Oddly, the Meyers bio is intended as a *sympathetic* portrait of Frost -- a corrective to the monumental three-volume bio by Lawrence Thompson, who knew Frost intimately ... hence detested him. The flap copy of the Meyers bio reads: "The Frost that emerges from this biography is neither the hayseed sage that he cultivated in his public persona nor the monster in human form depicted by his previous biographer [Thompson]." Well, Frost certainly doesn't emerge from these pages as sagacious, but as for being a monster, judge for yourself. Here's Meyers take on the political views of Robert Frost and his equally engaging wife Elinor:
"... in the 1930s he [Frost] tended to ignore not only the wars in Europe and Asia but also the unemployment, dust-bowl farms, bankruptcies, bread lines and suicides that came with the Depression. When most American artists and intellectuals were on the Left, he was adamantly opposed to the prevailing ideas about communism, the proletariat, industrial conflicts and social welfare.
"... Though Frost had lived on his grandfather's annuity for twenty-three years, there was a certain consistency in his thought. He had praised Robinson Crusoe and Henry Thoreau for their self-sufficiency. He had urged a friend to be individualistic and 'go it alone. You are stronger that way.' His personal quarrel with [Amherst College] President Alexander Meiklejohn [in 1919], when he opposed socialism with self-reliance, clearly anticipated his dislike of President Franklin Roosevelt.
"... in 1927, after one of the most notorious trials of the decade, Frost had defended what all liberals considered to be the unjust execution of the Italian Anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti. Arguing illogically and speciously that they deserved to be killed for merely planning a crime , even if they did not actually commit one, ... [he said:] 'I have no sympathy with them They may not have been guilty of the specific crime [murder] with which they were charged; but it was just as well. They intended to commit some similar crime, carrying firearms to do it.' By the time Roosevelt began to implement the New Deal in the 1930s, Frost had become a rock-ribbed Vermont Republican, strongly opposed to a minimum wage, labor union legislation, Social Security and medical insurance. ...
"Frost said he wanted not a New Deal, but a New Deck, and referred to the Popular Fron, a coalition of Left-wing parties opposed to Fascism, as the 'Popular Behind.' He believed that Socialism, which took money from those who worked and gave it to idlers, was theft. He mocked welfare planners who felt social problems could be cured by legislation, and thought that in a homogenized society the cream would never rise to the top. A Social Darwinist who believed the strongest should prevail in the struggle for existence, he argued that man's first duty was to protect himself: 'I discovered from [Edward] Bellamy that socialism is everybody looking after Number Two. My criticism was the same then as now; just as conservative. It's harder to look after Number Two than Number One, for how do you know what Number Two wants?'
"Instead of restraining Frost's extreme tendencies, as she did with other aspects of his life. [his wife] Elinor actually encouraged his conservative beliefs. Van Wyck Brooks recorded that Elinor hated Roosevelt for stealing their hard-earned money and handing it out to the unemployed workers of the cities. [Frost biographer Robert] Newdick stated that the usually mild and unassertive Elinor was rabid on the subject of the New Deal and 'hated FDR. A passion with her. She said she would kill him, if she had the strength.'
"... In October 1930 he [Frost] frankly told a younger poet that he was a selfish artist and would not give a cent to see the world made better. He wanted the world to stay the way it was, like all conservatives, so he could continue to write poetry about it."
Carl
Something there is that doesn't love a wanker.
– Anon.
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