James Dempsey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049267
- eISBN:
- 9780813050096
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049267.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Scofield Thayer, as owner of The Dial during the 1920s, was the center of the flow of cultural ideas between the United States and Europe, particularly those of the various modernist movements. He ...
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Scofield Thayer, as owner of The Dial during the 1920s, was the center of the flow of cultural ideas between the United States and Europe, particularly those of the various modernist movements. He published T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land for the first time in the United States and featured the works of writers whose works have gone on to become classics: Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Virginia Woolf, and many others. The magazine's art reproductions introduced Americans to the artists of the period, such as Picasso, Matisse, Lachaise, and O’Keefe. Critics writing for the magazine included Edmund Wilson and Van Wyck Brooks. The magazine was both a marketplace and a battleground of ideas, a place where aesthetics, not politics, was the chief concern. Compared to other avant-garde publications, the magazine's longevity ties to Thayer's careful selection of works as well as to his great wealth and that of his partner, James S. Watson, who poured money into the endeavor. Thayer was also an art collector, building up a collection of modernist works that is now at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. He suffered from mental instability and spent two years in analysis with Freud. In 1927 he had a complete mental breakdown that removed him from public life. He was eventually declared insane. This is the first biography of Thayer.Less
Scofield Thayer, as owner of The Dial during the 1920s, was the center of the flow of cultural ideas between the United States and Europe, particularly those of the various modernist movements. He published T. S. Eliot's The Waste Land for the first time in the United States and featured the works of writers whose works have gone on to become classics: Ezra Pound, William Carlos Williams, Marianne Moore, Virginia Woolf, and many others. The magazine's art reproductions introduced Americans to the artists of the period, such as Picasso, Matisse, Lachaise, and O’Keefe. Critics writing for the magazine included Edmund Wilson and Van Wyck Brooks. The magazine was both a marketplace and a battleground of ideas, a place where aesthetics, not politics, was the chief concern. Compared to other avant-garde publications, the magazine's longevity ties to Thayer's careful selection of works as well as to his great wealth and that of his partner, James S. Watson, who poured money into the endeavor. Thayer was also an art collector, building up a collection of modernist works that is now at New York's Metropolitan Museum of Art. He suffered from mental instability and spent two years in analysis with Freud. In 1927 he had a complete mental breakdown that removed him from public life. He was eventually declared insane. This is the first biography of Thayer.
James Dempsey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049267
- eISBN:
- 9780813050096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049267.003.0008
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
The Dial moved from Chicago to New York in 1918 and got into financial trouble. Thayer, having loaned the magazine a good deal of money, became the owner along with James Sibley Watson, a Harvard ...
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The Dial moved from Chicago to New York in 1918 and got into financial trouble. Thayer, having loaned the magazine a good deal of money, became the owner along with James Sibley Watson, a Harvard friend. E. E. Cummings had also moved to New York, where he began an affair with Elaine Orr. She bore him a daughter, Nancy. Thayer, meanwhile, began a relationship with Alyse Gregory. Thayer and Watson decided to forgo politics in their magazine and to devote The Dial to art, literature, and criticism.Less
The Dial moved from Chicago to New York in 1918 and got into financial trouble. Thayer, having loaned the magazine a good deal of money, became the owner along with James Sibley Watson, a Harvard friend. E. E. Cummings had also moved to New York, where he began an affair with Elaine Orr. She bore him a daughter, Nancy. Thayer, meanwhile, began a relationship with Alyse Gregory. Thayer and Watson decided to forgo politics in their magazine and to devote The Dial to art, literature, and criticism.
James Dempsey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049267
- eISBN:
- 9780813050096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049267.003.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Chapter 1 introduces us to Scofield Thayer in the following anecdote. In 1924, a nationally know portrait artist visited Worcester, Massachusetts, to paint the portrait of a college president. ...
More
Chapter 1 introduces us to Scofield Thayer in the following anecdote. In 1924, a nationally know portrait artist visited Worcester, Massachusetts, to paint the portrait of a college president. Interviewed by the local newspaper, he called Thayer's The Dial “an intellectual sewer,” not realizing that Worcester is Thayer's hometown. Thayer responded in a Dial article that describes the very different views of art that existed between the traditionalists and the avant-garde of the time. Soon after this response, Thayer drew up his will, leaving his art collection the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City rather than his hometown's Worcester Art Museum, where his large collection ended up on loan. At Thayer's death, the Worcester museum would be dealt a huge blow when the heart of its collection was moved to New York.Less
Chapter 1 introduces us to Scofield Thayer in the following anecdote. In 1924, a nationally know portrait artist visited Worcester, Massachusetts, to paint the portrait of a college president. Interviewed by the local newspaper, he called Thayer's The Dial “an intellectual sewer,” not realizing that Worcester is Thayer's hometown. Thayer responded in a Dial article that describes the very different views of art that existed between the traditionalists and the avant-garde of the time. Soon after this response, Thayer drew up his will, leaving his art collection the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York City rather than his hometown's Worcester Art Museum, where his large collection ended up on loan. At Thayer's death, the Worcester museum would be dealt a huge blow when the heart of its collection was moved to New York.
James Dempsey
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9780813049267
- eISBN:
- 9780813050096
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813049267.003.0003
- Subject:
- Literature, 20th-century Literature and Modernism
Thayer entered Harvard in 1909. His education began somewhat unimpressively with C grades on essays, but by his final year he was doing well enough to receive a scholarship. He became involved with ...
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Thayer entered Harvard in 1909. His education began somewhat unimpressively with C grades on essays, but by his final year he was doing well enough to receive a scholarship. He became involved with the literary magazine the Harvard Advocate, attached himself to George Santayana, and met many aspiring writers, some of whom would later work at and write for The Dial. He met and was impressed by the poet Alan Seeger, and one of Thayer's poems received a letter of admiration from an underclassman named E. E. Cummings.Less
Thayer entered Harvard in 1909. His education began somewhat unimpressively with C grades on essays, but by his final year he was doing well enough to receive a scholarship. He became involved with the literary magazine the Harvard Advocate, attached himself to George Santayana, and met many aspiring writers, some of whom would later work at and write for The Dial. He met and was impressed by the poet Alan Seeger, and one of Thayer's poems received a letter of admiration from an underclassman named E. E. Cummings.
