Beginning in A.D. 1000 with Leif Ericson and ending with the dropping
of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima in 1945, John Sanford (1904-2003),
recipient of the PEN Award and the Los Angeles Times Lifetime
Achievement Award, presents in poetic prose a searing personal
history of the United States.
"It was, and it
is, an unrelenting and accusatory book. No one who values his country
can find its charges easy to bear—and yet I value my country, too,
and the book was written only to make it better." — John Sanford, in
his preface to the 1982 Black Sparrow reissue of A More Goodly
Country
"This is, quite
simply, a noble and beautiful book, savage in its interpretation of
our heritage, absolute in its integrity, and almost miraculous in its
language." — The Tennessean
(Nashville, TN), May 5, 1975
"It is a work
for all time, a work of love, of wry humor, of devastating criticism... It is a work of poetry, a work of greatness, and while it is
almost blatantly subjective it is never subservient to any ideology."— Corvallis
Gazette-Times (Corvallis, OR), December 27, 1975
"... an
oozing, raucous treat of a book... a sprawling chorus on this
country, sparing none of the harsh voices, leaving none of our
pimples unpicked."— Los Angeles
Times, May 7, 1975
"Had I so interfered in behalf of the rich . . . it would have
been all right."-- John Brown, 1859
INTRODUCTION
John Sanford
published in nine decades, a remarkable feat for anyone, but
particularly remarkable for someone who came to his profession
relatively late in life. Sanford's first published piece appeared in
the expatriate little magazine Tambour in 1929, when he was 25 years
old, and his first book was not released until 1933, when he was 28.
Little Preparation
for a Career in Writing
All the more
remarkable is how little formal preparation Sanford had for his
career as a writer. He was a poor student in school. He did not
graduate from Manhattan's DeWitt Clinton High,--where his main
extracurricular activity was cutting classes,--when he failed English
his last semester. Sanford spent a year at Lafayette College, where
he unsuccessfully attempted to write for the student newspaper. This
tenure was followed by the shortest of stints at Northwestern and
Lehigh, where he lasted just two weeks. Afterward, he needed a
fraudulent diploma obtained by bribing a state official to gain
admission to Fordham Law School, but he dropped out after less than a
month. Finally, the next term, Sanford returned to Fordham, where he
completed his law degree. He then joined his father's legal practice.
However, it was during his law studies that Sanford chanced to meet a
childhood friend on a New Jersey golf course; this 1925 meeting would
forever change Sanford's path in life. To Sanford's astonishment, the
friend--Nathan Weinstein, who was now going by the name of Nathanael
West--announced that he was writing a book. Suddenly, the wayward and
goal-less Sanford knew he wanted to write one too.
Sanford renewed his
friendship with West, often accompanying him on walks through New
York City and listening to West discourse on art and literature. It
was West who introduced Sanford to an enduring model: an obscure
short story writer named Ernest Hemingway. Sanford helped read proof
on West's first novel, The Dream Life of Balso Snell. And, Sanford
shared a hunting cabin with West one summer in the Adirondacks, where
West worked on Miss Lonelyhearts and Sanford his first novel, The
Water Wheel. Later, West induced Sanford to exchange his given name,
Julian Shapiro, for the name of the principle character in The Water
Wheel. That decision Sanford would come to rue.
While not as
self-consciously lean as Hemingway's or West's writing, Sanford's
prose has an unembellished spareness that clearly shows his friend's
influence. Early on, James Joyce's influence could be seen in
Sanford's eschewing of apostrophes in contractions. Later, Joyce's
inspiration endured in Sanford's continuing quest for arresting and
unconventional expressions. Sanford rarely used simile; rather, he
preferred the directness and power of metaphor. He used nouns as
verbs, verbs as nouns. Often his prose has poetic elements, such as
multiple interior rhymes. Sanford's work is marked by a constant
striving for innovation.
A Second Career at
Sixty-three
Sanford's remaining
influence was William Carlos Williams, whose book of historical
vignettes, In the American Grain, Sanford read in the mid-1920s. The
concept of history as literature took root in Sanford early. From the
outset of his career, Sanford salted his works of fiction with
historical interludes. These episodes were often a source of
contention with publishers and cost him contracts. For example,
Seventy Times Seven did not appear in England, because Sanford
refused to remove historical material.
In all, Sanford
published eight novels, which showed increasing strain with the
bounds of fiction, as the books became more and more dominated by
teachers and preachers, who delivered sermons and lectures to
Sanford's readers. Finally, in 1967, with the publication of The $300
Man, Sanford had exhausted the novel form as a medium. At the
suggestion of his wife, screenwriter Marguerite Roberts, Sanford
embarked on what would become his second career, at the age of 63.
Three years in the
writing, A More Goodly Country established Sanford's mature narrative
voice, or rather voices. Consisting entirely of vignettes about
historical events and figures, this book allowed Sanford to explore
history by means of fable, parable and brief dramatic monologue.
Sanford brought history to life through magnificent flights of
imagination. However, so unconventional was the book that it would
take another three years and over 200 rejections before Sanford could
find a publisher.
With the issuing of
A More Goodly Country in 1975, Sanford's second career, as a
nonfiction writer, was underway. There would follow eighteen more
volumes of history, memoir and autobiography. It is remarkable that
twelve of these books were published after Sanford reached the age of
80. At an age when most writers are retired or dead, Sanford was
hitting his literary stride. And he continued to write until just a
month before his death, when deteriorating eyesight made writing
impossible. He died in March 2003, leaving three unpublished works.
The Finest Unread
Author Writing in English
Despite the beauty
of Sanford's writing, and the gravity and pertinence of his themes,
Sanford remains mostly unknown and almost entirely unread. His books
have been issued only in small editions, and only one has gone into a
second printing. Early on, Sanford's work was published by the
premier houses of the day. But Sanford quarreled with editors and
publishers, and he refused to compromise.
As a result of
Sanford's intractability, his publishers would each decide in turn
that Sanford was more trouble than he was worth: one book was enough.
Thus, they had little investment in his work. They did not promote
his books, because Sanford would never be a member of their stable.
Un-promoted, his books did not sell. And the chore of publishing
Sanford would be passed on to another house. If Sanford had
intentionally tried to sabotage his career, he could have done no
more damage than he did by being rash and intransigent.
It was not until
1977, when Sanford had been writing for over 40 years, that the Capra
Press followed Adirondack Stories with View from this Wilderness,
thus becoming the first of his publishers to issue a second Sanford
volume. And it was not until 1984 that Black Sparrow Press began what
would be the longest run of Sanford titles from a single publisher,
six in all. However, by the 1980s, Sanford was an old man, whose work
was of interest only to small, art-house publishers. His chances of
wider success had expired.
In addition to his
quarrelsome ways with publishers, Sanford's lack of success must
necessarily also be traced to the content of his books. From the
start, one can see Sanford's obsession with the darker side of
American history. In The Water Wheel, there is an episode musing on
Philip Nolan, the Man without a Country. In Seventy Times Seven,
there is a historical poetic interlude depicting man's inhumanity
since America's earliest days. From that book onward, the harshness
of Sanford's examination of the inequities in American history would
only become more strident.
Literature as a
Weapon
In 1936, Paramount
had hired Sanford as a screenwriter. In late 1939, he joined the
Hollywood cell of the Communist Party. The works that followed
Sanford's political awakening became progressively more leftist. In a
period when many American communists were reassessing their party
membership, any doubts Sanford may have had only served to increase
the fervor of his dedication to the cause. Even the Communists
condemned 1943's The People from Heaven as too radical. The following
A Man Without Shoes and The Land that Touches Mine are even more
deeply political works, which criticized the American social and
economic system as fundamentally unfair. This hard-line stance would
eventually force Sanford to self-publish A Man Without Shoes.
Even in his later
non-fiction historical books, Sanford's devotion to progressive
causes remained intense. To read The Winters of that Country, a
blistering indictment of America, is to find oneself denounced for
having profited from centuries of injustice; the book is an
accusation aimed at all Americans. Even Sanford's peerless prose
could induce few readers to endure such a withering rebuke of the
values in which they were raised to believe. Sanford must have known
that these works would find little acceptance with the general
reading public, who seek diversion, not chastisement. But he could
not dim his ire, or the fire of his dream.
One historical
figure to whom Sanford repeatedly returned is John Brown, the
abolitionist whose assault on the armory at Harper's Ferry led to his
execution. Sanford oft repeated Brown's statement: "Had I so
interfered in behalf of the rich. . . it would have been all right."
One could also apply that idea to Sanford's work: had he so written
in behalf of the rich, he might have sold well and perhaps been a
household name. Instead, Sanford chose to risk all in a quixotic
attempt to right the wrongs of society. He sacrificed potential
success to his cause. He wrote not to entertain the public, but to
condemn it. He wrote to goad Americans to abandon complacency and to
right society's wrongs.
The Luxury to Write
What He Pleased
Soon after arriving
in Los Angeles, John Sanford met fellow screenwriter Marguerite
Roberts at Paramount Studios. The couple would wed two years later,
and Roberts would go on to become one of the most successful and
highest-paid screenwriters in Hollywood, including twelve straight
years under contract at Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. After Sanford's
year-long tenure at Paramount was up, he had a brief stint at M-G-M.
Following that, he would be gainfully employed only once more, when
he co-wrote Clark Gable and Carol Lombard's Honky-Tonk with Roberts.
For the rest of his life, Sanford would be supported by his wife's
earnings.
Thus, Sanford
experienced a rare luxury among professional writers: the luxury to
write what he pleased, without consideration of economic
consequences. Sanford was not compelled to sell books to put food on
the table. He did not have to seek out other writing assignments to
pay the bills. Sanford did not do book tours, did not attend
signings, did not make public appearances or give lectures. He left
the selling of his works to others, as if he believed that to curry
the favor of readers would taint his work.
Unlike many writers
of his stature, Sanford did not review books, did not write articles
for magazines, did not have to interrupt the process of writing books
that did not sell, so that he could make a living. In fact, aside
from several pieces in literary little magazines at the outset of his
career, and during a brief editorship of Black & White/The
Clipper in 1940-41, Sanford hardly published in periodicals at all.
On the one hand,
this lack of economic necessity freed Sanford to pursue his art
wherever the muse took him. Without this freedom, his life's work
would not exist in its current form. On the other hand, one wonders
what Sanford would have produced, if he had been forced by economics
to temper his indignation and recast his reforming vision, so that
his books would sell.
If he had needed to
write to make money, would Sanford have been capable of writing for
the popular audience, and what would have been the result? Would his
missteps have been fewer? Would he have muted the excesses of
politics that flawed his later fiction? Would he still have achieved
the high splendor of his style under these mundane constraints?
Certainly, he would have had to write more and differently to earn a
living. But, could he have achieved the mass appeal that always
eluded him? One wonders whether economic necessity would have
improved Sanford's art, or merely blunted his talent.
Nonetheless, despite
its excesses and imperfections, John Sanford's writing has achieved a
sustained beauty and passion that is rarely seen. Even his less fully
realized works have passages of brilliance that commend them. And, in
those works where style and content felicitously meet, Sanford is
revealed as a master of his craft; his writing sparkles with the
clean lines of a gem.
Although nearly
unknown to the wider reading public, Sanford's work evokes fervor in
critics and academics, as well as an almost fanatical devotion from a
small cadre of collectors. It is, in particular, for these people
this bibliography is written.
https://www.oakknoll.com/pages/book-excerpt/94202/jack-mearns/john-sanford-an-annotated-bibliography
