Josephine Herbst

by Elinor Langer

Reprint of the Atlantic Monthly Press edition of 1983, with slightly revised notes. Annotation copyright Book News, Inc. Portland, Or.

Genres: Biography

Paperback

First published January 1, 1984

Reviews

[James Murphy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Josephine Herbst isn't well-known today. Her few novels aren't well-regarded, seldom read. Her writing is remembered primarily through her posthumously published memoir, The Starched Blue sky of Spain, which itself remembers many of those she associated with and with whom she shared the give and take of influence, writers like Katherine Anne Porter, Nathanael West, John Dos Passos, and Ernest Hemingway. Those friendships make Herbst important.

She's lucky in her biographer, Elinor Langer, a writer able to recognize Herbst's influence in her primary community of writers in the 1920s and 30s and one able to convincingly establish her importance during those pivotal years of American letters. Langer makes a relatively obscure American writer come alive in such a way that Herbst doesn't exist for the biography, she exists within it because Langer, as skilled biographers can, places her comprehensively in her time.

To be honest, Herbst's great work of memoir, The Starched Blue Sky of Spain, and this biography are mutually supporting. My reading of the memoir led me to the biography. If I'd read the biography first, it would have led me to the memoir. I recommend both.

[Scott · Rating 3 out of 5]

Despite enjoying this biography, I still haven't read a single novel by Herbst.

[Nicole]

An unusual biography employing experimental voice. Langer’s experimental narrative anticipated the current interest in postmodern method.
Meta-narrative;
Staccato prose;
Pastiche of language (montage of imagined voices);
Parallel versions of the same event