Wilder Hobson (February 18, 1906 – May 1, 1964) was an American writer and editor for ''
Time
Time is the continued sequence of existence and event (philosophy), events that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various me ...
'' (1930s-1940s), ''
Fortune
Fortune may refer to:
General
* Fortuna or Fortune, the Roman goddess of luck
* Luck
* Wealth
* Fortune, a prediction made in fortune-telling
* Fortune, in a fortune cookie
Arts and entertainment Film and television
* ''The Fortune'' (1931 film) ...
'' (1940s), ''
Harper's Bazaar
''Harper's Bazaar'' is an American monthly women's fashion magazine. It was first published in New York City on November 2, 1867, as the weekly ''Harper's Bazar''. ''Harper's Bazaar'' is published by Hearst and considers itself to be the ...
'' (1950s), and ''
Newsweek
''Newsweek'' is an American weekly online news magazine co-owned 50 percent each by Dev Pragad, its president and CEO, and Johnathan Davis (businessman), Johnathan Davis, who has no operational role at ''Newsweek''. Founded as a weekly print m ...
'' (1960s) magazines. He was also a competent musician (
trombone
The trombone (german: Posaune, Italian, French: ''trombone'') is a musical instrument in the brass family. As with all brass instruments, sound is produced when the player's vibrating lips cause the air column inside the instrument to vibrate ...
), author of an history of American jazz, and long-time contributor to ''
Saturday Review'' (1940s, 1950s, 1960s) magazine. Also, he served on the planning committee of the
Institute of Jazz Studies The Institute of Jazz Studies (IJS) is the largest and most comprehensive library and archives of jazz and jazz-related materials in the world. It is located on the fourth floor of the John Cotton Dana Library at Rutgers University–Newark in Newa ...
.
Life
Early years
Born in 1906, Hobson attended
Yale University
Yale University is a private research university in New Haven, Connecticut. Established in 1701 as the Collegiate School, it is the third-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and among the most prestigious in the w ...
. There, he was a roommate of
Dwight Macdonald
Dwight Macdonald (March 24, 1906 – December 19, 1982) was an American writer, editor, film critic, social critic, literary critic, philosopher, and activist. Macdonald was a member of the New York Intellectuals and editor of their leftist mag ...
, with whom he produced campus humor magazine ''
The Yale Record
''The Yale Record'' is the campus humor magazine of Yale University. Founded in 1872, it became the oldest humor magazine in the world when ''Punch'' folded in 2002."History", The Yale Record, March 10, 2010. http://www.yalerecord.com/about/histo ...
''. He was a 1928 member of
Scroll and Key
The Scroll and Key Society is a Collegiate secret societies in North America, secret society, founded in 1842 at Yale University, in New Haven, Connecticut. It is one of the oldest Collegiate secret societies in North America#Yale University, Y ...
.
Famed American documentary photographer
Walker Evans
Walker Evans (November 3, 1903 – April 10, 1975) was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evans' work from ...
captured Hobson and Agee on a Long Island beach during the summer of 1937, when Evans and Agee were visiting Hobson and his first wife Peggy. (The
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...
houses those photos, which are also available online—see "Images," below.)
Magazines
Hobson wrote for ''Time'' in the 1930s and 1940s.
After covering a coal strike during the 1930s, he helped lead unionization at ''Time'' and became the first head of ''Times
Newspaper Guild
The NewsGuild-CWA is a labor union founded by newspaper journalists in 1933. In addition to improving wages and working conditions, its constitution says its purpose is to fight for honesty in journalism and the news industry's business practic ...
branch.
In October 1942, Hobson succeeded the late
Calvin Fixx as assistant editor to
Whittaker Chambers
Whittaker Chambers (born Jay Vivian Chambers; April 1, 1901 – July 9, 1961) was an American writer-editor, who, after early years as a Workers Party of America, Communist Party member (1925) and Soviet Union, Soviet spy (1932–1938), defe ...
, then editor of Arts & Entertainment. Other writers working for Chambers included: novelist
Nigel Dennis, future ''
New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' Book Review editor
Harvey Breit, and poets
Howard Moss and
Weldon Kees. Hobson worked amidst the struggle between Soviet-sympathizing and
anti-Communist
Anti-communism is political and ideological opposition to communism. Organized anti-communism developed after the 1917 October Revolution in the Russian Empire, and it reached global dimensions during the Cold War, when the United States and the ...
staffers at ''Time''. Chambers and
Willi Schlamm
William S. (Willi) Schlamm (originally Wilhelm Siegmund Schlamm, June 10, 1904 – September 1, 1978) was an Austrian-American journalist.
Biography
Schlamm was born into an upper middle class Jewish family in Przemyśl, Galicia, in the Austrian ...
led the anti-Communist camp (and both later joined the founding editorial board of
William F. Buckley, Jr.'s ''
National Review
''National Review'' is an American conservative editorial magazine, focusing on news and commentary pieces on political, social, and cultural affairs. The magazine was founded by the author William F. Buckley Jr. in 1955. Its editor-in-chief ...
'').
Theodore H. White
Theodore Harold White (, May 6, 1915 – May 15, 1986) was an American political journalist and historian, known for his reporting from China during World War II and the ''Making of the President'' series.
White started his career reporting for ...
and
Richard Lauterbach
Richard Edward Lauterbach (June 18, 1914, New York - September 20, 1950, New York) was the ''Time'' magazine Moscow bureau chief during World War II.
Background
Lauterbach was born in New York in 1914. He studied China and the Far East under Pro ...
led the pro-Soviet camp. ''Time'' founder
Henry R. Luce came to support the anti-Communist camp before the end of World War II in 1945. Hobson, however, rode out the storm and even managed to write two books at ''Time'': a historical study called ''American Jazz Music'' (1939—see "Music," below) and a novel called ''All Summer Long'' (1945).
When Chambers received a promotion to senior editor in September 1943 and then joined ''Times senior editorial group in December 1932, Hobson succeeded to the Arts & Entertainment section. He hired friend Walker Evans to write reviews first on Film and then on Art (1943–1945).
In 1946, Hobson moved to editorial board of ''Fortune'', where he worked until severe writer's block caused him to resign.
In November 1950, Hobson became managing editor of ''Harper's Bazaar'' (then with a circulation of 340,605), replacing
Frances MacFadden, who retired after 18 years in that position.
Later, Hobson joined ''Newsweek'', where he worked for a decade.
Hobson become a contributor to the (now defunct) ''Saturday Review'' during the late 1940s, the 1950s, and into the 1960s.
Later life with Verna Hobson
Hobson was a heavy alcoholic and died at the age of 58 in 1964 of gastrointestinal hemorrhage in
Princeton, New Jersey
Princeton is a municipality with a borough form of government in Mercer County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey. It was established on January 1, 2013, through the consolidation of the Borough of Princeton and Princeton Township, both of w ...
.
Hobson married his second wife, Verna Harrison (1923–2004), in the mid-1940s after meeting at ''Time''. At first they lived in Manhattan but moved to Princeton. Each year, they summered on Squirrel Island, Maine while playing in the Hennessy Five Star Orchestra. Mrs. Hobson worked 1954-1966 as secretary to
Robert Oppenheimer, then director of the
Institute for Advanced Study
The Institute for Advanced Study (IAS), located in Princeton, New Jersey, in the United States, is an independent center for theoretical research and intellectual inquiry. It has served as the academic home of internationally preeminent schola ...
. After her husband's death in 1964, she moved to London and worked first for the American Association of University Women and then for the London branch of
Robert Matthew
Sir Robert Hogg Matthew, OBE FRIBA FRSE (12 December 1906 – 2 June 1975) was a Scottish architect and a leading proponent of modernism.
Early life & studies
Robert Matthew was the son of John Fraser Matthew (1875–1955) (also an archite ...
, Johnson-Marshall, architects. In 1976, she returned to America and settled in
New Gloucester, Maine, working for the independent weekly ''New Gloucester News'' and also helping to re-establish ''The Squirrel Island Squid''. In 1998, she became a photographic stringer for ''The Lewiston Sun''. In 2001, she moved to
New Rochelle, New York
New Rochelle (; older french: La Nouvelle-Rochelle) is a city in Westchester County, New York, United States, in the southeastern portion of the state. In 2020, the city had a population of 79,726, making it the seventh-largest in the state o ...
, to live with her son Archie's family. Verna Harrison Hobson died on April 13, 2004.
Music
In 1939, Hobson became the second American to write a major book on jazz, ''American Jazz Music'' ( A year earlier, colleague
Winthrop Sargeant
Winthrop Sargeant (December 10, 1903 – August 15, 1986) was an American music critic, violinist, and writer.
Early life
Sargeant was born in San Francisco, California on December 10, 1903. He studied violin in his native city with Albert Elku ...
, a staff writer at ''Life'', had published ''Jazz—Hot and Hybrid''). Sargeant believed that the "swing" in jazz derived from complex African multi-rhythms adapted to relatively simple Western music. Hobson and Sargeant—both amateur, though well informed, jazz enthusiasts—believed that jazz came from New Orleans bordellos, whereas in the 1930s European scholars like
Robert Goffin
Robert Goffin (21 May 1898 – 27 June 1984) was a Belgian lawyer, author, and poet, credited with writing the first "serious" book on jazz, ''Aux Frontières du Jazz'' in 1932.Epperson.
Life
Robert Goffin was born in Ohain, Brabant Province ...
of Belgium and
Hugues Panassié of France had already ascribed (correctly) that jazz was a "vernacular-based art."
Wilder's close ancestors were
Maine
Maine () is a state in the New England and Northeastern regions of the United States. It borders New Hampshire to the west, the Gulf of Maine to the southeast, and the Canadian provinces of New Brunswick and Quebec to the northeast and nor ...
"Downeasters" and he played summers on
Squirrel Island in
Southport
Southport is a seaside town in the Metropolitan Borough of Sefton in Merseyside, England. At the 2001 census, it had a population of 90,336, making it the eleventh most populous settlement in North West England.
Southport lies on the Iris ...
with the Hennessy Five-Star Orchestra, which slide-trombonist Wilder joined in 1921 at age 15. Wilder's second wife Verna later became a tuba player. Family members still return, where, as of 2001, the Hennessy band was "still alive and well." Daughter Eliza Hobson became a jazz disc jockey and broadcast journalist as well as playing piano and guitar. A biography of ''Time'' colleague Weldon Kees includes a reminiscence of Kees on piano and Hobson on trombone in the Greenwich Village home of James Agee's sister.
[
]
Publications
Books
* ''American Jazz Music''. (NY: W.W. Norton
1939 republished i
1941and 1976)
* ''All Summer Long''. (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce
1945
Articles
*
" ''Time'', April 10, 1939
*
" ''Time'', April 17, 1939
* "An Album of Chinese Paintings," ''Life'', October 11, 1943, 7 pp
* "The Business Suit - A short and possibly tactless essay on the costuming of American enterprise," ''Fortune'', July 1948, illustrated by
Bernarda Bryson
Bernarda Bryson Shahn (March 7, 1903 – December 12, 2004) was an American painter and lithographer. She also wrote and illustrated children's books including ''The Zoo of Zeus'' and ''Gilgamesh.'' The artist Ben Shahn was her "life companion ...
* "The Gospel Truth," ''
Down Beat'', May 30, 1968. vol. 35, p. 19. (posthumous)
Photos
Metropolitan Museum of Art- photo of Wilder Hobson by Walker Evans in 1937 (one of 30 in collection)
Portsmouth Herald- Wilder Hobson as part of the Hennessy Five Star Orchestra on Squirrel Island in Booth Bay Harbor, Maine
Notes
Sources
* Herzstein, Robert E. ''Henry R. Luce, Time, and the American Crusade in Asia'' (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005).
* Rathbone, Belinda. ''Walker Evans: A Biography'' (Boston: Houghton Mifflin Books, 1995).
* Reidel, James. ''Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon Kees'. (University of Nebraska Press, 2007).
* Tanenhaus, Sam. ''Whittaker Chambers: A Biography'' (New York: Random House, 1997). .
Down Beatmagazine
External links
1979 Audio Interview with Verna Hobson by Martin SherwinVoices of the Manhattan Project
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Hobson, Wilder
American music critics
People from New Gloucester, Maine
Writers from New Rochelle, New York
Yale University alumni
20th-century American non-fiction writers
Journalists from New York (state)
1906 births
1964 deaths
People from Southport, Maine
20th-century American journalists
American male journalists
20th-century American male writers