Max White, Author of Fiction
Max White's Early Literature
Charles William White settled in New York City following his return from France in 1933. Charles must have been engaged in creative writing from this time forward although he may have begun even earlier during his stays in France and Spain. In either case, Charles had assumed the pen name "Max White" by 1934 and had gained publication of a group of his short stories that year. One of these stories, A Pair of Shoes, was chosen for republication by Houghton, Mifflin Company in Edward J. O'Brien's Best Short Stories - 1935. Other authors appearing in O'Brien's 1935 selections included William Faulkner, Erskine Caldwell, Sarah Haardt, William Saroyan, Allan Seager, Thomas Wolfe, and Morley Callaghan.Max White Among the Literati and Artists
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| Charles William "Max" White (1906-1978) Alice Neel, Max White, 1935, oil on linen, Smithsonian American Art Museum, © 1970, HARTLEY S. NEEL, Museum purchase, 1989.14 |
Max White was a member of the arts community in and around Greenwich Village, Manhattan, during the 1930s, according to Don Skemer of the Manuscripts Division of the Department of Rare Books and Special Collections, Princeton University Library. One of Max's friends was the artist, Alice Neel, who painted his portrait (above) in 1935 and another in 1961. Among other friends in later years were Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Stein was enthusiastic about Max's literary work as indicated by her correspondence to Max in the Princeton archive of Max's manuscripts and correspondence.
Anna Becker, Max White's First Novel
Stackpole Sons of New York City published Max White's first novel, Anna Becker, on 15 February 1937. The book received a favorable review by Rose C. Feld of the New York Herald Tribune, parts of which were quoted in The Citizen-Advertiser.Max White, a newcomer in the field of long fiction, has written a book that will place him in the forefront of the younger novelists. "Anna Becker" as a novel and as a heroine defies classification and is insistent in demand for speculative attention. Rarely are originality of plot, characterization and style so finely welded to make a powerful structure. The conventional-minded may find flaws in expression and unevenness in flow of narrative, but Max White has written no conventional novel and obviously has no use for conventional tools. . . . The book moves with the undertones of swift rushing water under ice. . . . With brilliant technique White builds his characters into persons with flesh and blood. Some will compare his style to Faulkner and some to Hemingway. It is neither. It is straight White, distilled out of complexity that finds expression on the page with confounding simplicity that may be mistake for naivete. "Anna Becker" is the story of a woman who is shocked into emotional and intellectual integrity by physical assault. . . . What Max White has achieved is making credible the development of a situation which in the hands of a tyro would have turned into an artificial melodrama.
A Kirkus Review exists for this book as well. Anna Becker was published in England ca. July 1937. This month saw Max White traveling to Auburn to visit his parents at 139 East Genesee Street before returning to New York City where he was working on two more novels.-- Thomas Tryniski (scan), Roger Post (transcriber), First Novel by Young Auburnian Wins Exceptional Encomiums, Striking Originality Acclaimed (Auburn, Cayuga Co., NY, The Citizen-Advertiser, Monday, 15 February 1937), Old Fulton New York Post Cards http://www.fultonhistory.com
The Lady of Respectability, A Novella
Max White again visited his parents in Auburn in July 1938. He spent some or all of the winter of 1938-39 in California before returning to New York City where his novella, "The Lady of Respectability," was featured in the March-April 1939 issue of Story magazine as "the novella of the month." Max's short novel was about 50 pages in length. Later, in July 1939, Max again came to Auburn to visit his parents. He repeated this trip in June 1940 at which time he anticipated publication of his next novel in the fall.Tiger, Tiger, Max White's Second Novel
Duell, Sloan & Pearce published Max White's second novel, Tiger, Tiger, in October 1940. Gertrude Stein, author of The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, was favorably impressed by White's work, as indicated in a Kirkus Review of Tiger, Tiger. At Auburn, The Citizen-Advertiser took notice of Max White's new novel.A much more lengthy review of Tiger, Tiger appeared in The Citizen-Advertiser the following month.In a review of the book published in Sunday's Herald-Tribune "Books," Florence Haxton Bullock referred to it as "a fascinating record giving the whole story--mental, moral, emotional, technical--of the growth of an artist." The review concluded by saying, "Here is an excellent novel of a painter's life, as earthy and detailed less exotic, but almost as dramatic as the novelized lives of Van Gogh and Gauguin."-- Thomas Tryniski (scan), Roger Post (transcriber), 'Tiger Tiger,' New Novel by Max White, Reviewed in Herald Tribune (Auburn, Cayuga Co., NY, The Citizen-Advertiser, Wednesday, 16 October 1940), Old Fulton New York Post Cards http://www.fultonhistory.com
It may be superfluous to probe the meaning of an author's title, but when Max White chose 'Tiger Tiger' for his new novel of an artist's struggle to find his own true medium of expression, he invited conjecture. Mr. White . . . may have meant that Blake's tiger, "burning bright in the forests of the night," is "the relentless force of genius," as one critic suggests; but we prefer to believe that - the tiger is human nature, neither sentimentalized nor depraved but just it a-moral self, fierce with the lust of life, challenging mortal hand or eye to frame its fearful symmetry. This is where the artist comes in; for it is John Martin's struggle to frame human nature searchingly but without over-emphasis, to learn from other artists only to promote his own originality, that is the real story. The physical action, therefore, is subordinate to the inner progress. . . . it is the artist's pilgrimage, influenced but not conditioned by geographical change, that is the meat of the book. . . . Many of the pictures Max White draws are unforgettable, particularly those in the Spanish sequence, though one needs a hardihood to approach some of them, so cruel they are in their understatement of brutality. . . . And yet in John Martin one sees a great deal of Max White. An artist in words has chosen the symbols of another art to delineate the stages in his own creative development. . . . Max White's diction is like the brushwork of a modern painter, and he has cultivated it with the same fidelity. His sentences are uneven strokes, applied in different directions to his prose canvas. . . . the impact of the whole is undeniable. . . . the events which have a way of happening outside the will of the characters, the descriptions, three-dimensional rather than the flat posters of average fiction; even the characters most of them, especially the Spanish father and the French girl Claire, drawn with exceptional insight. . . . R. W. C."-- Thomas Tryniski (scan), Roger Post (transcriber), 'Tiger Tiger,' New Novel by Max White Tells of Artist's Struggle (Auburn, Cayuga Co., NY, The Citizen-Advertiser, Tuesday, 12 November 1940), Old Fulton New York Post Cards http://www.fultonhistory.com
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