This photograph (it looks like someone folded it up and carried it in their pocket) was found while googling something for something else. It did not have much information accompanying it. I recognize Delmore Schwartz, the poet, in the bottom right, and across him, looking like a Patrician Buddha, is TS Elliot. He has developed a scholar's hunch. Dame Edith Sitwell sits regally in the background with a tiara. What is she doing in the United States? I think that is Auden (Christopher Isherwoods' mate) ectomorphically lounging on the ladder. Gore Vidal, young and smart looking and with a full head of hair is middle of back row while that looks like Tennessee Williams at the end left. The others...Marianne Moore perhaps.... The others are no doubt famous as well, or were lucky enough to get in this shot.
At this point, the youthful and wide eyed Delmore Schwartz must have been at the apex of his fame before declining into manic depressive illness. I first saw this photo is the paperback version of James Atlas' biography of Schwartz, who had just made a splash with his story "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities" in the Partisan Review. But the photo was small and fuzzy. The photo looks to be from the forties, I would guess. This photo includes the entire aristocracy of writing at the time--the people who set the stage for much of the second half of the century. The level of talent in this room would be the equivalent of Maris, Mantle, Gehrig, Babe Ruth, Yogi Berra, and Joe DiMaggio attending an impossible Yankee reunion.
http://kvetchlandia.tumblr.com/post/25486651
Very cool. Thanks for sharing!
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