Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t7fkt Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-29T00:09:29.676Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Sex Boys in a Balloon: V. F. Calverton and the Abortive Sexual Revolution

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2009

Leonard Wilcox
Leonard Wilcox
Affiliation:
American Studies in the Department of American Studies, University of Canterbury, Christchurch 1, New Zealand.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

During the American sixties, the resurgent interest in Wilhelm Reich and the widespread impact of Marcuse's Eros and Civilisation encouraged the idea of coupling psychoanalysis and Marxism. Reich's works reminded radicals once again of the integral connection between political revolution and sexual freedom, while Marcuse's critique, a bold attempt of the mid-fifties to read Freud as a revolutionary utopian, suggested the desirability of a marriage between Marx and Freud, a marriage that would have seemed unnatural to many of the Old Left generation. Certainly, too, the writings of Norman O. Brown and Paul Goodman gave credence to the idea that sex, psychology, and radical politics were necessarily interrelated.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of American Studies , Volume 23 , Issue 1 , April 1989 , pp. 7 - 26
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 See Dell, Floyd. “Psychoanalytic Confessions,” Liberator 3 (04 1920), 15–19Google Scholar; and Eastman, Max, “Lenin was an Engineer,” New Masses, 3 (11 1927), 14.Google Scholar

2 Among these writers were Max Eastman, Edmund Wilson, John Dos Passos, John Dewey, Leon Trotsky, Stuart Chase, Lewis Mumford, George Soule, Lewis Corey; the list is extensive.

3 Horkheimer and Adorno's interest in Freud extended back into the late twenties, but Horkheimer's first article on the merger of psychoanalysis and Marxism, “Geschichte und Psychologie,” was published in 1932. Similarly, Fromm's work on this topic dates from 1932. See Jay, Martin, The Dialectical Imagination: A History of the Frankfurt School and the Institute of Social Research 1923–1950 (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1973), 100, 317.Google Scholar

4 Dell, Floyd, Love in Greenwich Village (New York, 1926).Google Scholar See also Love in the Machine Age (New York, 1930)Google Scholar, which draws on material published in the Liberator during the twenties.

5 Hale, Nathan G. Jr., Freud and the Americans: The Beginnings of Psychoanalysis in the United States, 1876–1917 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1971), 1, 309–10.Google Scholar

6 For a discussion of Tannenbaum's “liberative” Freudianism see Matthews, I. H., “The Americanization of Sigmund Freud: Adaptations of Psychoanalysis before 1917,” journal of American Studies 1, 1 (04 1967), 39–62.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 Calverton, to Ellis, , 8 11 1926 (V. F. Caiverton collection, New York Public Library; hereafter referred to as “VFC”)Google Scholar; Sexual Expression in Literature (New York: Boni and Liveright, 1926), 75.Google Scholar

8 Calverton, to Liveright, Horace, 22 07 1926, VFC.Google Scholar

9 Schmalhausen's dismissal is discussed in Sinclair's, UptonThe Goslings: A Study of American Schools (Pasadena: Sinclair, 1924), 73–77.Google Scholar

10 Schmalhausen, to Calverton, , 6 02 1924, VFC.Google Scholar

11 Schmalhausen, , “Psychoanalysis and Communism,” MQ 6, 2 (Summer 1932), 63–69Google Scholar; “Psychological Portrait of Modern Civilization,” MQ 6, 3 (Autumn 1932), 85–95.Google Scholar

12 MQ 4, 1 (01–04 1927), 40.Google Scholar

13 MQ 5, 1 (11–02 1928), 300–01.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., 287.

15 Calverton, , “Radical Psychology,” New Masses 2 (07 1927), 29.Google Scholar

16 Calverton, , “Love and Revolution,” New Masses 1 (10 1926), 28.Google Scholar

17 Dell, , “A Literary Self-Analysis,” MQ 4, 2 (06–09 1927), 148–52.Google Scholar

18 New Masses 3 (03 1927), 11.Google Scholar

19 Calverton, , “Sex and Economics,” New Masses 3 (03 1927), 11–12.Google Scholar

20 Calverton, , The Bankruptcy of Marriage (New York: Macaulay Inc., 1928), 13.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 For a discussion of this issue in relation to Reich, see King, Richard, The Party of Eros: Radical Social Thought and the Realm of Freedom (New York: Delta, 1972), 63.Google Scholar

22 Carter, Huntly to Calverton, , 3 08 1929Google Scholar; Briffault, to Calverton, , 14 10 1928Google Scholar; Wells, H. G. to Calverton, , 21 04 1929Google Scholar; Ellis, to Calverton, , 6 12 1928Google Scholar; Lindsey, to Calverton, , 22 06 1929, VFC.Google Scholar

23 Stevens, Bennett, “Sex Under Capitalism” (review of The Bankruptcy of Marriage), New Masses 3 (12 1928), 26–27.Google Scholar

24 Gold, to Calverton, , 28 12 1928, VFC.Google Scholar

25 Sinclair, to Calverton, , 24 09 1928, VFC.Google Scholar

26 Quoted in Darmstadt's, John “The Sexual Revolution,” MQ 4, 2 (06–09 1927), 142.Google Scholar

27 Ibid.

28 Wicks, H. M. “An Apology for Sex Anarchism Disguised as Marxism,” Daily Worker, 9 06 1927, 4.Google Scholar

29 Monroe, James P. to Calverton, , 2 04 1928, VFC.Google Scholar

30 Wood, Leonard to Calverton, , 6 01 1929, VFC.Google Scholar

31 New York Times, 9 06 1929, 7.Google Scholar

32 Calverton, and Schmalhausen, , Sex in Civilization (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1929), 248.Google Scholar

33 Calverton, , “Sex and Social Struggle,” Sex In Civilization, 249–84.Google Scholar

34 Los Angeles Times, 9 06 1929, 21.Google Scholar

35 See Calverton, and Schmalhausen, , “Preface,” The New Generation (New York: Macaulay, Inc., 1930), 13.Google Scholar

36 Calverton, and Schmalhausen, , eds., Women's Coming of Age (New York: H. Liveright, Inc., 1931), xx.Google Scholar

37 New York Times, 28 05 1929, 17 (Henry James Forman, reviewer).Google Scholar

38 New Masses 2 (01 1927), 5.Google Scholar

39 Aaron, , Writers on the Left (New York: Avon, 1965), 184.Google Scholar

40 Calverton, , “Love and Revolution,” New Masses 1 (26 10 1926), 28.Google Scholar

41 Calverton, to Dell, , 15 10 1926, VFC.Google Scholar

42 Gold, Michael, “Floyd Dell Resigns,” New Masses 4 (05 1929), 11.Google Scholar

43 New Republic 65 (11–02 1929–1930), 227–28.Google Scholar

44 New Republic 66 (03 1930), 102.Google Scholar

45 Cowley, Malcolm, Exile's Return (New York: Viking, 1951), 309.Google Scholar

46 Aaron, , Writers on the Left, 234.Google Scholar

47 Hook, Sidney, Open Court 42 (1928), 20.Google Scholar In 1928 Hook challenged Max Eastman's contention that Freudianism would advance Marxian analysis. Hook charged that Freud's theories represented the “grossest violation of the scientific method.” See Hook's, “Marxism, Metaphysics, and Modern Science,” MQ 4 (05–08 1928), 388–94.Google Scholar

48 Long, and Smith, advertisement for The Bankruptcy of Marriage, no date.Google Scholar

49 Dinamov, to Calverton, (no date), 1930, VFC.Google Scholar Dinamov later disappeared during the Stalinist purges.

50 Burnham, John Chynoweth, “The New Psychology: From Narcissism to Social Control,” in Braeman, John, Bremmer, Robert H., and Brody, David, eds., Change and Continuity in Twentieth Century America: The 1920's (Ohio State University Press, 1968), 374.Google Scholar

51 Calverton, to Schmalhausen, , 20 08 1930, VFC.Google Scholar

52 See note 3.

53 In 1929 Calverton challenged Eugene Jolas, editor of transition (a little magazine published in France and dedicated to experimental writings), to a debate over “the revolution in the word.” In the resulting symposium Calverton stolidly and unimaginatively maintained the position that surrealism amounted to no revolution at all, but rather a “chaotic Greenwich Village literary riot.” See Calverton's, “The Revolution-in-the Wordists,” MQ 5, 3 (Fall 1929), 277.Google Scholar

54 King, Richard, The Party of Eros, 51.Google Scholar