In his 99th year, John Sanford was such a singular writer that it's somehow unsurprising that, when death came quietly for him Thursday morning, even it could not quite end his extraordinary career.
Sanford published 24 books: nine novels, five genre-defying works he called "creative interpretations of history" and 10 volumes of autobiography and memoirs, including the five-book sequence, "Scenes
From the Life of an American Jew." More than half his books were completed after he turned 80. The most recent, "A Palace of Silver," which appeared just this month, was a meditative memoir on the life he and his wife of more than 50 years -- the late screenwriter Marguerite Roberts -- lived after they were blacklisted for refusing to name names before the House Un-American Activities Committee in 1951.
According to his literary executor, Jack Mearns, the author left three unpublished books "all written in the last four years. Last summer, he finished the one called 'A Dinner of Herbs' [see excerpts], which comprises vignettes about the women he knew. There's a book about his father, 'A Citizen of No Mean City,' and another, 'Little Sister Spoken For' about the first five years of his marriage to Maggie.
"John also had recently completed a major story called 'Judas and Inquiry,' which is about Martin Berkeley, the informer who named more than 150 names [including the Sanfords] before the committee in the 1951 hearings. To the end of his life, John wanted to figure out what was going on in the mind of someone who informed," said Mearns, a professor of psychology at Cal State Fullerton.
Sanford, who was born Julian Shapiro in Harlem and trained as a lawyer, may have been the most neglected of serious 20th century American writers. His books are a stunning fusion of formal experimentation and supple, lyric prose. There is nothing like them anywhere in American letters. Though he sometimes was compared to the young John Dos Passos, Sanford's work was so original that it confounded critics and their categories -- probably to his professional detriment....
Mearns, Sanford's executor, is hopeful of finding a publisher who will put the author's works, now mostly out of print, back on the shelves. "My big fear," he said, "lies in the fact that few writers have their reputations made after they die -- Herman Melville and John's friend Nathanael West are rare exceptions. I hope John will find a wider audience."
That's a thing devoutly to be wished. As Sanford himself once said, "My books did not fail -- they just didn't sell."
[The full article is available at <http://tinyurl.com/76bj>.] *****
***** THE PEOPLE FROM HEAVEN John Sanford Introduction by Alan Wald
An extraordinary novel, told partly in verse, The People from Heaven takes place in 1943 in Warrensburg, New York, where Eli Bishop, a white shopkeeper, initiates a reign of terror on the populace following his rape of America Smith, a black woman. The author, John Sanford, is considered by many to be one of the finest little-known writers of the twentieth century. In his introduction, Alan Wald provides an overview of Sanford's career, his art, and his politics.
Originally published in 1943
"The best thing he has ever written and in some ways the most important book of fiction published here in the last twenty years. His language is marvelous." -- William Carlos Williams
"The People from Heaven won for your great talent another sincere admirer in Orson Welles." -- from a letter to the author
"A sacred book, majestic in its rebukes of those who violate the breath and origin of humanity while professing faith and going through the motions of holiness." -- Carl Sandburg...
1995 264 pages. 5 3/8 x 8 inches Paper, ISBN 0-252-06491-7. $14.95 Fiction
<http://www.press.uillinois.edu/f95/sanford.html> *****
***** INTRUDERS IN PARADISE John Sanford
...A keen and incisive observation on the perilous and hilarious, absurd and appalling twentieth century, Intruders in Paradise takes on the influential personalities that history has strewn across the Americas and gives them their unfettered due.
From Francisco Pizarro's chaplain, Valverde, to J. Edgar Hoover in a fetching frock; from the poignant voice of someone drowned on the Lusitania to the creative musings of Andy Warhol; Sanford burrows--as no other writer has--into the very soul of these quintessential characters and with his words engages them, powers them to vigorous and palpable life....
1997 280 pages. 6 x 9 inches. Cloth, ISBN 0-252-02343-9. $26.95 FICTION
<http://www.press.uillinois.edu/f97/sanford.html> ***** -- Yoshie
* Calendar of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://solidarity.igc.org/>