Holy Delmore

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.

BY

DAVID MIKICS

JULY 11, 2024

The New York intellectuals, Irving Howe once said, were obsessed “by the idea of the Jew (not always distinguished from the idea of Delmore Schwartz).” Delmore, as everyone called him, was a boy wonder, opening the revamped Partisan Review’s first issue in 1937 at the age of 23, with his perfect short story “In Dreams Begin Responsibilities.” (The issue included work by Picasso, Edmund Wilson, Lionel Trilling, Wallace Stevens, and James Agee, but Delmore’s story headed the table of contents.) Then his first book of poetry arrived, hailed by Allen Tate as “the only genuine innovation we’ve had since Pound and Eliot.” But he came to a dismal end, an alcoholic and pill addict burdened by paranoid fantasies. Since Saul Bellow’s Humboldt’s Gift and James Atlas’ classic biography, Delmore has been more celebrated for the legend of his wasted talent than for his actual literary production. Schwartz the writer has gotten short shrift.