Is graduated from the Jewish Orphan's Asylum High School in Cleveland, Ohio in 1917.
Edward Dahlberg
was born on 22 July 1900 in a charity hospital in
Boston.
His mother, Elizabeth "Lizzie" Dahlberg, had been recently kicked out of her husband's house for being unfaithful. Edward and his older brother, Michael, were turned over to an orphanage.
Is graduated from the Jewish Orphan's Asylum High School in Cleveland, Ohio in 1917.
- Dahlberg in an autobiographical sketch included in Bottom Dogs
Enlists in the Army in 1918, amidst the last few weeks of
World War I.
Receives a B.S. in philosophy from Columbia University in 1925.
Travels to Europe in 1926 aboard the S.S. Rotterdam. Lives in Paris on his Army pension- about fifty dollars a month. Has a few pieces published in This Quarter, a literary journal.
Meets and befriends the poet
Hart Crane
at the famous Paris cafe
La Coupole.
Bottom Dogs,
his first novel, is published in 1930. With his advance money, Dahlberg returns to New York, resides in
Greenwich Village.
Publ
ishes in the influential experimental journal
Pagany.
Becomes involved in the
Communist Party.
Travels to Germany on 27 February 1933, just after the burning of the Reichstag, as
Hitler
was coming into power. After being beaten by a drunken Nazi officer, he returned to New York.
He was subsequently commissioned to write a book with an anti-Nazi theme, published as
Those Who Perish
- the first book of it's kind to be produced in the United States.
Arrested at a Communist picket line and sent to jail along with
Nathanael West
around Christmas in 1934.
In 1936, he renounces his Communist affiliations and writings, stating that Communism was "necrophilic".
Meets and befriends the poet
Charles Olson,
intiating one of the more difficult and important American literary friendships.
In 1937, his second marriage failing, he frequents the An American Place Gallery of
Alfred Stieglitz,
who introduced Dahlberg the writings of
Randolph Bourne.
Publishes the sublime and influential
Do These Bones Live? in 1941.
In 1948, he teaches briefly at the experimental
Black Mountain College.
Moves to the Danish island of Bornholm in 1955, works on
The Flea of Sodom.
Moves to Mallorca, works on Because I Was Flesh.
The Sorrows of Priapus
is published in 1957, becoming his most successful book thus far. Some deleted portions of were published by Irving Rosenthal in the Chicago literary journal
Big Table,
along with pieces by
Burroughs,
Jack Kerouac
and
Gregory Corso.
The issue was seized by the Post Office as offensive, thereby securing a certain fame for its included authors.
Rosenthal introduces Dahlberg to
Allen Ginsberg.
The two never form a close relationship but recognize certain affinities of theme in each other's work.
We had this funny conversation upstairs, in the balcony [of Schrafft's].... I was really curious what his opinion of Kaddish was; I didn't really think he'd care for it too much, but I did think he'd like its sincerity. He did have one very specific criticism of it, which was that the mention of my mother's asshole was "inappropriate" or "obscene" and aesthetically unnecessary....
- From an interview with Ginsberg quoted in The Wages of Expectation by Charles Defanti
The autobiographical Because I Was Flesh is published in 1964 to overwhelming critical acclaim.
Died on
28 February 1977
in Santa Barbara, California.
Everyone completes his life when he quenches his appetite. After that, he resumes his life as an ambulatory cadaver.
- Dahlberg from The Wages of Expectation
The above biographical information is entirely indebted to the fine study, The Wages of Expectation: A Biography of Edward Dahlberg by Charles DeFanti.
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