When Delmore Schwartz (December 8, 1913 – July 11, 1966) started out in the late 1930s, he was seen by many as the future of serious literature and praised by luminaries such as T.S. Eliot, William Carlos Williams and Ezra Pound. He never really fulfilled this promise, but The World is a Wedding, his story collection from 1947, shows what a talent he once was.
Schwartz is at his best when he writes about the bohemian scene in New York and the idle young men and failed artists in 1930s en 40s America. He’s not unlike film maker Woody Allen in that respect and the titular story almost feels like a script for one of his films. Schwartz’s dialogue-rich tales would have made him an excellent playwright.
Schwartz is (somehow surprisingly) good on gender politics – showing the dynamics between men and women and the different expectations and limitations that existed during his lifetime – and this collection contains one of the best short stories from that period about race issues in America (“A Bitter Farce”). It also contains his classic story “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities”, which had been published previously and often turns up in anthologies.
After his death Schwartz became an almost mythical figure, eulogized by Lou Reed (a former pupil of his) and Bono, and fictionalized as Von Humboldt Fleischer in Saul Bellow’s fantastic novel Humboldt’s Gift. Lou Reed’s album The Blue Mask opens with the song “My House”, dedicated to Delmore Schwartz: “the first great man that I ever met”. The U2 song “Acrobat” from Achtung Baby is also dedicated to Schwartz, who finds himself in good company here: William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Salmon Rushdie and William Blake have all been referenced by Bono at some point.
We currently have a first printing of The World is a Wedding in our shop, as well as a fine first edition of Bellow’s masterpiece Humboldt’s Gift.