Robert Menzies McAlmon (also used Robert M. McAlmon, as his signature name, March 9, 1895 – February 2, 1956) was an American writer, poet, and publisher.
/ref> In the 1920s, he founded in Paris the publishing house, ''Contact Editions'', where he published

Ernest Hemingway Ernest Miller Hemingway ( ; July 21, 1899 – July 2, 1961) was an American novelist, short-story writer and journalist. Known for an economical, understated style that influenced later 20th-century writers, he has been romanticized fo ...

, Gertrude Stein,

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (born James Augusta Joyce; 2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influentia ...

and

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Life

McAlmon was born in Clifton, Kansas, the youngest of 10 children of an itinerant Presbyterian minister. He died in Desert Hot Springs, California, at age 60. McAlmon studied for one semester as the

University of Minnesota The University of Minnesota Twin Cities (historically known as University of Minnesota) is a public university, public Land-grant university, land-grant research university in the Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Twin Cities of Minneapolis and Saint ...

in 1916 before enlisting in the

United States Army Air Corps The United States Army Air Corps (USAAC) was the aerial warfare service component of the United States Army between 1926 and 1941. After World War I, as early aviation became an increasingly important part of modern warfare, a philosophical ri ...

in 1918. After

World War I World War I or the First World War (28 July 1914 – 11 November 1918), also known as the Great War, was a World war, global conflict between two coalitions: the Allies of World War I, Allies (or Entente) and the Central Powers. Fighting to ...

, he returned to university (1917–1920), this time at the

University of Southern California The University of Southern California (USC, SC, or Southern Cal) is a Private university, private research university in Los Angeles, California, United States. Founded in 1880 by Robert M. Widney, it is the oldest private research university in ...

. He attended classes intermittently until 1920, when he moved to Chicago and then New York City, where he worked as a nude model at an art school. Once in New York, he collaborated with William Carlos Williams on the '' Contact Review'', which did not last for long but published poetry by

, Wallace Stevens,

Marianne Moore Marianne Craig Moore (November 15, 1887 – February 5, 1972) was an American Modernism, modernist poet, critic, translator, and editor. Her poetry is noted for its formal innovation, precise diction, irony, and wit. In 1968 Nobel Prize in Li ...

, H.D., Kay Boyle, and Marsden Hartley. The next year, he moved to Paris after marrying the wealthy English writer Annie Winifred Ellerman, better known as Bryher. This was a marriage of convenience which allowed Ellerman, a lesbian, to continue her relationship with Hilda Doolittle, and guarded McAlmon after he publicly identified himself as bisexual, stating: "I'm bisexual myself, like

Michelangelo Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni (6March 147518February 1564), known mononymously as Michelangelo, was an Italian sculptor, painter, architect, and poet of the High Renaissance. Born in the Republic of Florence, his work was inspir ...

, and I don't give a damn who knows it." Ellerman divorced McAlmon in 1927. McAlmon typed and edited the handwritten manuscript of Ulysses by

, with whom he had a friendship. McAlmon became a prolific writer after the move, with many of his stories and poems based on his experiences as a youth in

South Dakota South Dakota (; Sioux language, Sioux: , ) is a U.S. state, state in the West North Central states, North Central region of the United States. It is also part of the Great Plains. South Dakota is named after the Dakota people, Dakota Sioux ...

Contact editions

Having published his book of short stories ''A Hasty Bunch'' with James Joyce's printer Maurice Darantière in

Dijon Dijon (, ; ; in Burgundian language (Oïl), Burgundian: ''Digion'') is a city in and the Prefectures in France, prefecture of the Côte-d'Or Departments of France, department and of the Bourgogne-Franche-Comté Regions of France, region in eas ...

in 1922, he founded the Contact Publishing Company in 1923 using his father-in-law's money. Lasting until 1929, Contact Editions brought out books by Bryher (''Two Selves''), H. D.'s ''Palimpsest'', Mina Loy's ''Lunar Baedeker'',

's first book ''Three Stories & Ten Poems'' (1923), poems by Marsden Hartley, William Carlos Williams (''Spring and All'', 1923), Emanuel Carnevali's only book during his lifetime (''The Hurried Man''), prose by Ford Madox Ford, Gertrude Stein (''The Making of Americans'', 1925), Mary Butts (''Ashe of Rings''), John Herrmann (''What Happens''), Edwin Lanham (''Sailors Don't Care''), Robert Coates (''The Eater of Darkness''), Texas schoolteacher Gertrude Beasley's ''My First Thirty Years'' and Saikaku Ihara's ''Quaint Tales of Samurais''. McAlmon paid for the publication of ''The Ladies Almanack'' by Djuna Barnes. One of McAlmon's most important and best-received works is ''Village: As It Happened Through a Fifteen Year Period'' (1924) which presents a bleak portrait of an American town. The book shows his love for Eugene Vidal (Eugene Collins in the book),

Gore Vidal Eugene Luther Gore Vidal ( ; born Eugene Louis Vidal, October 3, 1925 – July 31, 2012) was an American writer and public intellectual known for his acerbic epigrammatic wit. His novels and essays interrogated the Social norm, social and sexual ...

's father, with whom he grew up in Madison, South Dakota, which is documented in Gore Vidal's mid-90s memoir, '' Palimpsest.'' Other works include the short story collection ''A Companion Volume'' (1923), the autobiographical novel ''Post-Adolescence'' (1923), ''Distinguished Air (Grim Fairy Tales)'' (1925), the poetry collections ''The Portrait of a Generation'' (1926), and ''Not Alone Lost'' (1937), the 1,200 line epic poem ''North America, Continent of Conjecture'' (1929), and his memoir ''Being Geniuses Together: An Autobiography'' (1938). McAlmon returned to the United States in 1940, residing in El Paso, Texas, where he sought treatment for a pulmonary ailment. He died at Desert Hot Springs, California, almost unknown in his native country, sixteen years later. In the 1990s, Edward Lorusso brought out three volumes of McAlmon's fiction (many were first American publications), ''

Village A village is a human settlement or community, larger than a hamlet but smaller than a town with a population typically ranging from a few hundred to a few thousand. Although villages are often located in rural areas, the term urban v ...

'' (1924, 1990), '' Post-Adolescence'' (1923, 1991), and '' Miss Knight and Others'' (1992), all through University of New Mexico Press. Edward Lorusso also published '' Naked Truth: The Fiction of Robert McAlmon'' in 2020. McAlmon is heavily featured in the book ''Memoirs of Montparnasse'' by John Glassco about the golden age of Paris in the 1920s when writers and artists flocked to the city. His social circle and friendship with

are discussed in the novel '' The Paris Wife'' by Paula McLain. In 2007, his fictionalized memoir ''The Nightinghouls of Paris'' was published, based on the experiences of Glassco and his friend Graeme Taylor with McAlmon in Paris. The previously unpublished book was based on a typescript held by Yale's archives. An epistolary novel about McAlmon's life in Greenwich Village, his expatriate adventures in Paris, and final years in California, '' Letters from Oblivion'' was published by Edward Lorusso in 2014.

Bibliography

Fiction

* ''A Hasty Bunch''. n.p., n.d. Printed by Maurice Darantière in Lyon in 1922. Short stories * ''A Companion Volume''. Contact, Paris 1923. Short stories * ''Post-Adolescence''. Contact, Paris 1923. Short stories * ''Village: As It Happened Through a Fifteen Year Period''. Contact, Paris 1924. Novel * ''Distinguished Air: Grim Fairy Tales'' Contact, Paris 1925 hoto-reprinted as ''There Was a Rustle of Black Silk Stockings''. 1963* ''The Infinite Huntress and Other Stories''. Black Sun Press, Paris 1932 * ''A Scarlet Pansy'' (under pseudonym Robert Scully), William Farro, Inc. (Roth), 1933 * Robert E. Knoll: ''McAlmon and the Lost Generation. A Self Portrait''. University of Nebraska, Lincoln 1962. * ''Miss Knight and Others''. University of New Mexico Press, 1992 * ''The Nightinghouls of Paris''. University of Illinois Press, 2007 * "La nuit pour adresse". Maud Simonnot (Paris: Editions Gallimard, 2017)

Memoirs

* ''Being Geniuses Together''. Secker & Warburg, London 1938. Memoir * ''Being Geniuses Together''. Doubleday, New York 1968 (revised with supplementary chapters by Kay Boyle)

Poetry

* ''Explorations''. Egoist Press, London 1921. * ''The Portrait of a Generation''. Contact, Paris 1925. * ''North America, Continent of Conjecture''. Contact, Paris 1929. * ''Not Alone Lost''. New Directions Publishing, Norfolk, CT, 1937.

Legacy

William Saroyan wrote a short story about McAlmon in his 1971 book, '' Letters from 74 rue Taitbout or Don't Go But If You Must Say Hello To Everybody''. Charles Demuth painted a watercolor based on McAlmon's ''Distinguished Air: Grim Fairy Tales'' titled ''Distinguished Air.''

Notes

References

* * The only biography of the author. * Contains an insightful account of McAlmon's life. *

External links

* * Robert McAlmon Papers. Yale Collection of American Literature, Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. * {{DEFAULTSORT:McAlmon, Robert American male poets University of Minnesota alumni University of Southern California alumni Objectivist poets Poets from Kansas People from Clifton, Kansas People from Desert Hot Springs, California 1895 births 1956 deaths 20th-century American poets 20th-century American male writers People from Madison, South Dakota Private press movement people