced marches from one camp to another, which was pretty arduous in a tough winter that winter in Germany. There was always an uncertainty about what was going to happen to us at the end of the war."

Some popular movies about German POW camps, like "Stalag 17," are fairly accurate in the physical description of the camps, Blotner said, but "there were no comic Germans that I was aware of."

Blotner completed his studies on the GI Bill, earning his M.A. in English at Northwestern University and a Ph.D. in English at the University of Pennsylvania in 1951. By the time he completed his graduate work, another conflict, the Korean War, interrupted his career, but in a different way. "Because of the Korean War, which drained a large percentage of the students out of academia, it was a while before I could get a job as a teacher," Blotner said. His first job in academia was at the University of Idaho.

Faulkner and the University

Blotner later came to the University of Virginia, where he helped arrange Faulkner's residencies. During Faulkner's time on Grounds, he taught courses and held his now-famous question-and-answer sessions, giving University students an unprecedented look into one of America's great literary minds. Blotner and Gwynn published edited transcripts of these sessions in "Faulkner in the University."

Faulkner was comfortable teaching, according to Blotner, having had similar classroom experiences at the University of Mississippi in Oxford. When he stood before students at U.Va., he was remarkably forthcoming about the writing process. Blotner recalled, "Although Faulkner said he was nervous about it, it was something with which he was familiar, which he did brilliantly. He once said, ‘I just say whatever I think will sound good,' which was in part true a

Reviews

[Tommy Johnson · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was the first book I have read cover to cover without stopping in a long time, and perhaps the longest book that I've read cover to cover in one sitting. It was certainly a doozy but I think it has only enhanced my desire to read more of Warren besides 'All the King's Men' and the occasional poem. It also makes me want to read Blotner's first biography, which is of Faulkner. This biography, as a piece of writing, is really quite impressive. It has the qualities of a well-written profile, as though Blotner had followed Warren around from birth to death. It has the qualities of a novel, capturing Warren's wit through recreated dialogue as well as the melodrama of Warren's first marriage. It has the qualities, too, of a great work of Southern history, capturing a great Southern intellectual's experience in and beyond the South, exploring and seeking to explain his identity, rooting him in the broader cultural, intellectual, and political movements in the South across time, and finally -- perhaps most compelling and impressively -- capturing his evolution from an affiliate of the abhorrent Southern Agrarian movement to a proponent of integration and racial justice. Warren's writings on the South suggest that human folly can come human wisdom, out of abject horror can come hope, and out of history can come a better future. He is not afraid to call what is evil, evil. His own clear-eyed assessment of the realities and evil of the South is a lesson to so-called historians whose visions have been clouded by maligned and malignant notions like the 'Lost Cause.' Leaders in governments, universities, and communities in the South today continue to peddle such false notions both implicitly and explicitly. The fact that Warren arrived at his final vision through talking to all sorts of people in Southern states captures his great hope for democracy, the same hope that emerges in the final chapter of the otherwise tragic 'All the King's Men.' Moreover, his personal growth and later advocacy for a better existence in the South serves as support for his believe that because the South had been the home of such evil and the site of such horror as slavery, segregation, and bloodshed, perhaps it might one day serve to take the lead in crafting a future that recognizes the facts of past wrongs and seeks to act on that recognition. Warren's own body of work, which is massive, perhaps is part of this project but whether or not this project is truly carried out remains to be seen.

[Drew Norwood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blotner's biography is well-researched, detailed, and thorough; his criticism seems fair for the most part; and the writing and organization is fine. There were some areas of Warren’s life that I wish Blotner would have spent more time on, and some endnotes that I would have thought worth bringing in to the main text. But on the whole it was a good biography of an extraordinary man of letters.

[Jay Rothermel · Rating 3 out of 5]

First-rate bio by a bio pro.

[Mark Smith · Rating 4 out of 5]

Blotner's biography of Robert Penn Warren is almost surely what you would expect. It is detailed, well-researched, and thorough. Blotner was able to secure interviews with Warren toward the end of his life, and these clearly added a depth that many biographers can never achieve.

I am not anywhere near a scholar of Warren, southern fiction, or poetry, but I have been doing a good bit of reading on Warren and All the King's Men. I turned to Blotner to flesh out my understanding of Warren so that I might have a stronger feel for All the King's Men. In particular, I focused on Blotner's treatment of Warren's religious beliefs, his evolution on race, and his discussion of the publication and reception of All the King's Men.

On these fronts, I found Blotner interesting and compelling.

My only criticism, and it is mild, is that Blotner, given his personal interactions with Warren, his scholarship on Faulkner, and his array of relationships within the world of southern arts and letters, runs the risk of being too close to his subjects. There is something to be gained from access, of course, and personal knowledge is invaluable. There is also something to be gained from detachment and the perspective of a fresh set of eyes. I assume there is another biography of Warren waiting to be written, perhaps in another decade or two, that benefits from the chronological, spatial, and personal distance from Warren's time and life.

I highly recommend this to anyone interested in Warren or in southern literature.

[John R · Rating 4 out of 5]

Joseph Blotner was a fine scholar, taught at Univ of Virginia. He was instrumental in bringing William Faulkner to UVA for two years of teaching/lecturing as Writer in Residence in 1957 and 1958. He published his massive two-vol biography of Faulkner in 1974. I have it on my bookshelves. He produced a somewhat slimmer version as an updated one-volume edition in 1991. Most subsequent Faulkner biographers have leaned on Blotner, but a criticism of him might be that he was a little too close to his subject, and might have withheld and restrained some things about Faulkner's alcoholism and sexual peccadilloes and other unsavory things to spare the family. The 1991 update is more succinct and more honest.

That said, Blotner's biography of Robert Penn Warren is totally accessible and reliable. RPW was a brilliant mind. His prose, especially his "historical fictional biography" of Louisiana governor/demagogue Huey Long, All the King's Men, is so so good. RPW deserves to be more widely known and read. Start with Blotner.