tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post2292769285894854187..comments2024-03-28T10:31:55.774-07:00Comments on The Passing Tramp: The Black Legend: The Private Life of Cornell Woolrich and The Perils of Public MemoryThe Passing Tramphttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-90679839201041466652022-01-08T13:18:47.614-08:002022-01-08T13:18:47.614-08:00Alma was born in 1938 according to a border crossi...Alma was born in 1938 according to a border crossing record.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-42932425748009771482022-01-08T13:15:56.334-08:002022-01-08T13:15:56.334-08:00Well, in the latest edition of Bride Wore Black th...Well, in the latest edition of Bride Wore Black the introduction tells us that we "know" thanks to Nevins that Woolrich was a "self-loathing gay man," so the legend still lives! I've a huge expansion of this piece appearing on Monday at another website. Will post a link. Thanks!The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-68035623380378887172022-01-06T23:19:33.523-08:002022-01-06T23:19:33.523-08:00What I'm struck by is the flat-out ugly homoph...What I'm struck by is the flat-out ugly homophobic hate in Nevins and the other intro writers you quote as they eagerly rush to judge Woolrich's character as contemptable. Hard to believe they have any credibility at this point.<br />So thank you for your brilliant take-down of all that.Maria Cate Cammaratahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/04930541205014398970noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-63838782261813667762020-09-08T13:38:13.757-07:002020-09-08T13:38:13.757-07:00I agree his writing is what makes him important. ...I agree his writing is what makes him important. But writers lives impact their writing and thus merit study as well.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-39574416156860473312020-09-08T13:36:47.330-07:002020-09-08T13:36:47.330-07:00I wonder whether either is still alive, it seems a...I wonder whether either is still alive, it seems a shame no one ever interviewed them. The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-23381837225775999452020-08-06T13:48:41.773-07:002020-08-06T13:48:41.773-07:00I personally dont care if he was sexual or not. Hi...I personally dont care if he was sexual or not. His writing is just so good. His prose is rich, dense, fantastic, and has an intensity and richness and humor about it that makes him just a great author. Someone ought to write a book about THAT.tankerjagda-kaj-genellhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00478673067323677519noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-1328420359581625092018-10-21T12:49:42.047-07:002018-10-21T12:49:42.047-07:00Per ancestry.com, Woolrich had two half sisters: M...Per ancestry.com, Woolrich had two half sisters: Maria de la Paz b 1927 and Alma b. 1924,daughters of Esperanza Pinon de Woolrich. Maria came to the US in 1937 with her father and Alma came in 1940.jumping jehosaphathttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07500373026551539029noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-63898898528505437082017-08-27T22:16:38.001-07:002017-08-27T22:16:38.001-07:00Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Black Alibi, The Black ...Night Has a Thousand Eyes, Black Alibi, The Black Angel, Phantom Lady. All filmed too, like I Married a Dead Man! All superb, doom-laden stuff.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-9768249020129248182017-08-22T19:20:04.871-07:002017-08-22T19:20:04.871-07:00That's understandable. By the way, I really e...That's understandable. By the way, I really enjoyed reading I Married a Dead Man. What other novels of his would you recommend?Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12705787569523872250noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-34644635208724353072017-08-18T18:57:28.433-07:002017-08-18T18:57:28.433-07:00I think you just made a better literary case than ...I think you just made a better literary case than the Nevins book! I definitely think Woolrich's precise sexuality is open up question, but my biggest beef with the Nevins approach is the old analytical standby of the "self-hating homosexual." He resorts to that crutch all too frequently, in my view. Also the view that Woolrich is someone to be loathed rather than pitied, based on hearsay evidence. The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-82627547561364302702017-08-10T14:03:00.616-07:002017-08-10T14:03:00.616-07:00Interesting post! I guess we'll never know fo...Interesting post! I guess we'll never know for sure about Woolrich's sexuality, but there are some moments in his fiction that at least raise this gay reader's eyebrow... For example, in "Death in the Yoshiwara," the sailor, Jack Hollinger, is described as follows: "Hollinger sucked a deep breath into his toiling lungs, lifted the squirming cop up bodily off the ground and tossed him like a sack into the stream. The bulge of his chest and the sudden strain of his back and shoulder muscles split the tight middy from throat to waist." And the cat-and-mouse game between Rogers and Blake in "3 Kills for 1" strikes me as rather homoerotic, particularly the line, "The flux of uncertainty came back again, it rinsed all the starch out of him, softened him all up. It bent the gun down uselessly floorward in his very grasp" (as well as the later description of the men tussling in a "mingled heap"). Of course, none of this amounts to overwhelming evidence, though I do at least find it...suggestive.<br /><br />But I think Woolrich's deep empathy for Patrice, the secretive, guilt-ridden heroine of "I Married a Dead Man," is what sounds, to me, rather like a closeted man confessing his loneliness..."She shuddered and hid fer face against him. There is a point beyond which you can't be alone any more. You have to have someone to cling to. You have to have someone to hold you, even if he is to reject you again in a moment and you know it...Suddenly his arm dropped and he'd left her. It was terrible to be alone, just for that minute. She wondered how she'd stood it all these months, all these years...He swept a sheltering arm around her again. (That sanctuary that she'd been trying to find all her life long. And only had now, too late.)"Anonymoushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12705787569523872250noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-73428848816439835162016-02-13T15:47:45.479-08:002016-02-13T15:47:45.479-08:00Thanks, Abner! Yes, I totally agree, in the case ...Thanks, Abner! Yes, I totally agree, in the case of Woolrich, no one has demonstrated that the "insubstantial allegations" have really added to our understanding of the author's impressive crime fiction legacy. And some of the worse iterations of the "black legend" are simply shameful in my opinion, blackening a man's name on very thin basis.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-59273496342015337842015-12-22T21:26:05.897-08:002015-12-22T21:26:05.897-08:00Well done, much respect, and about damn time someb...Well done, much respect, and about damn time somebody argued these insubstantial suggestions; it's a tragedy this ungrounded view has been so widely accepted, if for no reason other than that the question of the authors sexuality has overshadowed the man's brilliant literary output! <br />Abner N.https://www.blogger.com/profile/05760503539987126814noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-65443835198001900602014-05-18T13:30:55.727-07:002014-05-18T13:30:55.727-07:00Thanks Henrique! If I've encouraged you to re...Thanks Henrique! If I've encouraged you to read Woolrich again that's great. <br /><br />I think your reconstruction of the "gay question" is more plausible. Woolrich himself indicates he may have been fooling himself about the marriage, not deliberately playing his wife for a fool. Maybe he wanted the marriage to work, then realized he couldn't do it. Who knows? <br /><br />The stuff about the sex diary, I just don't know. It seems hard to reconcile with Nevins' portrayal of someone consumed with guilt and self-loathing. Leaving the diary out would have been either amazingly crass and "in-your-face" or quite incredibly careless (he wife, had she wanted to, could have destroyed him with it). <br /><br />And he, the self-loathing gay, supposedly kept this diary full of sexually explicit details, but later in his private autobiography wouldn't admit any of this stuff? Did he only become self-loathing later in life then? Not in Nevins' view. but then it makes no sense to me.<br /><br />I can but set this hearsay aside and address the Woolrich I feel I can understand from confirmed evidence and from the books.<br /><br />Good point too about the sublimation of Proust and Hartley. The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-5184665391402223632014-05-17T17:49:54.083-07:002014-05-17T17:49:54.083-07:00Thanks for this great post, Curt.
When I was youn...Thanks for this great post, Curt. <br />When I was younger I was a great fan of Woolrich but I gradually lost interest in his books. I never gave much thought to the reason why this has happened, but now I realize it started around the time I read Mike Nevins' foreword to one of his Woolrich anthologies, in which the issue of Woolrich sexuality was raised in the terms you described, and I must have been subconsciously put off by it. Woolrich's writing qualities were never in question for me, but if one believed in Nevins he really must have been a creepy bastard. Not because he was gay, obviously -- I also stopped reading Simenon when I learnt he was a (straight) creepy bastard. <br />Your post convinced me that Nevins's characterization of Woolrich does not make sense. I don't believe in a patologically introverted recluse marrying a girl as a joke, dressing as a sailor in order to have causal sex and leaving behind him a diary documenting his sexual orientation.<br />According to what we know for sure about Woolrich, I could believe he was indeed gay or at least in doubt about his sexuality, that he married Gloria in a period of conscious or unconscious refusal of this, that he was tormented by it, that this ultimately led him to leave her -- and that she, out of spite, publicly denigrated him as a stereotypical gay "of the most sordid type", which Mike Nevins acritically reproduced. But then this might have happened even if he wasn't gay at all (I once had a girlfriend who was genuinely convinced the few men that had ever dumped her had done so because they were gay -- I guess I must be on this list by now). Also, I don't remember ever finding any implictly gay aspects in Woolrich's highly personal style of writing, even in a sublimated form (as it often happens in the writing of gay authors, like Proust or L. P. Hartley, in whose books male/female couples and relationships are frequently obvious stand-ins for male/male ones). The examples you quote from Mike Nevins are ridiculous. <br />In any case, the person now emerging from your post, gay or not gay, is certainly no creepy bastard. Which reminds me I must read him again.Henrique Vallehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16626159490843432538noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-78178078218656245452014-05-15T13:39:18.680-07:002014-05-15T13:39:18.680-07:00Lucy, that is really beautifully put, thanks so mu...Lucy, that is really beautifully put, thanks so much for the comment. The terrible thing is this "ex pede Herculem" approach you describe so often succeeds!The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-10846636056870428612014-05-15T12:58:40.155-07:002014-05-15T12:58:40.155-07:00Interesting account of the way legend can become f...Interesting account of the way legend can become fact. Also that someone's life can be built up "ex pede Herculem" - from one detail. Woolrich lived with his mother, therefore he was gay, therefore he had casual sex with men, therefore [insert bizarre details about sailor suits here]. It's a template that can be applied to many who can't defend themselves. The lurid details, or the judgement, become something that "everybody just knows".Lucy R. Fisherhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08632983296994349550noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-39918648006685063392014-05-14T11:43:56.308-07:002014-05-14T11:43:56.308-07:00By the way, John, relating about your "rough ...By the way, John, relating about your "rough trade" comments, I think that's how the publisher Claude Kendall, who published Willoughby Sharp's two mysteries, got killed in NYC in the 1930s. I wrote about it on the blog, as an unsolved murder. Didn't see any need to stand as a judge over him, I hope.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-2759558411018800232014-05-13T23:50:02.906-07:002014-05-13T23:50:02.906-07:00Peggy Ann, thanks. Yes, I can't help feeling ...Peggy Ann, thanks. Yes, I can't help feeling but that that much dependence on one's mother was not an emotionally healthy thing. Kind of ironic I posted this right after Mother's Day!The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-64923945554257065332014-05-13T23:47:01.185-07:002014-05-13T23:47:01.185-07:00Jack, I agree that his themes can speak to all of ...Jack, I agree that his themes can speak to all of his, whatever his sexuality. Thanks!The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-9055778656230959922014-05-13T23:43:18.198-07:002014-05-13T23:43:18.198-07:00Thanks so much John, especially for the words on t...Thanks so much John, especially for the words on the ending. I am pleased you think I caught something about the special quality of Woolrich's work. <br /><br />It saddens me that the man who has dominated the Woolrich field for so long seems to have contempt for him on one level (the personal). Ideally Woolrich should have a more empathetic biographer, I think. <br /><br />I agree with you so much about the way Nevins wrote about Milton Propper. It's the same thing he does with Woolrich, except worse because unrelieved by any real admiration for Propper's work. The way Nevins wrote about Propper just seemed cruel, really, especially considering the poor man committed suicide. <br /><br />On the sex angle, the Nevins line "Clearly [Woolrich's] homosexual life was of the most furtive and sordid variety" is highly suggestive to me. Homosexual life of the MOST furtive and sordid variety. That seems to imply that all of it is pretty sordid to the author. It does seem to me like he feels "self-contempt" and "self-hatred" is what Woolrich SHOULD have been feeling, so he must have been! But then Woolrich records all this stuff in a diary and leaves it behind for his wife? Implausible, I think.<br /><br />In any event, I think defining Woolrich's work strictly in terms of homosexual self-contempt is an error, certainly much too limiting. And even if this is the approach you want to take surely you can do more than go trolling through the text for phallic symbols! I think you could say there's a distinct lack of insight into gay men here.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-57814538101109924472014-05-13T23:22:35.997-07:002014-05-13T23:22:35.997-07:00Well, Noah, I have to say the attitude emanating f...Well, Noah, I have to say the attitude emanating from the book did start to grate (did I just give the "homosexual symbol seekers" anything?).<br /><br />Thanks for the kind words, My own feeling is that Woolrich has been maligned unfairly in some of these accounts--not because they have said he was gay, which of course is no insult--but because they have said he was a terrible person. I don't have contempt for him, I feel sorry for him.The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-26983814856507592622014-05-13T23:16:40.466-07:002014-05-13T23:16:40.466-07:00Nope, only ever corresponded with Nevins once, abo...Nope, only ever corresponded with Nevins once, about a dozen years ago. I think the book speaks for itself however!The Passing Tramphttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09830680639601570152noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-3732841718423482232014-05-13T20:01:37.236-07:002014-05-13T20:01:37.236-07:00Very interesting, Curt! I would say his sense of i...Very interesting, Curt! I would say his sense of isolation and despair and sense of self were definitely symptoms of an enmeshed relationship with a domineering mother. Such damage can be done by a parent like that. And I would think a mother/son enmeshment would be very debilitating for the man. Lots of food for thought here! Peggy Annhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00426356514707257708noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-137677673775151256.post-43184720097604942422014-05-13T17:49:15.584-07:002014-05-13T17:49:15.584-07:00I have not read the Nevins books but I feel like i...I have not read the Nevins books but I feel like it really doesn't matter if Woolrich was gay or not. His fiction can be read and enjoyed without knowing the answer to that question. I think he was a terrific writer and I have enjoyed his work for many years. Thanks for this fascinating article!Jack Seabrookhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02216640325305820140noreply@blogger.com