Milking the Moon (56 page)

Garrigue, Jean
(1914–1972) American poet. Critic Stephen Stepanacher described Garrigue’s first collection of poems,
The Ego and the Centaur
(1947), as a work that “deals with the world everyone knows,…yet [has] the otherworldliness of experience raised several degrees above the expected and ordinary. It has a musicality, a refinement, and an elegance of phrase that are appealing and rare.” Her 1959 poetry collection,
A Water Walk by Villa d’Este,
was also admired critically, but her later efforts were less well received.

Gide, Andre
(1869–1951) French writer. Gide, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1947, wrote fiction and verse, translated literary works (
Hamlet,
for instance) into French, was a prolific letter writer, and kept a journal from 1899 to 1949. New Directions published many of Dorothy Bussy’s translations of his work into English.

Ginsberg, Allen
(1926–1997) American poet; born in Newark, New Jersey. Ginsberg was a central figure in the Beats, the underground circle of friends, artists, and intellectuals that included novelists Jack Kerouac
(On the Road,
1957) and William S. Burroughs (
Naked Lunch,
1959) and muse Neal Cassady. He is best known for his long poem
Howl,
which contains explicit homosexual themes and imagery. By the mid-1960s, Ginsberg was a celebrated and popular figure of anti-Establishment politics and poetic accomplishment.

Ginzberg, Natalia
(b. 1916) Italian novelist, essayist, translator, and playwright. Among her works is the novel
Tutti i nostri ieri
(1952; English translation,
A Light for Fools).

Girodias, Maurice
(1919–1990) French publisher and editor. Girodias is best known as the founder and editor of the Olympia Press (1953–1964), which published erotica, banned literature, and experimental literature. Some of the titles he published in the 1950s are Vladimir Nabokov’s
Lolita,
J. P. Donleavy’s
Ginger Man,
and William Burroughs’s
Naked Lunch.

Gnoli, Domenico
(1935–1965) Italian artist. For having lived a very short time, Gnoli produced a body of work that is substantial and considered important.

Grabbe, Christian Dietrich
(1801–1836) German playwright. Ridiculed or ignored in his own time, Grabbe found critical sympathy and respect in the early twentieth century. Chief among his works that gained legitimacy on the twentieth-century German stage was
Scher
j,
Satire, Ironie und tiefere Bedeutung
(
Wit, Satire, Irony, and Deeper Meaning,
written in 1867 and translated into English in 1955). His work has never become well-known internationally.

Graham, Martha
(1894–1991) American dancer and choreographer. Graham’s innovations in dance made major contributions to the creation of what became called modern dance. She departed radically from the conventions of traditional ballet in her abandonment of what she called “decorative unessentials”; her costumes had a marked plainness, and the sets of her dances, if existent, were understated. Her work has been called “cubist.” She established the Dance Repertory Theater in New York in 1930.

Graves, Robert
(1895–1985) British writer and poet, best known for his historical novels
I, Claudius
and
Claudius the God
(both 1934), which were adapted by the BBC for dramatization. Graves’s personal life was rather complicated. He had eight children from two marriages, between which he had a sometimes sexual, long-term relationship with the American poet Laura Riding.

Guggenheim, Marguerite (Peggy)
(1898–1979) Wealthy art patron and collector. Guggenheim was the daughter of a copper heir who died on the
Titanic.
After gaining control of her fortune in 1919, she went to London, where her friend Marcel Duchamp tutored her in modern art and introduced her to many artists. In Paris at the end of the 1930s, she bought a great deal of art from important artists, including Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque, who were eager to get cash in hand because of the Nazi threat to France. Guggenheim removed her collection to the French countryside just three days before the Nazis occupied Paris in 1940. She returned to New York, where she opened the gallery Art of This Century to great critical acclaim for the works and artists she introduced to the United States. By 1947 she owned one of the greatest collections of modern art. She gave financial support to many artists and was instrumental in establishing the artists of the New York school of abstract expressionism—Jackson Pollock, William Baziotes, Mark Rothko, Clyfford Still, and David Hare. In 1949 she bought an eighteenth-century palazzo on the Grand Canal in Venice, in which she lived and displayed her collection. By her death in 1979 the collection she had bought for $250,000 was worth $40 million.

Hall, Donald
(b. 1928) American poet. In addition to being one of the founders of the
Paris Review,
Hall served as its poetry editor from 1953 to 1961. He was a Pulitzer Prize nominee for poetry in 1989 for his long poem
The One Day,
a poem of 110 ten-line stanzas divided into three parts whose subject is the crisis of midlife.

Harrington, Curtis
(b. 1928) American director and producer in film and television. Harrington’s “cult film” that Eugene mentions is entitled
What’s the Matter with Helen?
(1971), which costarred Shelley Winters and Debbie Reynolds (whom Eugene refers to as “the little blond actress whose name I can never remember”). Film critic Leonard Maltin describes the movie as “a campy murder tale set in the 1930s.” Other films directed by Harrington include
Queen of Blood
and
The Dead Don’t Die
(1974). He directed the made-for-TV
Killer Bees
(1974) and episodes of such television shows as
Charlie’s Angels, Logan’s Run,
and
Wonder Woman.

Henze, Hans Werner
(b. 1926) German composer. Henze is an important and critically acclaimed composer of the twentieth century, with a reputation for industry and innovation. His operas include
Boulevard Solitude
(1952) and
Der junge Lord
(1965), for which Ingeborg Bachmann wrote a libretto. In 1958 he wrote the ballet
Undine,
a recording of which, performed by the London Sinfonietta, was released on CD in 1999 to enthusiastic reviews.

Herbst, Josephine
(1897–1969) Radical American journalist and novelist. Born in Iowa, Herbst moved to New York City in 1920, where she began her career in journalism working for H. L. Mencken and George Jean Nathan as a reading editor. In 1924, she went to Paris and met Ernest Hemingway among the American expatriates. Back in the United States during the Great Depression, Herbst, whose politics were already sympathetic to the Left, became more radical. She published eight novels, each of which treated the injustice of social and economic oppression. Herbst is best known for her journalism during the 1930s. She covered Cuba’s underground movement, German criticism of Hitler prior to the war, and the Spanish civil war. No corroboration has been found for Eugene’s contention that Herbst and Jean Garrigue had an affair.

Herron, Mark
(1928–1996) American actor. Herron was married to Judy Garland from 1965 to 1967 and was her fourth husband. A biographer of Garland described Herron as “an inconsequential actor.” After he acted in
8½,
his career stalled.

Herschberger, Ruth
(b. 1917) American writer. Herschberger’s poetry, dramatic literature, and nonfiction frequently explore feminist perspectives. Her best-known work is the nonfiction
Adam’s Rib,
which was published in 1954 but is currently out of print. Her poetry has appeared in many collections.

Hesse, Hermann
(1877–1962) German writer, author of the novels
Siddhartha
(1922) and
Steppenwolf
(1927). In 1919 he moved to Switzerland, where he lived the rest of his life in seclusion. Hesse won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1946.

Highsmith, Patricia
(1921–1995) American writer of crime fiction. Highsmith wrote twenty-two novels, including
The Talented Mr. Ripley
(1957)1 recently adapted for the film starring Matt Damon and Gwyneth Paltrow (1999). In 1962 Highsmith won the Crime Writers Association Silver Dagger Award.

Hill, Pati
(dates unknown) American novelist and poet, born in Kentucky. Her journal,
The Pit and the Century Plant,
was published in 1955.

Howard, Vilma
(dates unknown) African American playwright. Howard was associated with the Southern Association of Dramatic and Speech Arts (SADSA) during the 1950s. Her play,
The Tam,
was published in the
SADSA Encore
in 1951.

Hugo, Ian
(dates unknown) American banker, amateur filmmaker. Ian Hugo is the pseudonym of Hugh Guiler, a successful banker and the husband of Anaïs Nin. The marriage was widely known to be an “open” one, and Nin had an eight-year affair with the American writer Henry Miller. Hugo’s second career was experimental filmmaking. He also illustrated some of Nin’s literary works.

Jones, Gwyneth
(b. 1936) Welsh opera singer. Jones, an internationally renowned soprano, made her Metropolitan Opera debut in 1972. Her voice is described as “naturally beautiful” and “very feminine.”

Knopf, Blanche
(d. 1966) American editor and publisher. Wife of publisher Alfred Knopf (1892-1984) and vice president of the Knopf publishing company. In 1917 she helped her husband establish Knopf, and in 1921 she became vice president of the firm. Although her husband did not always agree with her opinions, her interest in foreign literature helped strengthen the reputation of the firm. She created the Borzoi imprint, which won eighteen Pulitzer Prizes and six National Book Awards. By the 1960s, Knopf had published works by Andre Gide, Thomas Mann, D. H. Lawrence, Jean-Paul Sartre, and Albert Camus, and the firm had published eleven Nobel Prize winners.

Lampedusa, Giuseppe di
(1896–1957) Italian prince; writer. Giuseppe Tomasi, prince of Lampedusa, began his literary career in earnest just a few years before his death. His novel,
The Leopard,
was published two years after his death and was internationally acclaimed as one of Italy’s best modern novels.

Larbaud, Valery
(1881–1957) French novelist and critic. Among other works, Larbaud wrote the novel
Fermina Marquel
(1911) and a collection of essays entitled
Aux couleurs de Rome
(1938).

Laughlin, James
(1914–1997) American publisher. Laughlin’s wealth came from his family’s steel interest in Pennsylvania. After graduating from Harvard, Laughlin tried his hand at poetry until his mentor, Ezra Pound, suggested that he publish works of important contemporary writers, many of whom lacked the opportunity to publish in the poor economic conditions following the Great Depression. Laughlin took Pound’s advice, establishing New Directions publishing house. The first book the firm published, in 1936, was an anthology that included works by e. e. cummings, Ezra Pound, Gertrude Stein, William Carlos Williams, Elizabeth Bishop, and Henry Miller. Laughlin focused on publishing not-yet-established authors whose publishing opportunities were limited by their lack of commercial appeal. In addition, New Directions is largely responsible for introducing foreign-language authors to the American public. Some of these authors are Vladimir Nabokov, Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Merton, Dylan Thomas, Rainer Maria Rilke, Franz Kafka, Baudelaire, Paul Valery, and Jean Cocteau.

Lawrence, Seymour
(1927–1994) American editor and publisher who worked at Dell/Delacorte, E. P. Dutton, and, ultimately, Houghton Mifflin. Throughout his career Lawrence maintained a reputation for publishing what he considered to be important works that did not always bring immediate commercial success. Many proved to be profitable in the long run. A few of the best-selling authors he published are Kurt Vonnegut, Katherine Anne Porter, and Tim O’Brien. Lawrence published many others, including the Nobel Prize—winning authors George Sefaris (1963), Pablo Neruda (1971), and Miguel Angel Asturias (1967).

Lee, Harper
(b. 1926) American writer; literary mystery. Lee is best known for her beloved novel,
To Kill a Mockingbird
(1960), which won a Pulitzer Prize and was adapted for the Academy Award-winning film starring Gregory Peck. It remains something of an enigma, then, that she has never written a novel after
To Kill a Mockingbird.
She has contributed to the mystery by avoiding discussion of the reasons for her silence. She lives in her hometown of Monroeville, Alabama, where she and Truman Capote had been childhood friends.

Lehmann, John
(1907–1987) English editor. John Lehmann has been described as “England’s dean of creative editors.” A founding editor of
London
magazine from 1953 to 1961, Lehmann helped many writers establish themselves through editing, anthologizing, and publishing their works. A few such writers are W. H. Auden, Jean-Paul Sartre, Saul Bellow, and Gore Vidal.