13626: Craig-Obituary: Selden Rodman, Writer and Folk Art Advocate, Dies at 93 (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: Dan Craig <dgcraig@att.net>


 Selden Rodman, Writer and Folk Art Advocate, Dies at 93
November 11, 2002
By DOUGLAS MARTIN
The New York Times

Selden Rodman, a polymathic poet, an iconoclastic critic of
modern culture, the author of more than 40 books and a
tireless promoter of Haitian and other folk art, died on
Nov. 2 at a hospital in Ridgewood, N.J. He was 93.

Mr. Rodman, who lived in Oakland, N.J., played tennis two
days before he died, probably cheating as usual, his wife,
Carole, said. In 1932, he and a tennis partner defeated
Ezra Pound - one of the many literary giants Mr. Rodman
knew in a unique intellectual life.

Mr. Rodman encountered, sought out and communed with some
of the best known creative people of the 20th century. Born
into a monied family in New York, he grew into a rebellious
young man and ended up as a famous champion of the Western
Hemisphere's folk arts, particularly Haitian paintings,
which he called a "crystallization of joy." Intermediate
stops included editing one of the most successful
anthologies of modern poetry, writing essays and books on
travel, and rocking the modern art establishment by
branding Abstract Expressionism "the cerebral put-ons of
the avant-garde."

Mr. Rodman first received wide attention in the early
1930's when he and a Yale classmate founded The Harkness
Hoot, an acidic but celebrated detractor of everything from
professors to the school's gothic architecture. Frank Lloyd
Wright wrote to applaud when the publication printed
pictures of the steel girders underlying the university's
new library along with a picture of the finished product.
The Hoot called the girders better architecture, much to
Wright's delight.

Rushing off to Europe without attending his graduation, Mr.
Rodman looked up Pound, as well as James Joyce and Thomas
Mann, and ingratiated himself, a lifelong talent. He would
later write a book of essays describing his encounters with
the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Bertrand Russell and Leon
Trotsky.

"He could weasel his way in anywhere," said Gary Fountain,
an English professor at Ithaca College who is writing Mr.
Rodman's biography.

When he returned to New York, Alfred Bingham, a leader of
left-wing causes, asked him to become his partner in a new
magazine called Common Sense, which criticized the New Deal
while remaining anti-Communist. Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr.,
in "The Politics of Upheaval," called the magazine the most
lively and interesting forum of radical discussion in the
country.

Cary Selden Rodman was born in Manhattan on Feb. 19, 1909.
His father, an architect, died before the boy was a year
old, and he came to regard his mother as overprotective,
Mr. Fountain said. But his mother's family fortune, which
provided him a trust fund, greatly increased his lifelong
freedom of choice.

His sister, Nancy, married Dwight Macdonald, the writer,
who used her trust fund to help finance the startup of
Partisan Review in the 1930's.

After his return from Europe, Mr. Rodman was introduced to
Mr. Bingham, who was looking for a partner for his new
magazine. Mr. Bingham wrote on politics and economics; Mr.
Rodman handled cultural matters. He also persuaded W. H.
Auden, Stephen Spender, Theodore Dreiser and Edmund Wilson
to contribute articles. The youthful nature of his and Mr.
Bingham's radicalism was suggested by an article in The New
York Times in 1934 telling of their trying to get diners at
the Waldorf-Astoria to leave in support of striking
waiters. As they scuffled with house detectives, "Robert
Benchley and Dorothy Parker lent strong moral support at a
nearby table," The Times said.

Mr. Rodman published his first poetry book, "Mortal Triumph
and Other Poems," in 1932. He and Mr. Bingham published
"Challenge to the New Deal" in 1935, and in 1938 he
published his "New Anthology of Modern Poetry."

The anthology drew immediate attention for including
selections not usually considered poetry, including
African-American folk songs, light verse, choruses from the
experimental theater and Bartolomeo Vanzetti's last plea to
the court.

In 1938 Mr. Rodman visited Haiti for the first time and
wrote a play about the Haitians' successful slave revolt
against the French in 1803. Nelson Rockefeller, as the
State Department official responsible for Latin America,
delayed his induction into the Army so he could attend the
premiere in Port-au-Prince in 1942. Mr. Rockefeller
believed the play would foster pro-American feelings.

>From 1943 to 1945 Mr. Rodman served in the Office of
Strategic Services, the wartime spy agency.

Mr. Rodman's interest in art deepened after the war, and in
1947 he wrote "Horace Pippin, a Negro Painter in America,"
the first monograph on the artist. He also became
co-director of Le Centre d'Art in Port-au-Prince. It was
the main exhibition center of the naive, voodoo-inspired
art at the time its popularity was blossoming.

Mr. Rodman wrote many travel books as he prowled the
Western Hemisphere in search of folk art. In "Mexican
Journal," published in 1958, he demonstrated a favorite
technique: asking leading personalities remarkably direct
questions. For example, he asked the painter Tamayo what he
thought of the painter Siqueiros, and vice versa.

Mr. Rodman was married to Eunice Clark, Hilda Clausen and
Maia Wojciechowska, the author and onetime matador, all
dead. His wife of 40 years, the former Carole Cleaver, who
is also a writer, survives him along with his daughters
Oriana Rodman and Carla Oschwald, both of Santa Fe, N.M.;
his son, Van Nostrand Rodman of Oakland, N.J.; and three
grandchildren.

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/11/11/obituaries/11RODM.html?ex=1038015751&ei=1&en=06d4df5cbdf4209a