The originary 20th-century American Jewish writer and poet is famous for his descent into drug-addled madness. A new collection shows quantities of self-obsessed dreck shot through with redeeming literary and critical genius.
Stories of paternal complications, in a new collection by Adam Ehrlich Sachs and a ‘long-needed’ new selection of the writings of Delmore Schwartz
In defense, and praise, of the champion of personality, for whom Jewishness was simply a fact of life, not an ‘identity’
The great Yale literary scholar introduces new poetry by Peter Cole, in ‘The Invention of Influence’
An encounter with legendary rock star Lou Reed, who died this weekend at 71
The Brooklyn-born punk star, writer, and poet altered the New York cultural landscape
Or at least kept Lou Reed from punching me at a dinner party
The rock star’s new tribute to his teacher, the writer Delmore Schwartz, illuminates their common genius
The writer Delmore Schwartz is largely forgotten today, but he once captured the anxieties and hopes of the Jewish intellectuals of the 1930s and stunned his generation with his poems and short stories
Delmore Schwartz, once one of America’s most celebrated writers, died mad and forgotten, having produced little in his later life. His story remains a compelling cautionary tale for American Jews.
A haftorah of strong emotions and long views
An excerpt from a new history of Commentary shows how the fiction published in the magazine’s early years shook not just the world of Jewish literature but the very foundations of American letters
