1. Max Forrester Eastman was an American writer on literature, philosophy, and society, a poet, and a prominent political activist.
43 Facts About Max Eastman
1. 2.
Max Eastman supported socialism and became a leading patron of the Harlem Renaissance and an activist for a number of liberal and radical causes.
3.
Max Eastman published more frequently in National Review and other conservative journals in later life, but he always remained independent in his thinking.
4.
Max Eastman was born in 1883 in Canandaigua, Ontario County, New York, the fourth of four children.
5.
Max Eastman's father, Samuel Elijah Eastman, was a minister in the Congregational Church, and his mother, Annis Bertha Ford, joined him in 1889, one of the first women in the United States to be ordained in a Protestant church.
6.
Max Eastman graduated with a bachelor's degree from Williams College in 1905.
7.
From 1907 to 1911, Max Eastman completed the work toward a PhD in philosophy at Columbia University under the noted philosopher John Dewey.
8.
Max Eastman was a member of both the Delta Psi and Phi Beta Kappa societies.
9.
Max Eastman spent summers and weekends with Crystal in Croton-on-Hudson, where he bought a house in 1916.
10.
Max Eastman became a key figure in the left-leaning Greenwich Village community and lived in its influence for many years.
11.
Max Eastman combined this with his academic experience to explore varying interests, including literature, psychology, and social reform.
12.
That same year, Max Eastman published Enjoyment of Poetry, an examination of literary metaphor from a psychological point of view.
13.
The numerous denunciations of US participation in World War I published in The Masses, many written by Max Eastman, provoked controversy and reaction from authorities.
14.
Max Eastman was twice indicted and stood trial under provisions of the Sedition Act, but he was acquitted each time.
15.
Max Eastman raised the money to send the radical John Reed to Russia in 1917.
16.
Max Eastman's magazine published Reed's articles from Russia, later collected as Ten Days That Shook the World, his notable account of the Bolshevik Revolution.
17.
Max Eastman had even delivered anti-war speeches on behalf of the People's Council of America for Democracy and the Terms of Peace.
18.
In 1922, Max Eastman embarked on a fact-finding tour of the Soviet Union to learn about the Soviet implementation of Marxism.
19.
Max Eastman stayed for a year and nine months, observing the power struggles between Leon Trotsky and Joseph Stalin.
20.
Max Eastman remained in Europe for the next three years.
21.
In that essay, he described Lenin's Testament, a copy of which Max Eastman had smuggled out of Russia.
22.
In other essays, Max Eastman described conditions for artists and political activists in Russia.
23.
Max Eastman translated and published works by the poet Alexander Pushkin, including The Gabrieliad.
24.
Max Eastman published several works in which he criticized James Joyce and other modernist writers who, he claimed, fostered "the Cult of Unintelligibility".
25.
When Max Eastman had asked Joyce why his book was written in a very difficult style, Joyce famously replied: "To keep the critics busy for three hundred years".
26.
Max Eastman published The Literary Mind and Enjoyment of Laughter in which he criticized some elements of Freudian theory.
27.
Max Eastman was a traveling lecturer throughout the 1930s and 1940s, when he spoke on various literary and social topics in cities across the country.
28.
Max Eastman was a notable member of the women's rights movement in the early 20th century.
29.
Max Eastman served as President of the Men's Equal Suffrage League in New York and was a founding member of the Men's League for Women's Suffrage in New York in 1910.
30.
Max Eastman allied with the American writers James Burnham, John Chamberlain, and John Dos Passos.
31.
Max Eastman arranged for the serialization of Hayek's work in Reader's Digest.
32.
Later, Max Eastman wrote articles critical of socialism for The Freeman, an early libertarian publication edited by his friends John Chamberlain and Henry Hazlitt.
33.
Max Eastman was a participating member of the American Committee for Cultural Freedom at the invitation of Sidney Hook.
34.
Max Eastman associated the term with the ideas of the writer Albert Jay Nock.
35.
Max Eastman's writing was more predictable and less generous in spirit.
36.
Max Eastman led no magazines, and wasn't particularly central to those to which he contributed.
37.
Max Eastman wielded some influence in conservative and anti-communist circles, through organizations like the American Committee for Cultural Freedom and magazines like National Review, but he was essential to none of them.
38.
Together they had one child, Dan, with whom Max Eastman had no connection for 23 years after their separation.
39.
Max Eastman organized many of Joseph Stalin's infamous "show trials" of the 1930s, before being arrested and executed himself during the Great Purge in 1938.
40.
In 1958, Max Eastman married Yvette Szkely, who was born in Budapest in 1912.
41.
Max Eastman emigrated to New York with her divorced stepmother.
42.
Max Eastman had a long-term relationship with Theodore Dreiser before her marriage to Eastman.
43.
Max Eastman died in New York in 2014 at the age of 101.