In 2002 FLUID TEXT John Bryant makes such a deal of his intimacy with his equals: "while researching Melville, I would drift uptown to the Newberry Library to confer with Harrison Hayford, who from time to time would drift down from Northwestern to conduct the making of his magisterial edition of The Writings of Herman Melville."
I may yet have to describe how we had to deal with intrusions from Bryant over the years. I at least have diary entries, though I have not yet taken time to locate those of my intense frustration of trying over and over again to explain some bit of evidence he had called about. Hayford dreaded Bryant's calls because he never got right to the point but held Harry for a long initial maundering before he got to the purpose of the call. I see a 5 July 1991 entry. I don't quite remember whether Bryant had actually thought he would write a biography of Maurice Sendak or whether that was a nightmare of mine because of his vaulting ambition to control all things. It may have been a joke with Sendak.
Sendak had called: "Told him my horror of his official biographer John Bryant finding my notes. . . . Told him Brian H[iggins] says Harry now labels him Chowderhead. Maurice had terrible meal with Y[oung] Bryant & HH before Theatre--tension from HH."
"Vaulting Ambition" without true achievement leaves a no-longer-young man very jealous, as you see in the June 2019 essay, where he does not protect himself by reading more carefully than usual. What he says of me and Sealts is almost unbelievably distorted. When you say a rejection slip would be actual proof that HM wrote POEMS and not know that there was an actual rejection letter by Charles Scribner, then your jealousy or vindictiveness (what is it?) has pushed you into revealing just how weak you are with any biographical evidence, and how desperate you are to make so much of your essay on the NN edition into a personal attack on me. As he says, "Gotcha!"--but he does not "get" me.
He NEVER understood how evidence can be located and analyzed. It's still "Any Aunt Mary will do."--biographical tidbits out of time, out of space, as garnish, topping, decoration.
Why would he want to let that essay be his best chance to blacken part of the NN Edition?
I may yet have to describe how we had to deal with intrusions from Bryant over the years. I at least have diary entries, though I have not yet taken time to locate those of my intense frustration of trying over and over again to explain some bit of evidence he had called about. Hayford dreaded Bryant's calls because he never got right to the point but held Harry for a long initial maundering before he got to the purpose of the call. I see a 5 July 1991 entry. I don't quite remember whether Bryant had actually thought he would write a biography of Maurice Sendak or whether that was a nightmare of mine because of his vaulting ambition to control all things. It may have been a joke with Sendak.
Sendak had called: "Told him my horror of his official biographer John Bryant finding my notes. . . . Told him Brian H[iggins] says Harry now labels him Chowderhead. Maurice had terrible meal with Y[oung] Bryant & HH before Theatre--tension from HH."
"Vaulting Ambition" without true achievement leaves a no-longer-young man very jealous, as you see in the June 2019 essay, where he does not protect himself by reading more carefully than usual. What he says of me and Sealts is almost unbelievably distorted. When you say a rejection slip would be actual proof that HM wrote POEMS and not know that there was an actual rejection letter by Charles Scribner, then your jealousy or vindictiveness (what is it?) has pushed you into revealing just how weak you are with any biographical evidence, and how desperate you are to make so much of your essay on the NN edition into a personal attack on me. As he says, "Gotcha!"--but he does not "get" me.
He NEVER understood how evidence can be located and analyzed. It's still "Any Aunt Mary will do."--biographical tidbits out of time, out of space, as garnish, topping, decoration.
Why would he want to let that essay be his best chance to blacken part of the NN Edition?
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