Word: bodenheimer
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Tossed out on a Greenwich Village sidewalk with his belongings and young wife for being two months behind on his $42.50-a-month rent, Maxwell Bodenheim, 61, eccentric poet-novelist of the '20s (Replenishing Jessica, Naked on Roller Skates), was in need of a friend. New York City's Welfare Department, said Max, had let him down by assuring him that the rent would be paid...
Pathetic and ineffectual, Bodenheim flaps through the Village today, eating and drinking when he can cadge a handout or peddle a bit of verse in the San Remo bar on Bleecker Street. Mostly he lives on gin and the memory of a time when the literary life brought him greater rewards...
Scandal & Uproar. In the first quarter of the century, Bodenheim, along with men like Carl Sandburg, Ezra Pound and Edgar Lee Masters, spawned Chicago's lusty artistic revolt. Harriet Monroe's Poetry and Margaret Anderson's Little Review fought for the privilege of introducing his eccentric verse. Teamed with Ben Hecht, he provided his share of the scandal and uproar that lit up the city...
...novel about a girl who wanted to live with "an A number one, guaranteed bastard [who will] beat my heart and beat my brain . . . and lug me to . . . the lowest dives . . ." He wrote Replenishing Jessica, about a millionaire's promiscuous daughter. It became a bestseller in 1925; Bodenheim and his publisher were charged with selling obscene and indecent literature, but triumphantly beat...
Acquitted this week, he did not seem particularly disconcerted by his misadventure. Everybody seemed to feel sorry for Bodenheim but Bodenheim. "The Village," he said, "used to have a spirit of Bohemia, gaiety, sadness, beauty, poetry . . . Now it's just a geographical location." But as he hustled back to the San Remo bar, he acted as though he thought he might save it from mediocrity still...