Once and For All: The Best of Delmore Schwartz

Delmore Schwartz

Excellent writing.

National Post

The publication of this book restores a missing chapter in the history of twentieth-century American literature

Once and For All: The Best of Delmore Schwartz

Fiction by Delmore Schwartz

Edited by Craig Morgan Teicher

With a contribution by Craig Morgan Teicher and John Ashbery

With his New Directions debut in 1938, the twenty-five-year-old Delmore Schwartz was hailed as a genius and among the most promising writers of his generation. Yet he died in relative obscurity in 1966, wracked by mental illness and substance abuse. Sadly, his literary legacy has been overshadowed by the story of his tragic life.

Among poets, Schwartz was a prototype for the confessional movement made famous by his slightly younger friends Robert Lowell and John Berryman. While his stories and novellas about Jewish American experience laid the groundwork for novels by Saul Bellow (whose Humboldt’s Gift is based on Schwartz’s life) and Philip Roth.

Much of Schwartz’s writing has been out of print for decades. This volume, with an introduction from John Ashbery, aims to restore Schwartz to his proper place in the canon of American literature and give new readers access to the breadth of his achievement. Included are selections from the in-print stories and poems, as well as excerpts from his long unavailable epic poem Genesis, a never-completed book-length work on T.S. Eliot, and unpublished poems from his archives.

Buy Once and For All: The Best of Delmore Schwartz

Paperback(published May, 03 2016)

ISBN
9780811224321
Price US
17.95
Price CN
23.5
Trim Size
5x8
Page Count
280

Ebook(published May, 03 2016)

ISBN
9780811224338
Portrait of Delmore Schwartz

Delmore Schwartz

20th century American poet and short story writer

Excellent writing.

National Post

One of the young princes of American literature in the middle of the 20th century.

National Post

[V]ivid details of lived experience are thrust throughout Schwartz’s writing. Readers are left reeling among elemental features of the world, physical and immediate yet drenched as well with historical and literary ambience.

Patrick James Dunagan, Rain Taxi

For Schwartz poetry was ongoing and unstoppable, a process as compulsive and endless as the mariner’s telling of his tale.

Mark Ford, Times Literary Supplement

Once and for All serves as an ideal introduction for the curious reader.

Adam Kirsch, Tablet

This new collection of Delmore Schwartz’s work reads like a literary “CV of Failures,” a powerful testament to a life shaken by the Great Depression. As we navigate the long road to national recovery, we can use his writing both as a mirror and as a compass.

Jason Boog, The Los Angeles Review of Books

Once and For All is the latest and most comprehensive collection of his work to date and the volume takes on a very valuable task: it attempts to give Schwartz’s provocative and multifaceted literary legacy its long-deserved due.

Matt Hanson, The Arts Fuse

This richly illuminating collection should help secure Schwartz the renewed appreciation he deserves.

Donna Seaman, Booklist

This is a consistently intriguing volume that devotees and neophytes will want on their shelf.

Publishers Weekly

Delmore’s genius survives in the sound of his words, in his hypnotizing lines.

Jonathan Galassi, The New York Review of Books