|
LOUIS ADAMIC IN Guide to
Noted Slovene-American Immigrant Author Louis Adamic and his Works Appealing
To Your Hearts＆ Minds Beyond Frontier, Nationality,
Ideology, Race, Religion, Time and Space ... In this 'Borderless Era' Of New
Century, A Compulsive Observer and writer, A Fighter, A Reformer, 'A Poet', A
Cosmopolitan, TOP → Louis Adamic in Japan |
|
E-BOOKS OF LOUIS ADAMIC |
|
NEW ルイス・アダミック雑録 ①－ Louis Adamic on Twitter ルイス・アダミック雑録 ②－ Louis Adamic on Twitter ルイス・アダミック雑録③－ Louis Adamic on Twitter ルイス・アダミック雑録④－ Louis Adamic on Twitter ルイス・アダミック雑録⑤－ Louis Adamic on Twitter |
●「電子書籍ebook (ebook_global) on Twitter」
* * *
|
… One could take note of the rise of
the Black and other minority movements and recall Adamic's belief in a
balance between the pride and individual racial group should have in its
unique diversity and its unity and usefulness as a group within a whole
society …. It is
not so much that either America or Adamic has cycled as it is that beneath
the widely varying surface detail of Adamic's prose is the continuing study
of the human condition. His canon, therefore, provides sufficient provocation
Dr. Henry A. Christian |
“Adamic not only sees deeply into
current American social phenomena,
but he studies the lives of individual living in American with equal clarity,”
“…he did more to call attention to ethnic values
and dramatize what he called‘the secondary consequences’
of immigration than any other American of his time.”
Carry McWilliams*
(Author
of "Louis Adamic and Shadow-America" 1935)
|
The period from 1948 to 1951 is remembered by the people who lives
through it for the constant fear of another atomic bomb, the war in Korea and
the birth of McCarthyism ...The background to all these events was the Cold
War that had taken a number of
violent turns and which, in a few years, had brought humanity to the
brink of a Third World War. . . . With all the energy possessed by a human
being, Louis Adamic fought
against the horrifying consequences of these events. …His strong disagreement
with the US domestic and foreign policy of the time is reflected in his
journal T & T:
Trends & Tides,
which in 1948 was, as he wrote, “spearheading
an American resistance movement” It is also reflected in
his articles published in other periodicals, in his unpublished manuscript, Game of Chess in an Earthquake, and his political
activity connected with the American Progressive party. Dr.
Janja Zitnik |
|
My purpose... is
to begin exploring our American cultural past... imaginatively and
creatively, with eyes to the future, ... to sink our roots into our common
American subsoil, rich, sun-warmed and well watered, from which we still may
grow and flower. Louis Adamic (1940) |
|
|
without the border - No
ethnic conflictt- No more war "EU" and Louis
Adamic On "Women Scholars
Active in Wartime", New York Times. "Literature, Culture and Ethnicity-Studies on Medieval, Renaissance and Modern Literatures" by Henry. A. Christian 1993 |
|
A Free … I am for
a free Jewish homeland in Palestine which is not anything exclusive and separate
but a part of a world organized upon the basis of an intense consciousness of
all people's interdependence and also for a free Slovenia, a free Croatia,
and a free Serbia in a free Balkan or southeast-European confederation in a
free United Europe, which is part of a free World State. -The
New |
[Adamic could never enter the
In the The Eagle and the Roots(1952)
Adamic writes,
I think there is a fatality in it-
I
seldom go to a place I set out for.
- LAURENCE STERNE A Sentimental Journey
"IF"
|
The future, ours and the world's, Melting Pot is a poor phrase and concept. It means everybody
is to be turned into something else with heart. The future, ours and
the world's, is in unity within diversity. Our various
backgrounds are important and valuable, but, in the long run, not in
themselves, not as something perfect and final. They are important and
valuable only as material for our future American culture. As I say, we
have a chance to create a universal, a pan-human culture, more
satisfying than anything humanity has as yet devised or experienced. The
American Dream is a lovely thing, but to keep it alive, to keep it from
turning onto a Nightmare, every once in while we've got to wake up. From Many Land,1940 p.301 - L Adamic |
◆
The are two ways of looking at our
history. One is this: that the
with a white Protestant Anglo-Saxson civilization struggling to preserve itself
against
infiltration and adulteration by other civilizations brought here by Negroes
and hordes of "foreigners."
The second is this: that the pattern of the
The Pattern of
woven of threads from many corners of the world.
Diversity itself is the pattern, is the stuff and color of the fabric.
--A Nation of Nations 1945 p6
◆
Today, "STRUGGLE" by L Adamic is most
Important book
concerning
Protection of Human Rights in the world.
|
Adamic's
last work By Dr.JANJA ZITNIK The Eagle and the Roots The Eagle and the Roots was published in the
Translation
〔Contents〕 BOOK
TWO To
sum up the contrastive comments: Adamic's last work invited contradictory
reactions. In the U.S.A. the book was to a great extent rejected
because of what were considered its unjustified criticism of domestic policy
and its subjective, idealized presentation of conditions in Yugoslavia; in
Yugoslavia, on the hand, it was ignored on account of its lack of criticism
of U.S.A. conditions and unacceptable criticisms of Yugoslav political life.
Today, more than four decades after the initial publication of The
Eagle and the Roots, the judgments of some 'Game of Chess in an Earthquake' Core of The Eagle and the Roots -the unpublished and disappeared
chapter- “The Education of Michael Novak” The
beginnings of Adamic’s idea about the book and the connotations of its title
are presented in the opening of the draft: Ten
years ago I began to plan a book tentatively entitled “The Education of
Michael Novak” for publication in 1950 or sooner after. I have been preparing
for it intermittently since, and for perhaps a year I have left, off and on,
that I am nearly ready. The first half of the book I could begin to write
tomorrow: it will deal only or mainly with the American scene from the
mid-1890’s to the mid-1930s. I have a large carton bulging with folders of
notes for these early sections, mostly on matters not touched on, or barely
touched on, in my books up to the present. For the last 250 or 300 pages,
however, which will cover the last ten or fifteen years when the The book’s length
will be about 200,000 words. The tentative (or
working) title – to be given up if a better one springs out of the narrative
during the writing – was suggested by Henry Adam’s best-known work. It is my
purpose to do for the last half-century level, with a different point of view
and different emphases and foci, and in a style and mood that I hope will
contribute toward making my book more readable than I found much of “The
Education of Henry Adams”… Most of the
few people who are familiar with his plans in 1948, believe it would have
been better for Adamic and certainly safer, if he had written “The Education
of Michael Novak” instead The Eagle and the Roots, which is
generally believed to have been the cause of his death. “The Education” would certainly be an
interesting novel, containing many dramatic but credible life stories. As he
had proved in some of his other works, Adamic was a master of vivid and
coherent life own thinking and emotions, interwoven within his fictional
characters’ idea, feelings and actions. Had Adamic written this book as he
conceived it, it would probably retain a lasting and reach a wider reading
public than The Eagle and the Roots did. - J ZITNIK Hi, Dr.JANJA ZITNIK Thank you for
sending me your great books and papers! ZNASTVENORAZISKOVALNI CENTER SAZU, PERO IN
POLITIKA ZADNJA LOUISA ADAMICA SLOVENSKA MATICA V Ljibljani 1993, POGOVORI O
LOUISU ADAMICU PRESERNOVA DRUZBA Ljibljani 1995, DVE DOMOVINI Razprave o
izseljenstvu Dr.Janja
Zitnik |
|
The
Native's Return again - after sixteen years （1949） Coffee
Break What is the important thing AT THE
PRAGUE AIRPORT, the official in charge of the Belgrade-bound Yugoslav plane
introduced me to the pilot, who shook my hand with great energy. "Tonight I
leave for The Eagle and the
Roots - L Adamic *This is A Coffee Break, but his philosophy, too. |
|
◇ ◆ ◇ Dear Tine, Thank you for It's very
interesting and important- the Croatian artist Maksimilian Vanka*, his
unti-war Collage World WarⅡ, Chandler
(Douglas Chandler)*, and L Adamic. And also thank you for the recopied
portrait of Louis Adamic Vanka draw at the island of Korcula (Yugoslavia) in
1933, which was found in the Adamic family recently. ＊Maxo
Vanka's Collage "World WarⅡ",17"6"by
11"6''',New York, 1939 The collage World
WarⅡ by Vanka
illustrates the successful voyage of the liner Ile de France from Le Havre to
New York in the first days of the war and her avoidance of the same fate as
liners HMS Lusitania and HMS Athenia, sunk by German U-boats in the first
days of the WW I and WWⅡ respectively. Numerous symbols on the collage recall
the names of relevant towns and personalities, among them L.Adamic. "Important as
the collage may be for those interested in Vanka and Adamic, the work of art
has significance beyond either man or the cause of its inception. Much as
Picasso's Guernica is always a commissioned depiction of the 1937
bombing of a Spanish town, the painting nevertheless is forever perceived in
light of the subsequent defeat of the Spanish Republicans and the coming of
World WarⅡ. So too does the final importance of Vanka's
collage depend on later events." *
Maksimilian (Maxo) Vanka (1889-1963) ◇ ◆ ◇ PISMA LOUIS ADAMIC
NECAKU TINETU By Tine Kurent Dve domovini / Two
Homelands-9-1998,27-53 My Correspondence
with Louis Adamic started after the Second World War. It contains more than
two dozen of long letters by Louis, not to count some duplicates, books and
magazines, postcards, paper clips, greetings, and some handwritten slips of
paper, added to other mail. His early letters were in Slovenian, but latter
he switched to English. That was his way to teach me, since he expected that
my replies will be English too. He tried to broaden my mind by making me
interested in the World Government, Henry Wallace's politics and other
problems of the time.
|
|
SPECTRUM-Immigration
History Research Center-University of Minnesota ("Louis Adamic His
Life, Work, and Legacy") Fall 1982 ■The IHRC Guide to Collections The LEGACY Louis Adamic's
books were standard fare for literate Americans and Yugoslavs for several
decades and then abruptly, in the United States at least, read little after
his death. This neglect in the United States was partly caused by the
McCarthyism of the early 1950s. Adamic was dismissed as a lightweight
popularizer, if not a "Red" propagandist. In recent years, however,
interest in the man and his work has been quietly growing in both the United
States and Yugoslavia. Adamic is
of interest today for many reasons. Students of history, literature, and
public policy on both sides of the Atlantic are finding Adamic an important
figure. Much current U.S. historical research into the 1930s and 1940s
investigates the influence of ethnicity on politics and culture. More often
than not, Adamic is found at the junctures of this influence. He has been
rediscovered as a pioneer writer and patron of American ethnic literature;
meanwhile, in Yugoslavia his reputation continues to grow as a major force in
modern Slovenian letters. His role as mediator between "old-stock"
and ethnic cultures in the United States as well as between the United States
and Yugoslavia, is intriguing. Adamic's efforts as an ethnic leader and
intellectual to influence both American and Yugoslav public policy also are
arresting. In the
United States, Adamic has received attention mostly as an early prophet of
the pluralistic America celebrated in the current ethnic revival. The ethnic
movement of our time has a short memory. The editors of The Harvard Encyclopedia
of American Ethnic Group (1981), for example, acknowledged that they were
well along with their work before discovering that Adamic had proposed a
similar project in My America(1938). In Yugoslavia, Adamic holds similar contemporary significance. There he is honored as an early friends and read as an outsides witness to the creation of the New Yugoslavia, which is now moving into a post-Tito era. A measure of his reputation in his homeland is the recent publication of a large collection of his correspondence, the republication of The Eagle and the Roots, and the projected reprinting of most of his woks with new scholarly introductions. |
|
INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE The St.Paul symposium, The
St.Paul symposium on Louis Adamic drew approximately 150 participants from
Yugoslavia, Canada, and the United States. And the Ethnic Dance Theatre of
St. Paul performed a series of South Slavic dances and songs at a dinner
during the Minnesota conference. France
Adamic and Tine Kurent, Univerza Edvarda Kardelja v Ljublijana, "The
Adamic Family"* / William C. Beyer, University of Minesota, "Louis
Adamic and Common Ground, 1940-1949* / John A. Blatnik, former U. S.
Congressman, Arlington, Virginia, " Louis Adamic: A Personal
Reminiscence" / Henry A. Christian, Newark College of Rutgers
University, Newark, NewJersey, "Louis Adamic: Random Portraits and
Snapshots" / Ivan cizmic, Matica Iseljenika Hrvatske, Zagreb, "The
Native's return: Its Impact" / Danica Dolenc, UniverZa Edvarda
Kardelja v Ljubljana, " Louis Adamic and Frank Mlakar: Two Slovene
American Writers" / Philip Gleason, Notre Dame University, South Bend,
Indiana, "Minorities' in Europe and America" / Robert F. Harney,
University of Tronto, Ontario, "E Pluribus Unum: Louis Adamic and the
Meaning of Ethnic History" / Matjaz Klemencic, Univerza Edvarda Kardelja
v Ljubljana, " Louis Adamic and World WarⅡ* / Lorraine Lees,
Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia, " Louis Adamic and American
Foreign policymakers" / Fred H. Matthews, York University, Toronto,
Ontario, " Louis Adamic in the Development of American Pluralist
thought" / John L. Modic, Indiana University-Purdue University at Fort
Wayne, " Laughing in the Jungle: The
Writer as Hero" / Nicholas V Montalto, International Institute of Jersey
City, New Jersey, "Adamic and Multicultultual Education, 1939-1941"
/ Bogdan C Novak, University of Toledo, Ohio, "Adamic and Yugoslavia
during World WarⅡ：The Slovene Catholic Response" / Jerneja Petric,
Univerza Edvarda Kardelja v Ljubljana, "Louis Adamic and His Views
Concerning Literature"* / Rose Mary Prosen, Cuyahoga Community College,
Cleveland, Ohio, "Louis Adamic: Romantic Sentinel"* / Janez
Stanonik, Univerza Edvarda Kardelja v Ljubljiana, "Historical Survey of
Reseach on Adamic"* / Rudolph Susel, editor of Ameriska domovina,
Cleveland, Ohio, "The Slovenian Immigration to America"* /
Vladislav A. Tomovic, Brock University, St Catharines, Ontario, "Adamic
under Attack"* / Rudolph J Vecoli, University of Minnesota, "Dynamite:
Adamic and Working-class America"* / Joza Vilfan, former Yugoslav
ambassador and Post-war Yugoslavia: A Personal Reminiscence"* / Richard
Weiss, University of California, Los Angeles, "Louis Adamic and Cultural
Democracy" *read
at both symposia The Ljubljana Symposium, Sept 16-18, 1981 The
official U.S. delegation that traveled to Ljubljana included Henry A.
Christian, John L. Modic, Rose Mary Prosen, Rudolph J. Vecoli(director of
IHRC),and William C. Beyer. Besides the five members of the U.S. delegation
(Ivan Dolenc, Slovene Canadian author and teacher, Florence
Unetich,corresponding secretary, Progressive Slovene Women of America, Joze
Vilfan, former Yugoslav U.N. ambassador and others) to Ljubljana, 35 other
scholars from Canada, Germany, France, Italy, and many places in Yugoslavia
presented papers there. Gudrun
Birnbaum, Universite de Sciences Humaines de Strasbourg, "Louis Adamic'
s View of America: From the Jungle to the Nation of Nations" /
Henry A. Christion, Newark College of Rutgers University, Newark, New Jersey,
"Adamic's Struggle: The International History of a 'Radical'
Pamphlet" / Milan Culjak, Novi Sad, "The Native's Return:
The Beginning of Louis Adamic's Commitment to the New Yugoslavia" / Ivan
Dolenc, Toronto, "Reactions to 'The Bohunks' by Louis Adamic" /
Branko Djukic, Beograd, " Louis Adamic in Contemporary Yugoslav and
Foreign Encyclopaedias" / Drago Druskovic, Ljubljana, "Lovro
Kuhar-Prezihov Voranc and Louis Adamic" / Omer Hadziselimovic,
Univerzitet u Sarajevu, "The Response to the Work of Louis Adamic in the
Criticism in Serbo-Croatian between the Two World Wars" / Dirk Hoerder,
Universitat Bremen, "Industrialization, Americanization and the
Immigrant: Whose Dynamite?" / Mirko Jurak, Universa Edvarda Kardelja v
Ljubljana, "The Relationship between Fictional and Non-Fictional
Elements in Adamic's Autobiographical Novels" / Vladimir Klemencic and
Rado Genorio, Univerza Edvarda Kardelja v Ljubljana "Adamic in the
Process of Mass Emigration from the Slovene Ethnic Territory" / Mile
Klopcic, Ljubljana, "The First Visit of Louis Adamic to His Home
Country" / Boris Kuhar, Slovenski etnografski muzej, Ljubljana,
"The Popular Culture in Adamic's Birthplace" / Andrej Kurent, Drama
SNG, Ljubljana, "Louis Adamic's Help to the Slovene Theatre" / Tine
Kurent, Univerza Edvarda Kardelja v Ljubljana, " Louis Adamic's Ties
with His Family between His Emigration and His First Visit Home" / Janko
Lavrin, Nottingham University, " My Correspondendence with Louis
Adamic" / Anna Maria Martellone, Universita degli Studi di Firenze,
"Immigrant Wokers and Social Struggle in America in the Writings of
Louis Adamic" / John L. Modic, Indiana University-Purdue University at
Fort Wayne, "Louis Adamic and the Story of Common Ground" /
Sloban Nesovic, Beograd, "Louis Adamic's Contribution to the Liberation
of Yugoslavia, 1941-1945" / Sait Orahovac, Sarajevo, "The Origins
of Adamic's The Native's Return" / Boris Paternu, Univerza
Edvarda Kardelja v Ljubljana, "The Nascence of Adamic's Values regarding
America and Yugoslavia" / Denis Poniz, Ljubljana, "Nationalism in
Adamic' Works about Slovenes and Yugoslavia" / Mojca Ravnik, Univerza
Edvarda Kardelija v Ljbljana, "Emigration from Grosuplje before World
WarⅠ" /
Marija Stanonik, SAZU, Ljubljana, "Louis Adamic and Yugoslav Literary
Folklore" / Dragi Stefanija, "Macedonia in the Works of Stoyan
Christowe and Louis Adamic" / Malcolm Sylvers, Universita degli Studi di
Trieste, "The America of Louis Adamic: Democratic Ideals, Immigration
and the Working Class Movement" / Tihomir Telisman, Zavod za migracije i
narodnosti, Zagreb, "The Congress of American Croats and Louis
Adamic" / Janez Tomsic, Split, "Louis Adamic and the Slovene
Littloral" / Ivo Vidan, Sveuciliste u Zagrebu, "An Adventure in
Understanding: Louis Adamic's America" / Franc Zadravec, Univerza
Edvarda Kardelja v Ljubljana, "Oton Zupancic and Louis Adamic" |
|
* * * Stella
and I sat on a stone under a low-hanging bough of a great hemlock at the clearing's
edge and watched the lake below slip into shadow. Then we heard the sound of
hurrying hob-nailed boots on the steep, gravelly Triglav trail ... and a
moment later a boy and a girl bounded into the refulgent shimmer and stopped
short at the convergence of trails, where the knoll was highest and the view
best. Facing
the lake and the sun, which put a rutilant sheen on their skin, they stood on
that spot for possibly ten seconds without moving or saying a word. Then they
abruptly faced each other and smiled strangely as though with a private
understanding. And thus they remained for another few seconds. They were
watching the setting sun's trembling light on each other's faces. Then the
instant before shadow engulfed the knoll with the rest of the mountainside,
the girl rose quickly, eagerly on her toes and the boy bent down a little and
pressed his cheek briefly against hers. I have
never witnessed a more appealing scene or one more filled with drama. For a
moment, rising on the tiniest ripple in the time-stream, the boy and the girl
were the core of all meaning, the sudden and significant center of everything
that lived and mattered. *Louis Adamic, 'Love in Slovenia' in MY NATIVE LAND, New York and London:Harper&Brothers,1943,pp.3-4 |
|
Laughing in the
Jungle By Louis Adamic As A boy
of nine, and even younger, in my native village of Blato, in Carniola - then
a Slovenian duchy of Austria and later a part of Yugoslavia - I experienced a
thrill ever time one of the men of the little community returned from
America. My notion
of the United States then, … was that it was a grand, amazing, somewhat
fantastic place-the Golden Country-a sort of Paradise-the Land of Promise in
more ways than one-huge beyond conception, thousands of miles across the
ocean, untellably exciting, explosive, quite incomparable to the tiny, quiet,
lovely Carniola ; a place full of movement and turmoil, wherein things that
were unimaginable and impossible in Blato happened daily as a matter of
course. One day-I
was then a little over ten-I said to Mother:
All of
us, parents and children, slept in the izba-the large room in a
Slovenian peasant house-and that night, soon after we all went to bed, Mother
called me by name in a low voice, adding, "Are you asleep?" "Do
Not Got to America!" …Down with
Austria! Down with America! Austria drove the good Slovenian peasants to
America, and America ruined them. True, a deal of money came from the United
States, but …was it worth the price? America broke and mangled the
emigrants' bodies, defiled their souls, deprived them of their simple
spiritual and aethetic sensibilities, corrupted their charming native
dialects and manners, and generally alienated them from the homeland. The
peasants (said the agitators) were lured to America by her dollars and
so-called opportunities because at home the Austrian oligarchy denied them
the soil which was their birthright, and on which they might have made decent
livings. ... A widely
read book in Carniola at that time, sponsored by the Yugoslav Movement, was Obljubljena
dezhela (The Land of Promise), an anonymous novel dealing with the
unhappy voyage of a small party of honest, simple Slovenian peasants to the
falsely called Land of Promise, and their brief and heartrending sojourn
within its borders, where, swindled by sharpers out of all they possessed,
most of them perished from hunger, thirst, and exposure in a desert. The
dreadful tale ended with these words: "Nev v Ameriko!" ("Do
not go to America!)…. --------------- In the
morning everything was quiet again. ------- Laughing in the Jungle by L Adamic |
Immigrants to their Promised Land!
|
I go to
America. The Niagara
sailed from Le Havre, France. She was an old ship, rather small, carring mostly
immigrants. Most of the steerage passengers were Poles, Slovaks, Czechs,
Croatians, Slovenians, and Bosnians, with a sprinkling of Jews, Greeks,
Turks, Germans, and Austrian Italians; young men and middle-aged men, women
and children of all ages, some of them wearing colorful native costumes--all
of them headed for the Land of Promise….. -
- - - The day
before we reached New York Harbor, Molek said to me in English: "You'll
be all right in America, even if it is a jungle," which I understood
with but slight help from him. He added in Slovenian: "You are going to
America for excitement and adventure. Don't fear; you will not be
disappointed; you will find plenty of both." The
morning of December 30,1913, in New York, was clear and cold. There was snow
on shore. ------ Laughing by L Adamic |
＊
|
ISLAND OF HOPE, The day I
spent on Ellis Island was an eternity. Rumors were current among immigrants
of several nationalities that some of us would be refused admittance into the
United States and sent back to Europe. For several hors I was in a cold sweat
on this account …. I was
asked the usual questions. When and where was I born? My nationality?
Religion? Was I a legitimate child? What were the names of my parents? Was I
a prostitute? (I assume that male and female immigrants were subjected to the
same questionnaire.) Was I an ex-convict? A criminal? Why had I come to the
United States? I was
weak in the knees and just managed to walk out of the room, then downstairs
and onto the ferryboat. … I laughed, perhaps a bid hysterically, as
the little Ellis Island ferryboat bounded over the rough, white-capped waters
of the bay toward the Battery. … I was in New York--in America. |
＊
|
"…Once upon a time immigrants were called 'dung' in America ; that was a good name for them. They were the fertilizer feeding the roots of America's present and future greatness. They are still 'dung.' The roots of America's greatness still feed on them…. Life in America is a scramble. More people are swept under than rise to riches," |
|
＊ ＊ A light rain had fallen during the night and the streets were frozen. Turning a corner somewhere in the Twenties near Third Avenue, I came to a slight incline where a teamster for all he was worth in an attempt to make them pull up the slippery grade. Sparks flew from under the hooves; straining themselves and unable to hold ground, the animals were falling to their knees, making scarcely any progress; and as the wagon shook over the cobbles, little pieces of coal dropped onto the streets. They were immediately picked up by two small girls clad, so far as I could see, in threadbare torn dresses that barely reached to their knees--and I was cold in my heavy army overcoat! They were immigrants' children, no doubt. Obviously, they were rivals, each belonging to a different family, for a piece of coal no sooner struck the street than they both rushed for it like two famished animals for a bit of food, frequently endangering their lives by crawing under the wagon. |
＊ ＊ ＊
My life in America has been largely an
adventure in understanding,
and these people--foreign-born and native American--
and their histories have been a vital factor in that adventure.
＊
I have never been hungry for more than two days since I am here.
The jungle has been and is vastly interesting. Too interesting.
Sometimes it is overwhelming in its complexity and melodrama.
As I say, lately I find difficult to laugh.
But I stay and intend to remain here.
L Adamic (Laughing 1932)
＊
In the last forty years we immigrants … have dug
no end of coal
and ore and made most of the steel in the United States….much
of our immigrants' energy is frozen in America's present-day
greatness; in the tall buildings of New York…in the
bridges and
railroads throughout America ….We have contributed
to America's
greatness not only with our brawn, but with our brains as well…
We have worked hard, millions of us, and our achievements
remain...
L Adamic (The Native's Return 1934)
＊
WHO BUILT AMERICA?
Profiteers,
Professional Patriots or "Vile Immigrants?"
L Adamic (COMMON SENSE April,1934)
*
America, "a Land Nobody Knew…."
"I want America
eventually to become a work of art."
L Adamic (My America 1938)
On the evening of June 11,1991, as one
of the presentations of
The
New York International Festival of the Arts, a performance on Ellis Island
titled
"Immigrant Voices" relived via live readings the immigrant experience
from
European departure to passage through Ellis Island to the beginnings
of
new life in America. In the course of actors' presenting words
from
nearly fifty immigrants, at three different times the passage
being
spoken was from Laughing In the Jungle. (H.A. Christian)
* * * * *
Adamic never
lost his pride
as an immigrant through his life.
Adamic at age about 15
|
After Nineteen Years Early IN
THE SPRING OF 1932, WHEN I RECEIVED A Guggenheim Fellowship requiring me to
go to Europe for a year, I was thirty-three and had been in the United States
nineteen years. A fourteen-a son of peasants, with a touch of formal
"city education"-I had emigrated to the United States from
Carniola, then a tiny Slovene province of Austria, now an even tinier part of
a banovina in the new Yugoslav state. Three
weeks later, in mid-Atlantic, I said to Stella, "I'm a bit scared of
this home." Our ship
stopped for a few hours each at Lisbon, Gibraltar, Cannes, Naples, and
Palermo. Save in Cannes, everywhere, on getting ashore, we were mobbed by
ragged youngsters, crying, "Gimme! Gimme!" and making signs that
they were famished and wanted to eat. In the streets (especially in Lisbon)
women with children in their arms approached us and made signs that their
babies were hungry. Most of these, no doubt, were professionals, dressed and
trained for begging; but even so it was depressing. --- --- --- --- --- * * * The short
train ride from Trieste to Lublyana was a delightful experience, especially
after we crossed the Italian border, when I was in my old country at last. Tired as I
was, I didn't fall asleep till after daylight. A tenseness, not unpleasant,
from which I could not relax, held my body, and my mind throbbed with new
impressions, newly stirred memories, thoughts of tomorrow….My
mother --how did she look? This, suddenly, was very important. When I had
left, she was still on the sunny side of middle life, "rather
tall," as I described her in my autobiographical narrative Laughing
in the Jungle, "with a full bust and large hips; long arms and big,
capable hands; a broad, sun-browned, wind-creased Slavic face; large,
wide-spaced hazel eyes, mild and luminous with simple mirth; and wavy auburn
hair which stuck in little gold-bleached wisps from under her colored
kerchief, tied below her chin." That was how I remembered her. Now she
was in her late fifties; she had borne thirteen children, raised ten, and
worked hard without pause all her life…. Our house? It was over six hundred
years old, but with the possible exception of a new roof it probably was
unchanged since I last saw it…. At the
little country railroad station, which is in the village next to ours and
which seemed ten times smaller than I recalled it, stood a crowd of
people-elderly peasants, women, young men, girls, children, all in their Sunday
best, some of the men in coat-sleeves, some of the girls in costumes of the
region. The sight
of my mother, who waited for me (as I recalled in that instant) on the same
spot in the courtyard of our home where I had said good-by to her in 1913,
gave me a sharp sting. She had aged and her body had shrunk; her hair was
gray and thin, her eyes and cheeks were sunken, but her hug told me she was
still hale and strong. .......... It was a
bright, warm Sunday afternoon, with a light mountain breeze blowing through
the valley. The literati mixed with the villagers, praised the village,
exclaimed over the beauty of the fields and the meadows, and raved about the
prodigal's sisters and brothers. - - - - - |
Biographical Note
You can read it almost completely in Japanese by Shozo
Tahara,
I'll
translate it here later to be more complete one.
-- BOOK INFORMATION --
Adamic
produced twenty novels and other books,
and more than 500 articles in English, Slovenian,
Selvo-Cloatian, and Russian for only 25 years.
*Japanese EBOOK
|
Yerney's
Justice Ivan Cankar, Yerney's Justice, translated by Adamic This
book is the first edition of Slovenian writer, Ivan Canker's Hlapec
Jerney* in English. Canker is Louis
Adamic, August 23,1926 Dear
Friend: Sincerely, *"Ten
Letter to Louis Adamic" by Henry A. Christian. *
Ivan Cankar "My chief literary influence has been Ivan Cankar, a Slovenian novelist, one of whose stories (Yerney's Justice)"Adamic says in Twentieth CentryAuthours,1956. |
|
Superman -The
American Mercury, Nov 1927 C/o Guaranty Trust co. Dear
Mr. Adamic / April 2nd.1929 I've
been meaning to offer my congratulations for months on Superman.
I think it's one of the best American short stories in some years---very
vivid and fascinating. Seeing you in the Mercury again this month
reminded me of it. Most Appreciatively Yrs -H.
Christian,“Fitzgerald and‘Superman’:An
Unpublished Letter to Louis Adamic,”Fitzgerald
News letter, No.31（Fall,1965）
|
|
Robinson
Jeffers : A Portrait
(Seattle:
university of Washington Book store Seattle, 1929,Reprinted 1969 32pgs) I think Adamic's
short book is unexcelled as a description of the man and the work he did up
the late twenties. Concise and unpretentious, it is perceptive and written
with an eye for significant details. Rereading the book, I am reminded of
qualities my father had that I took for granted and did not think of as
distinctive in those days. R. J. : Robinson Jeffers : A Portrait. Covelo,
California: The Yolla Bolly Press,1983. Foreword by Garth Jeffers (one of
Jeffers' twin sons which offers significant passages concerning Adamic's book
about the poet). (JEFFERS).
ADAMIC, LOUIS. A PORTRAIT... With Foreword by Garth Sherwood Jeffers. Covelo:
Yolla Bolly Press, [1983]. 8vo, xiv, (2), 32pp. Cloth, illus, a fine uncut
copy. ¶ 250 copies
printed. USD 100.00 [Appr.: EURO 77.75 | ￡UK 53.5 | JP\ 10800]-- Dailey Rare Books. Book
number: 317.
Foreword
by Garth Sherwood Jeffers. Illus. from photographs. 9?x6, gray cloth, paper
spine & cover labels, glassine. No. 194 of 265 copies printed by the
Yolla Bolly Press. ---------------------------------------- Critics-"local people," as he calls them-eager to do justice to Jeffers' significance as a poet, try to establish a kinship between his work and Whitman's. Their eagerness is justified, but wild. Whitman's and Jeffers' statures as poets may stand comparisons, but aside from their sizes they are as unlike as day and night. Indeed, the emergence of Jeffers, and that he is hailed as a major poet and prophet, is a severe commentary upon Whitman's dream of America.(pp34-5) -L Adamic |
|
Dynamite :
The Story of Class Violence in
(New
York: Viking, 1931; London: Cape, 1931; revised edition, New York: Viking,
1934 495pgs) Dynamite: The Story of Class Violence in
America Paperback:
Rebel P. ,London December, 1984
The fascinating & largely forgotten history of class struggle in America. It is the story of the brutal exploitation, the massacres &judicial murders directed against workers. It is also the story of how they responded: at first with peaceful strikes but later with dynamite, sabotage & riots. Everyone's here: anarchists, commies, Wobblies & others. An extremely inspirational & informative read. (1931-84) D16 -- Rebel -- 224p. 12.00 leftbankbooks.com/ The classic - and criminally, now almost
forgotten - history of class struggle during America's industrial beginnings.
A story of brutal exploitation, massacres, and judicial murder - and how the
largely European immigrant workforce fought back. The Molly Maguires,
propaganda by the deed, Haymarket, Homestead, the Wobblies, Mooney-Billings,
Sacco & Vanzetti, and much, much more. "DYNAMITE! Of all the good
stuff, that is the stuff! Stuff several pounds of this sublime stuff into an
inch pipe...plug up both ends, insert a cap with a fuse attatched, place this
in the immediate vicinity of a lot of rich loafers who live by the sweat of
other people's brows, and light the fuse. A most cheerful and gratifying
result will follow. In giving dynamite to the downtrodden millions of the
globe science has done its best work..." (from 'Alarm', Translation: Dinamit: povijest klasnog nasilja u Americi. Translated by
Dr.Brako Kojic. Zagreb: "Binoza," 1933 Dinamit, by bogdan Gradisnik,
Ljubljana,Borec,1983(with introductions by Ivan Bratko and Janes Stanonik,
and a biography and bibliography of Louis Adamic by Jemeja Petric). 〔Contents〕 Part
Two "DYNAMITE…THAT'S THE STUFF!" Part
Three THE WAR BEGINS IN EARNEST Part
Four THE MCNAMARA AFFAIR" Part
Five MASSACRES, FRAME-UPS, AND JUDICIAL MURDERS Part
Five RCENT TENDENCIES IN THE CLASS WAR (1892-1934) Postscripts *episode
|
|
Laughing in the Jungle :
The Autobiography of an Immigrant in America (New
York & London :Harper,1932 335pgs) Translation: Smijeh u dzungli: autobiografija jednog americkog by Dr.Branko
Kojic. Zagreb: "Bnoza," 1933 Vrnitev v rodni krai, by mira Mihelic,
Ljubljana: Cankarjeva zalozba,1962 (with the author's
biography by Mira Mihelic). Un Rire Dans La Jungle: L'autographie d'un immigrant en Amerique by Alice
P. Pouilloux French Jangulu no naka no warai by Shozo Tahara
Japanese 〔Contents〕 PartⅠ: WHY I
CAME TO AMERICA PartⅡ:
GREEHORNS PartⅢ: THE
CRUDADE PartⅣ: THE
LAND OF LAUGHS PartⅤ: SOME
PEOPLE IN CALIFORNIA Postscript To America from a village in the province of Carniola, now a part of Yugoslavia, in 1913 came Louis Adamic, a boy of 14...His new book, first backgrounding his story with several chapters depicting his boyhood in his village home, narrates his life in this country for the almost two decades he has been living here. But it is hardly an autobiography of the conventional sort, for, although it outlines his movements and deals briefly with the many and highly varied jobs he has undertaken, his theme is less himself and his life than it is the country in which he has been living, which, for him, is the 'jungle' of his title. The United States, he says, 'is more a jungle than a civilization--a land of deep economic, social, spiritual and intellectual chaos and distress, in which by far the most precious possession a sensitive and intelligent person can have is an active sense of humor.' -N Y Times |
|
Mr.Adamic
has an abiding sense of human dignity, and to my mind he touches greatness as
a story-teller ... he is no mere autobiographer. It is through other men's
struggles, through their conflict of values, that we catch, fleetingly yet
clearly, his own adventure. This seemingly unconscious technique of mirrored
self-portraiture is done so almost perfectly that it is the reader who limns
the portrait of the artist" -Benjamin Stolberg in the N.Y.Herald
Tribune It
is by all odds the best story about and by an immigrant that I have ever
read-and I read every word of it with unflagging interest. -R. L.
Dufflus. "Adamic
has a magnificient authenticity which makes his writing very wrong. He is a
literate Bohunk who is still a Bohunk; an American proletarian who tells a
story with the directness of a hobo beside a camp fire. He is singularly
creedless, without a touch of Mary Antin sentimentality or of class-conscious
propaganda. He tells what he has seen, in stories." -Lewis Gannet "A
vitally interesting book, an important book: the sanest account of an
immigrant's experience we have ever had; the only one I know in which the raw
matter of fact has been given a twice-truthful statement by a man who
exhibits, instinctively, the restraint of an artist." -Evelyn
Scott. "No
one can quarrel with Mr.Adamic's wise conclusions, with the high spirits of
his report on American life as an immigrant found it, with the appealing
simplicity and healthiness of his nature. He came here when he was fourteen
years old, and the simplicity and frankness of his nature, the realistic
honesty of his attitude toward men and events he seems to have brought with
him. What he learned in America was how to write. He writes well, with a
strong clarity and an easy eloquence. He emerges from this book a good
guy." -William Soskin in the N.Y. Evening Post. "I
was entirely charmed with the book. Not only is the material interesting and
a valuable contribution to one's knowledge of one's country, but I find the
story clear and convincing and with a very pleasing quality. There is
penetration in his point of view. I hope it has the success it
deserves." -Mary Austin. A grand
book…the music
and color of life on its lower levels. - James Stevens,
author of "Paul Bunyan" "To
the reviewers and critics of Laughing in the Jungle in
Yugoslavia" (1932) from Louis Adamic My book
is described on the title page an autobiography. It is an autobiography in a
limited but essential sense of the word. (It
is interesting that Adamic has already had his aim in writing it was to
give it a touch of universality - S Tahara.) *He
won a Guggenheim Fellowship for fiction sponsored by Sinclair Lewis, H. L.
Mencken, Mary Austin, the anthologist E. J. O'Brien and Carl Sandburg. *episode
|
|
The Native's Return: An American
Immigrant Visits Yugoslavia and Discovers His Old Country
Bestseller 1930's-40's The Book-of-the
Month Club selection The
Fiction Editor of the Record noted this abridgement of this book was
"the first non-fiction book of ever run as the Book of the Week." (New
York & London :Harper,1934; London: Gollancz, 1934 370pgs) Translation:
The Native's Return was banned in his homeland and
people were imprisoned for merely possessing the book. There
was a touch of spring in the air. The bird were flying back from the south.
Carniola looked very lovely.... Near the track, as our train sped
Trieste-ward, we saw a peasant plowing. He looked like my brother Stan, tall
husky, bent over the plow-handles. There was a great dignity in his task…. As we
passed him he reached the end of a furrow. He glanced up and waved…. I had
an enormous lump in my throat. --The Native's Return 〔Contents〕 PART
ONE: HOME AGAIN IN CARNIOLA PART
TWO: THE COAST AND MOUNTAIN REGIONS PART
THREE: BELGRADE AND CROATIA CONCLUTION ILLUSTRATIONS I began to
realize that during these nineteen years I, in America, had meant much more
to my people than they, remaining in the old country, had meant to me. In the
excitement of my life in America, I had lost nearly all feeling for them and
for the old country in general. In Zagreb, between
visits to villages, I met a number of interesting people who were more than
local or national figures. 'The
Native's Return' has a value and an interest beyond that offered by any
mere record of travel, however absorbing, for it carries upon it, as every
really vital book must, the record in the true sense, in that it reflects its
author' s state of mind, gives meaning to his experience, invests his book
with the qualities simply of what Louis Adamic saw and heard but of what
these things meant to him. *episode …Had I
remained in Slovenia and become a Slovenian writer, I could not possibly have
published a book that would have infuriated King Alexander, thrown the
Belgrade Foreign Office into panic, and generally had the effect of a blow at
tyranny…. My
America P135 * * * December
16 1933 -Last night The N.R. is the Book-of -the-Month selection
for February! In one month some fifty thousand copies will be distributed…. Stera
terribly happy.... I guess my financial worries are over-for a while, anyhow.
Suddenly I feel very calm. … December
19-Yesterday I received my check from the Book-of
-the-Month. More money than I had ever thought I would ever have….Today I
mailed out nine checks, paying all my debts! Lord! It feels wonderful!…. Following
The publication of The Native's Return, Lewis Gannet remarked to me on
several occasions that he had difficulty in believing any place could be
quite so nice as I described my native Carniola to be; and in the summer of
1935 he and his wife, Ruth, also a skeptic, took a trip there to "check
up" on me. When they returned to New York their criticism swung the
other way: I had understand the scenic loveliness of Carniola and the charm
of the people, the Slovenians, who inhabit it!…--My America
|
|
STRUGGLE LOUIS ADAMIC A
Story of Terror Under King Alexander's Dictatorship〔Yugoslavia〕; a
Pamphlet Slovenian
version by Edvard Kardelj, translated into English by Louis Adamic; Preface
by L Adamic, (Arthur
Whipple, Publisher 1169 North Virgil Avenue Los Angeles,California,1934) 〔Contents〕 Publication
& Translation: "White
Terror : A Case History." New Republic, 16 August , 1933
, "What
It Means to Be a Communist In Yugoslavia." New Masses, 9
( Sept. 1933 ), 38 ; Struggle : Translated from the Yugoslav by Louis
Adamic :With a Preface by the Translator. Los Angeles : Arthur
Whipple , 1934. Wood engravings by Elizabeth Whipple.
Contents:Acknowledgement", " Preface," " Struggle,"
"A Letter of Protest,". "Torture
in Belgrade : A first Hand Document Revealing What It Means to Be a Communist
or a National Revolutionist in Yugoslavia." In George Dimitroff
, Pierre Van Passen , and Louis Adamic , George Dimitroff , Pierre Van
Passen , Louis Adamic on the Bloody Fascist Terror in the Balkans.
Detroit : Macedonian People’ s League of America,［ca.1934］, pp . 5-15
; ( follows W. paginatin for New Masses printig above ) . Struggle : Translated from the Yugoslav by Louis
Adamic: With a Preface by the Translator. New York : Reprinted by
Tommorow, Publishers, 1935 . "Borba."
Borba , p.2 of the issues of April 21 , 23 , 25 , 28 , 30 , and May 2
, 5, 7, and 9, 1936; Portion
of chapter "he Communists." In My Native Land. New York and
London: Harper, 1943, Boj : prevedel iz
sloven? c ine in predgovor napisal Louis Adamic . Trans. Jo? e Stabej.
Introd. Ivan Brayko. Ljubljana : Dr? avna Zalo? ba Slovenije , 1969.
Photographs . Borba : Iz slovenac kog
preveo i predgovor napisao Louis Adamic . Trans. Milena Rakoc evic .
Introd. Ivan Bratko. Ljuljana : Dra? avna Zalo? ba Slovenije , 1969.
Photographs . Henry
A. Christian,"Adamic's Struggle: The International History of a
"Radical" Pamphlet", in Janez Stanonik.ed., Louis Adamic:
Simpozij: Symposium (Ljubjiana: Tiskala Univerzitetna tiskarna, 1981) (Introduction
in Japanese translation by Shozo Tahara - Adamic's Struggle: The International
History of a "Radical" Pamphlet-*New vertion,1993 -by Henry A.
Christian) Henry A. Christian says "prime example of revolutionary or
radical literature" ----------------------- Dear
Mr.Tahara, Thank you
for all your notes and cards lately. I am sorry I have not been able to
answer; I have been doing too much, and not all of it well at all. All your
news is good, and I am of course willing to help you in any way I can. Did I
send you a card at Chrismas from London and say that? I hope so. Best
wishes my friend, Henry Christian |
|
Lucas, king
of The Balucas (Los
Angeles: Arthur Whipple,1935.Limited to 350 copies. Wood Engravings by
Elizabeth Whipple
Publication
& Translation: 1
Phlipine Interlude (March,1930) Plain Talk THE
SHIP I TRAVELED ON WAS STOPPING A FEW hours in Manila. I radioed Weber, and
he met me at the dock. Preface Half a
century ago, Louis Adamic, an American writer of Slovenian origin, published
his story about King Lucas. After Adamic's demobilization at the end of the
First World War--he was an American soldier--he "wandered over the world
-- the whole of America, Mexico -- Hawaii, the Philippines, and the Far East … looking
for himself," -- as he later informed his sister Toncka back home in
Slovenia. It was at that time the Conradesque story about the black natives
and the white newcomers was written, but beneath the exotic aura of Pacific
Islands there can be felt ideas that could have been written by
"Tomlinson, McFee, W.H. Hudson, Cabell, Mencken." So they are
listed by Adamic himself as the favorite writers of his friend. In Weber, his
"alter ego", Adamic painted his own psychological and physical
portrait. The story
about King Lucas can be read on various levels and is still timely, because
the relations between the hungry South and the rich North are becoming more
strained every day. The insufficiency and futility of the charity offered by
the Developed Nations to the lagging Third World is more and more evident. Tine Kurent in Slovene translation Louis Adamic, "Lucas.
Lralj Balukov" (Ljubljana: Presernova druzba,1986), p.16. ----------------------------- …
Certainly the role of the United States in 1930 in the Philippines is
implicit in the story. … Yet what threatens Lucas as much as colonial neglect is
not the white man but the localized trials of age, ignorance, famine,
hypocrisy, politics, other Negrito tribes, and a bias perhaps initiated by
troops who are as black as he. …. In 1931, Adamic met the black
scholar Abram Lincoln Harris. Co-author with Sterling Spero of Black
Worker; The Negro and the Labor Movement, Harris later wrote The Negro
as Capitalist (1937) and taught economics at Howard University in
Washington, D. C. For the little book version of the Lucas story in 1935,
Adamic decided the dedication page should read 'To Abram Harris'(p.[3]). Henry A. Christian (Rutgers University) NOTE ON THE LITTLE GUGU FROG : AN AFTERWORD TO LOUIS ADAMIC'S LUCAS, KING OF THEBALUCAS |
|
Grandsons :
(New
York & London: Harper,1935; London: Gollancz, 1935) reprint.
The Labor Movement In Fiction And Non-Fiction An AMS REPRINT SERIES
1982,1995. AMS PRESS Translation: 〔Contents〕 To
CAREY McWILLIAMS Part One The
originality of Mr.Adamic's point of view and his obvious sincerity and very
genuine love for the country of his adoption give his book a real importance
to all Americans, old or new. As a piece of reading matter, it is excellent
because of the accuracy of the observation and of Mr.Adamic' ear for speech.--Herschel
Brickell Grandsons earned mixed reviews. It was hardly a
"radical" novel of the 1930s; still it was not complacent. Peter Gale's
explanation of Jack Gale's dream-"the idea of one big union" to
control national production and wealth and foster " a new moral and
spiritual civilization"- was not exactly the promised Red Dawn of the
decade. Adamic was satisfied to promise nothing, but instead to prod his
readers with Jack Gale's question: "Peter, why did they do it?"-Henry
A Christian ------------------ |
|
Cradle of
Life: (New
York & London :Harper,1936; London: Gollancz, 1937) 〔Contents〕 Dramatic
tale of one Rudolf Stanislaus, an illegitimate child brought up by ignorant
peasants in the hills of Croatia. When it was discovered that he was the son
of a young Moravian countess and Prince Rudolf, son of a young the Emperor of
Austria, he was taken by his own family to be educated as befitted a
descendant of the nobility. -Book Review Digest 'Cradle
of Life' is surely one of the most unusual novels of recent years, a story in
which the melancholy Slav stalks the Croatian land ruminating on the misery
of his people, in which the aristocratic and peasant nature of an Austrian
Count Leo Tolstoy strives to find justice and faith for the down trodden and
understanding of the rulers. And all of this hungry expression of social
idealism is entertaining as the most blatant of your popular thrillers. -
Wiliam Soskin -
Alfred Kazin …Much of the reading public understood the book… as an aberration. Just how much, however poorly executed, it was to prove a part of their lives did not become clear until the rise of the Partisan movement in the 1940s and the emergence of Yugoslavia as a Third World country after it was expelled from the Russian orbit in 1948. -Henry Christian |
|
The House
in Antigua: (New
York & London :Harper,1937; London: Gollancz, 1938 p ) Illustrated with
Black and White Photographs.
〔Contents〕 This is the
story of a three-hundred-year-old house, now standing, partially restored, in
Antigua, once the capital of Guatemala. After a brief introduction, relating
how he came to visit the house, the author divides his work into three parts:
a history of the house from earthquake in 1773 and thereafter to 1930; an
account of the restoration accomplished by Dr Wilson Popenoe and his wife :
and finally the story of the author's visit in 1936. Mr.Adamic
has captured the spirit of Antigua as well as been captured by it. His
literary restoration has a reverence and simplicity that matches the work of
the Popenoes. As a result the book contains the timeless charm of its
subject." -L. J. Halle. Jr. 〔episode〕
---------------------- Your
website came up on my search engine this evening as I was researching Louis
Adamic. I am so very impressed with you and the work that you are doing. I
hope that you will be able to find a publisher in Japan. D.
Dineen ANTIGUA GUATEMALA---MONUMENTAL CITY
OF THE |
|
My
America: 1928-38 (New
York & London :Harper,1938; London: Hamilton, 1938 669pages) The
publication was made possible by the award of a Rockefeller Foundation
grant-in aid. A
Da Capo Press Reprint Series: FRANKLIN D. ROOEVELT AND THE ERA OF THE NEW
DEAL 1966,1976 Translation: 〔Contents〕 AMERICA
IN ACTION AFTER
"THE NATIVE'S RETURN" ELLIS
ISLAND AND PLYMOTH ROCK THE
DEPRESSION THE
WORKERS RANDOM
PORTRAITS AND SNAPSHOTS THE
LONG ROAD Here I continue my
American adventure in understanding,
“My America
1928-1938” L Adamic From
Portland to Portland, from Detroit to the Gulf, from New York to Hollywood,
there were patterns for all. In Louis Adamic's My America, a sprawling
book of impressions by a writer whose immigrant past had given him an
outsider's curiosity and a vibrant democratic fraternalism, America appeared
as a strange but promising land that essentially "a process-long and
endless." - Alfred Kazin On Native Ground A
beautiful book, as American as 'Roughing It,' brought up to date. It is as
though Mr.Adamic had taken the song 'America the Beautiful' and had played it
on every kind of a musical instrument from a horse fiddle to a celestial
harp, and by some magic had harmonized it all into a vast choral symphony.
Which is to say that 'My America' is well worth reading, rereading,
pondering, and engraving upon the heart of America. - W. A. White Dear
Louis Adamic Nov9 1939 I suspect
that you may think me rather slow that I have just recently got to your book,
MY AMERICA but, even though I am late I would like to tell you
how fine I think it is. Sincerely The
Harvard Encyclopedia of America Ethnic Groups stars its Introduction with the
statement that "During
the Great Depression of the 1930s,Louis Adamic, a popular writer and
journalist, conceived of a project that he believed 'would excite all America
about herself.' A'great Encyclopedia of the Population of the United
States,from the Indians down to the latest immigrant group, 'would
demonstrate 'in as great detail as possible, of what sort of human stuff
America is made.' Such work, he wrote, 'might very well revolutionize
American writing and affect all thinking about the United States. 'It' would
be invaluable to thousands of...school principals and teachers...and
librarians and social workers. In would appeal not only to New Americans and
their immigrant parents...but to America as a whole'(My America,1938)." * * * … A real
mountain man, a Balkan Slav of the so-called Dinaric type, he had great
natural dignity, an innate wholly unconscious pride … He had
in him the Slavic peasants' so-called "heart culture," which is
deeper, more vital and dependable than culture acquired in schools. .. He
seemed to at once infinitely tragic and infinitely heroic-a big human
being-one of the finest I had ever experienced. … --After
"The Native's Return" --------------------------------- WHO BUILT AMERICA? * * The chief and most important fact …about the New Americans is that all too many of them are oppressed by feelings of inferiority in relation to their fellow-citizens of older stock, to the main stream of American life, and to the problem of life as a whole; which, of course, is bad for them as individuals, but since there are so many of them and their number is still rapidly increasing, even worse for the country. |
|
From Many
Lands (New
York & London :Harper,1939 1940 p ) The
publication was made possible by funds granted by Carnegie Corporation of New
York. *John
Anisfield award as "the most significant book of 1940 on race relations
in the contemporary world" Translation:
〔Contents〕 THE
MAN IN A QUANDARY FIGURES
IN THE AMERICAN MAZE A
YOUNG AMERICAN WITH A JAPANESE FACE LUPE VALDEZ MET HELEN SMITH IN
CONCLUSION: A LETTER THE
PROJECT ILLUSTRATIONS In this
large volume Louis Adamic, under more or less fictionalized form, tells the
stories, sketches the characters, reveals the personal philosophies and
individual problems of a number of Americans whose origins were in foreign
lands. Included are the stories of a Jewish doctor, a Slovenian peasant, of a
California-born American with Japanese features, and others. From Many
Land is a book which all Americans should read. The immigrants'
problem is so clearly stated and their contribution to our culture so evident
that we are challenged to approach the problem without prejudice and with
intelligence and deep understanding. -H. P. Bolman This book
of Louis Adamic's has its place, in all soberness, among great books in our
day. For he has done his work worthily. To say that these true records are as
interesting as a novel-as half a dozen novels-is to state the obvious. These
word-pictures are portraits, not mere photographs. This temper is not only
earnest and magnanimous, but clear and poised. Eventful, direct, warmly
human, are these stories of Meleski, Steinberger. Evanich and all the rest.
In a broken, terrified world, amid the existence is defiance, they hold our
challenge of destiny. -Katherine Woods With
emotional fervor and penetrating knowledge, with sweep and fire, tenderness
and understanding. Louis Adamic here describes the lives of a number of
immigrants and their descendents, of varying racial and geographical
backgrounds. In a sociological document that becomes poetry, drama, and
unforgettable literature. -R. H. Reyher Something
between really craftsman like biographies and the conventional case studies,
they fulfill their aim, which is to make us conscious of the enormous
richness of these 'foreign' strains. They stimulate one, in Adamic's
excellent phrase, to 'make America safe for differences.' The book is part of
a series, indeed part of a social program (a project of the Common Council
for American Unity), and is of extreme importance to Americans who now
realize that this century will mark either our end as a nation or our emergence
as a true and great culture-carrier. -Clifton Fadiman Book Review Digest 1940 *In
1941 Adamic also received an honorary Litt.D. from Temple University. ---------------------- September17,1989 Dear
Shozo Tahara, It is
impossible for me to tell you how very, very happy I was to receive your
postcard recently. Your news was absolutely wonderful. I am happy that the
"Young Man…" chapter is to be published and that
my article will also appear. I am even more delighted to know that your
translation of The Native's Return is to be published. Yes, I will
write an introduction or preface for the book. My
schedule just now is as follows: today I finished a contract and must by the
end of September finish an introduction to a new printing of Adamic's
Grandsons. October 17-21 I am to be in Zagreb to lecture, and November 1-5 I
am to lecture in Toronto. I have much writing to do for these two trips, but
if I finish the Grandsons introduction in time I shall begin at once
to write the introduction for you. I know the story well and will make it
interesting about how the book came to be written and say something about the
book itself and what it can mean to readers today. Do you have an idea of how
long your publisher will allow the introduction to be? Please ask, and say I
am doing it, and I shall write it so that you can translate it easily--I
hope. Write me when you have the answers to the length problem, so I shall
know that and know too you have received this letter. Until I
hear from you, best wishes and thanks for all you have done for me. Henry Christian |
|
The Nisei 's Problem Is Difficult but Natural By Louis Adamic Mr.Omura,
the editor of this magazine, asks me to write for him a brief article or
editorial. I can do no better than quote the hero of my story "A
young American With a Japanese Face" in my last books. -L Adamic FROM MANY LANDS: " I
spent my Easter vacation in 1938 trying to write an essay on the Oriental
Americans. I held that the first thing for us to do was to realize that our
situation, while difficult, was perfectly natural; in fact inevitable. I saw it
this way: we are of the most recent immigration, and so still in the acute
stage of adjustment to the country, as the country is, in turn, in that stage
in relation to us. We have our problem, to be sure; but what can we expect? We are marginal
people, but more important than that fact is the need for us to see that we
are that naturally. To cease
being marginal, we must proceed from this realization, the only point from
which we proceed. We must look both within and outside ourselves, especially
for the good and weak things within us. We must start working against our
disadvantages . . . . which, to repeat, are perfectly normal: but their being
normal does not mean we need to put up with them. In
America it means the exact opposite. It means we must try to overcome them.
If we try, we will do something. We must
prove ourselves. All the people, group and individuals, who came here had to
prove themselves. We must stand up and face the situation, and not withdraw
from it and lie down, or sneak around it with various dodges. … " ( Current Life Jan1941) |
|
Common Ground *Adamic
publishes the quarterly journal devoted to creation of unity and mutual
understanding among peoples of diverse background in America. 18.
ADAMIC, Louis (editor). Common Ground. New York: Common Council for American
Unity, 1940. Volume I, Number 1 (Autumn 1940). 8vo. Stiff tan wrappers.
104pp. Very good. First issue of this periodical, handsomely inscribed on the
front wrapper by writer Louis Adamic (1899-1951), who not only edited the
premiere issue but contributed "This Crisis Is an Opportunity" to
this issue: "For Mr. & Mrs. Charles A. Sink's library, this first /
issue of Common Ground, with the compliments / of the Editor, / Louis Adamic /
1950." Other contributors include Van Wyck Brooks, John Ciardi, Arthur
M. Schlesinger and Robert M. Hutchins. The goal of this periodical, as Adamic
puts forth in an "Editorial Aside," is "to explore gradually,
from various angles, the racial-cultural situation and its problems which --
perhaps especially acute at this time -- have developed in the U.S...." Price:
$60.00 Louis Adamic and the Contemporary Search for Roots |
|
America And The Refuges A Pamphlet |
|
The Crisis Is An A Pamphlet Translation: |
|
Bulletin
of the United Committee of South-Slavic Americans 1943 *Adamic
was elected president of the United Committee of South-Slavic Americans;
founds and edits. Translation:
|
|
The People of American Series *Adamic general editor.
|
|
Two-Way Passage
(New York & London :Harper,1941
328 pages ) Translation: 〔Contents〕 This
book is the author's overview of the world situation, published before
America 's entry into the Second World War. Both Franklin Roosevelt and Mrs.Roosevelt (Eleanor was Adamic's fun and friend) had been impressed by the thesis of Two-Way Passage: "I propose that we take to Europe-in person-the American Revolution, the American Experience…" |
|
What's
Your Name? (New York & London :Harper,1942 p
) Translation: 〔Contents〕 An informal
treatise on the subject of European-American surnames: why do some immigrants
change or Anglicize their names, why do others not do so, and what effect
does the change or the lack of it have upon their lives and fortunes.-Book
Review Digest The American simply cannot understand why a man called Adamciewicsz wants to keep his name in the navy, or why the numerous Krzyzanowskis want to hold on to that impossible designation in the army … Mr. Adamic does not try to give the solution. That is not possible for anyone, so much depends upon individual feelings and temperament, upon customs, traditions, and loyalties … He gives all sides of the cases and not merely his own interpretations. One thing that makes this book so readable, and at times exciting and pathetic, is that he tells story after story in the words of those who have written or related their experiences to him.- O. G. Villard |
|
My (New
York & London : Harper,1943 p507)
I
am not born for one corner; the whole world is my native land. -- SENECA THE
STOIC (First Century)
MY NATIVE LAND, by Adamic, Louis. New York: Harper
& Brothers, 1943. Stated First Edition. Hard cover with dust jacket, 507
pages. Illustrated with many illustrations and b/w photos. Author's account
of life in Yugoslavia, contents include; The Nightmare - 1941-43, Slovenia
Under the Italians/ Germans, The Axis Attacks Throught the Rift. The story of
Yugoslavia under Axis domination & the Yugoslav resistance. Based upon
author's exclusive material, story of Yugoslavia. "Yugoslavia - what
happens here will determine the pattern of life for the rest of the
world". SIGNED by author on ffep with date 1947. The dust jacket, which
folds out to reveal many illustrations, is shelf worn but still intact, o/w
book's in good used condition (old newspaper articles laid into back). http://cgi.ebay.com/ 〔Contents〕 PICTURE
DRAWN AGAINST DAKNESS THE
NIGHTMARE: 1941-'43 FRAGMENTS
FROM A SHATTERED COUNTRY "Death
To Fascism! Liberty To The People!" BACKGROUND THE
FUTURE IS HERE NOW
ILLUSTRATIONS A
Letter In
August 20,'42 A Young Man In Slovenia Wrote A Letter to his brother in the
United States. The various notations on the back of the sheet indicate that
it somehow got out of Yugoslavia to Egypt, thence to London, thence to America,
where it was delivered on June 19,'43.It reads: For an endless time we have not had any word of you or your
wife. Now and then on the radio we hear words spoken in America which stir
hope but give no assurance. Mother and all the brothers and sisters are still living today.
Of our relatives many are already lost. Suffering is extreme. The storm with metal hail rages on. Losses
are enormous for our small nation. We ask for urgent help, or it will be too
late. All of us send you, your wife and all your
friends in America our greetings. 'My
Native Land' is a vital book, full of the most challenging
observations. In a way it goes far beyond the confines of a small Balkan country
and deals with issues which all the word will have to face. Mr. Adamic is
tremendously outspoken in his criticism of governments and statesmen. It is
refreshing to read him-even though, naturally, not all can, agree with all
his views and conclusions. -Leigh White 'My
Native Land' is a valuable book even if half of the author's opinions
should prove partly in error. For it is eloquently written and best of all it
will grip man readers because it is pointed up vividly-often tragically-by
personal portraits of participants in the struggle. -Marshall Bragdon *In October of 1944 the Yugoslav Council of Liberation awarded Adamic the Order of Unity. |
|
A Nation
Of Nations (New
York & London :Harper,1945 399pgs) A New, thrilling view of the
real America
〔Contents〕 Preface:
Letters to and from an Old-Line American of Anglo-Saxon Stock …Here[in
these States] at last is something in the doings of man that corresponds with
the broadcast doings of day and night. Here is not merely a nation but a
teeming nation of nations…. --Walt Whitman Ⅰ.
Americans from Italy NY:
Harper, 1945. 399p. Stated 1st. Hardback. Photos.
http://www.eskimo.com/~recall/cats/radical.htm Adamic
presents a sweeping view of ethnic America, focusing on the coming of peoples
to this continent, voluntary or in chains, at the very center of our
historical process. NY:
Harper, 1945. 399p. Stated 1st. Hardback. Photos. Adamic presents a sweeping view
of ethnic America, focusing on the coming of peoples to this continent,
voluntary or in chains, at the very center of our historical process. ------------- It has
long been customary for many Americans, including writers of history, to
regard the United States as an "Anglo-Saxon" country with a
White-Anglo-Saxon-Protestant civilization struggling to preserve itself
against infiltration and adulteration by other civilizations brought here by
"hordes of foreigners" and Negroes. To
Mr.Adamic this is a dangerous fallacy, certain to bring us to grief in both
domestic and foreign affairs, should any substantial proportion of Americans
persist in dangerously mistaken beliefs regarding many of their fellow
citizens. Challenging
the idea that the United States is exclusively an "Anglo-Saxon"
country, Mr.Adamic has produced an exciting new kind of history based on an
abundance of long-neglected, though tremendously important facts. The
cultural pattern of the United States is not essentially Anglo-Saxon, although
her language is English. Nor is the pattern Anglo-Saxon with a motley
addition of "foreign" darns and patches. The pattern of America,
says Mr.Adamic, is all of a piece, is American. It is the blend of
cultures from many lands, woven of threads from all corners of the earth.
Diversity itself is the American pattern, the very stuff and color of the
fabric, and one of the most important sources of our strength. In other
words, our is a new civilization, of course owing much to the Anglo-Saxon strain,
but owing much as well to the other elements in our heritage and growth, to
the unique qualities and forces which stem from the sweep of the continent
between two oceans, the mixture and interplay of our peoples, the plenitude
of our resources, and the skills which all of us--Britons, Irishmen,
Frenchmen, Scandinavians, Slavs, Latins, Negroes--Protestants, Catholics,
Jews, agnostics--have brought here or developed here in the past three
hundred years. A NATION OF NATION--based on seven years' research, readable as a fine novel -- is Louis Adamic's twelfth and perhaps most important book. Coming at a crucial time in history, it is a vital contribution to the individual and collective reorientation required of the American people by a rapidly changing world. It is a book that Americans of all national, racial and religious backgrounds will be reading and referring to for decades to come. |
|
Dinner at
the White-House (New
York & London : Harper Brothers, 1946 pages) Invitation
and Dinner with Franklin D elano Roosevelt and Winston Churchill -a
record of conversations and thoughts etc.
〔Contents〕 Mr.
Louis Adamic Dear
Louis, *Adamic was sued by Winston Churchill for libel on the basis of a footnote in this book in 1947. |
*After that Adamic could not publish
at all in USA.
"I have in me a sort of peasant
resistance
to influences of all sorts." -L Adamic
"Death Waits For My Uncle
Yanez"-L Adamic 1934
"There undoubtedly is a great
difference," said Stella,
"between
your uncle's death and my father's.
Here
Death is a rather mild through inexorable fellow
who
comes and stands by the door with his scythe, waiting
till
his victim is through saying good-by to everybody,
including
his nephew who happens to return from America;
then
does his work because, somehow, it must be down….
In
America, in the cities at least, Death is a gangster
who
puts one on the spot, then-bang! In America,
he
doesn't carry a scythe, but a sawed-off shotgun."
"I was too closely tired up with
contemporary America.
I
carried my death in me all the time."
- - - - - - - - -
"Peter,
why did they do it?"
-Grandsons,1935
|
Mysterious Death On the morning of Sept.4,1951, Adamic's body was found on the second floor bedroom-study of the century-old farmhouse he had purchased in 1937 in Hunterdon County, in Western New Jersey near the village of Riegelsville. A bullet from the .22 rifle that lay across his knees had penetrated his brain. The house and the garage across the road had been set afire with rags soaked in fuel oil. But there were no fingerprints found on the rifle and Adamic was not wearing gloves. Mysterious Death |
|
His attempt
"to get at the truth about things" and to make "an effort to
understand them" came, finally, to be no more or less complete or satisfactory
than mankind itself. On September 4,1951,his study-garage already consumed by
fire, Adamic was found lying on a bed in his burning farmhouse, a rifle
angled across his thigh and a fatal bullet wound in his head. The shock,
confusion, and seeming mystery of his death in great measure bscured, and
continues to obscure, the fact that a life was ended for which more of the
nation and world might have mourned. "Louis
Adamic A Checklist" by Henry
A Christian |
|
Iz dveb domovin: Izjav-Reportaze--Slovstvo From Two
Homelands Translated by Ivan Crnagoj, Vito Krajger, Olga Skerl-Grahor,and Branko Rudolf. Maribor:Zalozba "Obzorja," 1951. Contains "The Enigma" and selections from Laughing in the Jungle, My America, From Many Lands, and A Nation of Nations. |
|
The Eagle and the Roots New
York : Doubleday,1952. Edited by Stella Adamic and Timothy Seldes. Garden
City Park, NY: Doubleday & Co, 1952. 531pgs. *ユーゴスラヴィア(スロヴェニア)で発禁書となった。 |
|
The“Last
Book”of Louis Adamic Most of the
few people who are familiar with his plans in 1948, believe it would have
been better for Adamic, and certainly safer, if he had written “The
Education of Michael Novak” instead of The Eagle and the Roots, which is generally believed to have been
the cause of his death. “The Education” would certainly be an interesting
novel, containing many dramatic but credible life stories. As he had proved
in some of his other works, Adamic was a master of vivid and coherent life
stories. The book he planned in 1948 would also contain a good deal of his
own thinking and emotions, interwoven within his fictional characters’ idea,
feelings and actions. Had Adamic written this book as he conceived it, it
would probably retain a lasting value and reach a wider reading public than The Eagle and the Roots did. – Janja
Zitnik |
* * *
Louis Adamic was one of the most
complicated and
provocative
figures of the American literary world
during
the first half of the Twentieth century.
Henry A. Christian
|
Dan
Shiffman is an Assistant Professor of English, Rhetoric, and Writing at Berry
College in Mount Berry, Georgia, where he teaches writing, humanities, and
American studies courses. |
Dan Shiffman - Rooting Multiculturalism: The Work of Louis
Adamic Publisher: Fairleigh
Dickinson University Press | 2003-08 | ISBN: 0838640028 | PDF | 191 pages |
1.04 MB Rooting Multiculturalism: The Work of
Louis Adamic offers the American immigrant writer, editor, and social
critic's insights about democracy and diversity to the ongoing "culture
wars." This study begins with a chronological overview of Adamic's
career from his boyhood in Slovenia, to the growth of his reputation as an
advocate for ethnic diversity in the 1930s and 1940s, to the suspicious
circumstances surrounding his death in 1951. Rooting Multiculturalism then
considers Adamic's relationship to the development of American cultural
pluralism between the Wars, his populist rhetoric of progressive social
reform, and his analysis of the plight of "second-generation"
immigrants. By evaluating Adamic's life and work, Rooting Multiculturalism
reveals that multiculturalism has a longer and deeper history than is often
acknowledged. Moreover, this study underscores Adamic's dynamic model of
multicultural identity and American citizenship in which individuals draw
from a variety of cultural and philosophical perspectives without being bound
by any of them. http://www.ebookee.com/Dan-Shiffman-Rooting-Multiculturalism-The-Work-of-Louis-Adamic_351005.html * * * Hi, Mr.Dan Shiffman, Thank You for your
mail！ –Shozo (Japan) |
●TOP「Louis Adamic in Japan」 スポンサーバナー広告募集
Wanted sp ads Suponsabana for my publication
------------------------------------
Copyright 2000-2012
: All rights reserved.
Shouzou Tahara (Japan)
Louis Adamic In Japan 簡にして要-政治の風を読む
Guide of Noted
Slovene-American Immigrant Author Louis Adamic
Blog–Immigrant
Download Ebook for World Diversity!