Michael Rumaker (March 5, 1932 - June 3, 2019) was an American author best known for his semi-autobiographical novels that document his life as a gay man in the 1950s and after.
Rumaker was born in Philadelphia. He graduated from
Black Mountain College
Black Mountain College was a private liberal arts college in Black Mountain, North Carolina. It was founded in 1933 by John Andrew Rice, Theodore Dreier, and several others. The college was ideologically organized around John Dewey's educatio ...
in 1955 and later wrote a memoir of his time there. He hitchhiked to San Francisco, where he encountered the literature of the
Beat Generation
The Beat Generation was a literary subculture movement started by a group of authors whose work explored and influenced American culture and politics in the post-war era. The bulk of their work was published and popularized by Silent Generat ...
. Returning to New York, he attended Columbia University and received an MFA in 1971, then he began teaching writing.
Rumaker's first collection was in 1959 in the new-writer showcase ''Short Story 2'', which featured short stories from him and three other authors, including
Gertrude Friedberg
Gertrude Tonkonogy Friedberg (17 March 1908 – September 17, 1989) was an American playwright and writer.
Life and career
Gertrude Tonkonogy was born in New York in 1908 as one of 11 children. Her siblings included Eugene Tonkonogy; George T. ...
. His short stories in the book received a favourable review in ''The New York Times'', where he was described as an "impressive young writer''.
His first book, ''The Butterfly'', is a fictionalized memoir of his brief affair with a young
Yoko Ono
Yoko Ono ( ; ja, 小野 洋子, Ono Yōko, usually spelled in katakana ; born February 18, 1933) is a Japanese multimedia artist, singer, songwriter, and peace activist. Her work also encompasses performance art and filmmaking.
Ono grew up i ...
, published before Ono became famous. His short stories ''Gringos and other stories'' appeared in 1967. A revised and expanded version appeared in 1991. He began to write directly about his life as a gay man in the volumes ''A Day and a Night at the Baths'' (1979) and ''My First Satyrnalia'' (1981). The novel ''Pagan Days'' (1991) is told from the perspective of an 8-year-old boy struggling to understand his gay self. ''Black Mountain Days'' is a memoir of his time at Black Mountain College. In addition, there are portraits of many students and faculty (including the poets
Robert Creeley
Robert White Creeley (May 21, 1926 – March 30, 2005) was an American poet and author of more than sixty books. He is usually associated with the Black Mountain poets, though his verse aesthetic diverged from that school. He was close with Ch ...
,
Charles Olson
Charles Olson (27 December 1910 – 10 January 1970) was a second generation modern American poet who was a link between earlier figures such as Ezra Pound and William Carlos Williams and the New American poets, which includes the New Yor ...
and Jonathan Williams) from 1952 1956.
Following his graduation from Black Mountain College, Rumaker made his way to the post-"
Howl
Howl most often refers to:
*Howling, an animal vocalization in many canine species
*Howl (poem), a 1956 poem by Allen Ginsberg
Howl may also refer to:
Film
* ''The Howl'', a 1970 Italian film
* ''Howl'' (2010 film), a 2010 American arthouse b ...
", pre-
Stonewall riots
The Stonewall riots (also known as the Stonewall uprising, Stonewall rebellion, or simply Stonewall) were a series of spontaneous protests by members of the LGBT community#Terminology, gay community in response to a police raid that began in t ...
gay literary milieu of San Francisco, where he entered the circle of Robert Duncan. His account of that time in the book ''Robert Duncan in San Francisco'', first published by Donald Allen at his Grey Fox Press, gives an unvarnished look at the premier poet of the
San Francisco Renaissance
The term San Francisco Renaissance is used as a global designation for a range of poetic activity centered on San Francisco, which brought it to prominence as a hub of the American poetry avant-garde in the 1950s. However, others (e.g., Alan Watt ...
. Rumaker released previously unpublished letters between himself and Robert Duncan for a new edition, published by
City Lights
''City Lights'' is a 1931 American silent romantic comedy film written, produced, directed by, and starring Charlie Chaplin. The story follows the misadventures of Chaplin's Tramp as he falls in love with a blind girl ( Virginia Cherrill) an ...
.
Published works
*''The Butterfly: A Story in Nine Parts'' (1962)
Charles Scribner's Sons
Charles Scribner's Sons, or simply Scribner's or Scribner, is an American publisher based in New York City, known for publishing American authors including Henry James, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Kurt Vonnegut, Marjorie Kinnan R ...
; (1968) Macdonald
*''The Bar'' (1964) by Four Seasons Foundation
*"Exit 3" (1966) by
Penguin Books
Penguin Books is a British publishing house. It was co-founded in 1935 by Allen Lane with his brothers Richard and John, as a line of the publishers The Bodley Head, only becoming a separate company the following year.Grove Press
*''Schwul'' (''Queers'') (1970) by März Verlag, Frankfurt am Main
*''Robert Duncan in San Francisco'' (1976) by Grey Fox Press
*''Crow Dog and Black Elk'' (1977) by Bezoar (Gloucester, MA)
*''A Day and a Night at the Baths'' (1979) by Grey Fox Press (reprinted by Triton Books, 2010)
*''My First Satyrnalia'' (1981) by Grey Fox Press,
*''To Kill a Cardinal'' (1992) by Arthur Mann Kaye,
*''Gringos and Other Stories'' (1997) by North Carolina Wesleyan College Press,
*''Pagan Days'' (1998) by
Circumstantial Productions
Circumstantial may refer to:
*Circumstantial evidence, in law
*Circumstantial thinking, in psychiatry and psychopathology
*Circumstantial voice, in linguistics
See also
* Circumstance (disambiguation)
Circumstance or circumstances may refer to ...
,
*''Black Mountain Days'' (2003) by Black Mountain Press, (reprinted by Spuyten Duyvil 2012)
*''An Immodest Proposal'' (2004) by The Phi Press
*''Pizza: Selected Poems'' (2005) by Circumstantial Productions,
*''Selected Letters of Michael Rumaker'' (2012) by The CUNY Poetics Document Initiative: Lost & Found, City University of New York, Center for the Humanities
*''Robert Duncan in San Francisco: Expanded Edition'' (2013) by City Lights Publishers,