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About Jean Cannon

Cannon assisted a wide variety of students, scholars, and patrons with their research in the book and manuscript collections at the Ransom Center.

A graduation diploma: “The Eviction Notice Written in Latin”

May 16, 2014 - Jean Cannon

Spalding Gray’s “The Graduation Speech I Never Made” reads like a warm-up exercise created by an anxious speechwriter. Its concluding sentences, which include strikeouts and misspelled words, read: “I’m sorry to say I have no advice to give. How could I deign [sic] to give advice when my life is held together like an ill-made birds nest, and I am still surprised as well as shocked by each new dawn?”

This week, The University of Texas at Austin prepares its podiums and fireworks for Saturday’s commencement ceremony, the 131st in the school’s history. [Read more…] about A graduation diploma: “The Eviction Notice Written in Latin”

Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts Tagged With: graduation, Undergraduate, University of Texas

Tomorrow in the theater: “All Quiet on the Western Front”

May 14, 2014 - Jean Cannon

German soldiers enjoy a brief respite from trench duty in a film still from “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

Tomorrow, May 15, the Ransom Center will screen All Quiet on the Western Front (1930), the second film of the World War I Film Series, held in conjunction with the current exhibition, The World at War, 1914–1918. The film will be shown in the Ransom Center’s theater at 7 p.m.

 

All Quiet on the Western Front, an adaptation of Erich Maria Remarque’s 1929 bestselling novel, tells the story of Paul Baümer, a young German soldier who—under tremendous pressure from his war-enthused village—enlists in the German Army and serves on the battlefields of France and Belgium, where he suffers the demoralizing conditions of trench warfare and is wounded in battle. Remarque’s novel is often cited as a landmark in the history of post-WWI disillusionment; its success caused the book market to be flooded with war memoirs and novels written by veterans, many of whom expressed anger and resentment toward former military leaders and insensitive civilians. The 1930 film adaptation of the story was every bit as controversial as the book—which was censored and banned both for its “filth” and its anti-war sentiment. The production and reception history of the film quickly established it as one of the most far-reaching and provocative movies ever made about the experiences of men in battle.

 

Though the public controversy surrounding Remarque’s book certainly made for a precarious film adaptation project, the international success of the novel prompted Universal Pictures to buy the production rights on Armistice Day in 1929. Though many at Universal feared that Remarque’s bleak story of war and its horrors would not appeal to audiences a decade after the war’s end, Universal’s founder, Carl Laemmle, himself a committed pacifist, insisted on the creation of the film. After much in-house dithering, Universal selected Lewis Milestone, a Russian-born immigrant who had become a naturalized American citizen in 1919, to direct the film. Milestone had served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during the First World War, where he had produced army film footage. The original screenplay was edited by a team that included Maxwell Anderson, the author of the WWI stage play What Price Glory?, which had been released as a silent film in 1924 and would later be remade under the direction of John Huston in 1952. Future famed director George Cukor, in his first Hollywood job, was the uncredited dialog director of All Quiet on the Western Front.

 

Milestone and his team had grave difficulty deciding on the cast; more than 200 screen tests were given to a wide variety of actors and actresses. Milestone had the most trouble choosing an actor to play Paul Baümer: should the lead be a known star or an unknown talent, presenting the “everyman” aspect of an infantry soldier? Milestone considered Douglas Fairbanks, Jr., Johnny Harron, and even Erich Maria Remarque himself before settling on the virtually unknown Lew Ayres, whom he came across while looking at screen tests Cukor had discarded.

 

The role of Paul Baümer would become definitive in Ayres’s life and career. While working on the film, Ayres became a dedicated pacifist; years later, when the draft was introduced for World War II, Ayres announced himself a conscientious objector.  His decision provoked the ire of Hollywood, and Ayres was blacklisted by many Hollywood producers during wartime.

 

Milestone was dedicated to creating realistic battle scenes for the film: Universal dramatically exceeded its budget on the movie—in all spending nearly $1.5 million on the film, four times more than its initial projection. Milestone created a large-scale reconstruction of a First World War battlefield in Balboa, California, complete with trenches, barbed wire, and a No Man’s Land. A special crane was imported for the camera, and authentic uniforms were imported from France and Germany. Ex-German Army officers were hired to drill the actors.

 

The elaborate sets and nuanced acting of the film brought wide acclaim in America and Britain when it was released in 1930: Variety called it a “harrowing, gruesome, morbid tale of war, so compelling in its realism, bigness and repulsiveness. . . .Nothing passed up for the niceties; nothing glossed over for the women.” The film won the year’s Academy Awards both for best film and best direction.

 

Such accolades did not extend across Europe, however, where many countries objected to the film for its blatant anti-militarist stance, its graphic nature, and its depiction of the former Central Powers. The film was banned in Italy, Hungary, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. It incited angry demonstrations in Austria. France did not ban the film but censored a scene in which German soldiers spend the night with French women of questionable morals.

 

As may be expected, the film received the most incendiary reactions in Germany. Though Universal prepared a specially dubbed version of the film, edited by Remarque himself (who cut many of the more overt depictions of German militarism), it caused riots in German theaters.  Joseph Goebbels publicly denounced the film, and the leading Nazi newspaper called it “a Jewish lie.” Five days after premiering in Berlin, All Quiet on the Western Front was suppressed by Germany’s Supreme Film Censorship Board. Reels of the film, as well as copies of the book, were publicly burned.

 

Only after several decades would All Quiet appear in full in Germany. In 1984, a dubbed reconstruction of the original cut of the film was broadcast on television in West Germany for the first time and to great success. Nearly 11 million viewers watched the film. The restoration of the film for public view embraced an irony appropriate for a story that criticizes bureaucracy and high command: one of the prints used for the restoration had come from the private collection of noted cinephile and censor Joseph Goebbels, who in the 1930s had burned as many reels of the film as he could, save for his own.

 

Please click on thumbnails below to view larger images.

The book jacket of the unexpurgated American edition of Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1930). The first American edition of Remarque’s novel was expurgated by publisher Little, Brown at the request of the Book-of-the-Month Club, which thought that the original text—which included a lengthy section dedicated to a battalion’s visit to a latrine—would repel the average reader. This first unexpurgated version is featured in the current Ransom Center exhibition, “The World at War, 1914–1918.”
The book jacket of the unexpurgated American edition of Erich Maria Remarque’s “All Quiet on the Western Front” (1930). The first American edition of Remarque’s novel was expurgated by publisher Little, Brown at the request of the Book-of-the-Month Club, which thought that the original text—which included a lengthy section dedicated to a battalion’s visit to a latrine—would repel the average reader. This first unexpurgated version is featured in the current Ransom Center exhibition, “The World at War, 1914–1918.”
Lew Ayres as German private Paul Baümer. Originally a supporter of the war effort, Baümer returns from the front lines to report that, “It’s dirty and painful to die for your country. When it comes to dying for your country, it’s better not to die at all.” The last scene of the film documents Baümer’s death on a parapet on the Western Front; he is shot while reaching his hand toward a butterfly.
Lew Ayres as German private Paul Baümer. Originally a supporter of the war effort, Baümer returns from the front lines to report that, “It’s dirty and painful to die for your country. When it comes to dying for your country, it’s better not to die at all.” The last scene of the film documents Baümer’s death on a parapet on the Western Front; he is shot while reaching his hand toward a butterfly.
German soldiers enjoy a brief respite from trench duty in a film still from “All Quiet on the Western Front.”
German soldiers enjoy a brief respite from trench duty in a film still from “All Quiet on the Western Front.”

Filed Under: Books + Manuscripts, Exhibitions + Events, Film Tagged With: All Quiet on the Western Front, censorship, Erich Maria Remarque, Film, George Cukor, Joseph Goebbels, Lew Ayres, Maxwell Anderson, Paul Baümer, The World at War 1914-1918, World War I Film Series

Knopf archive documents Nobel Prize–winner Alice Munro’s early struggles with the genre of the short story

October 23, 2013 - Jean Cannon

The book jacket of the first Canadian edition of Alice Munro’s first novel, “Lives of Girls & Women” (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryersen, 1971).

On Thursday, October 10, the Nobel Prize Foundation awarded the coveted Nobel Prize in Literature to author Alice Munro, making Munro the 13th woman to win the award since its inception in 1901, and the first ever female winner from Canada. Munro—unlike most previous prize winners—is renowned not for novels or poetry, but for short stories, most of which are drawn from her small-town upbringing in rural Ontario. Peter Englund, the secretary of the Swedish Academy that bestowed the award, called Munro a “master of the contemporary short story,” declaring that throughout her career she “has taken an art form. . . which has tended to come a little bit in the shadow behind the novel, and she has cultivated it almost to perfection.”

 

Upon receiving the award, Munro herself acknowledged her hopes that winning the prize would foster long overdue recognition for the short story as a genre on par with novels, poems, and plays. She stated “I would really hope that this would make people see the short story as an important art, not just something you played around with until you got a novel.”

 

Indeed, documents in the Alfred A. Knopf archive at the Ransom Center reveal that Munro struggled for recognition of the short story as a sophisticated genre from the earliest days of her career. The Knopf collection contains two rejection sheets that address Munro’s work: one for Dance of the Happy Shades (1968), her first book of short stories, and another for Lives of Girls & Women (1971), her first novel. Both books were initially published by the Toronto house McGraw-Hill Ryerson and achieved such accolades in Canada that the firm sought a wider reading audience in the United States.

 

Upon reading Dance of the Happy Shades in 1968, Knopf editor Judith Jones wrote in her rejection sheet that although she “quite love[d] these stories,” she found “nothing particularly new and exciting here.” She also expressed misgivings about Munro’s future ability to develop longer forms of narrative: “her forte is the story; she doesn’t seem to have the larger reach of the novelist.” Two years later, after reading Munro’s first attempt at longer fiction, Jones reiterated her reservation toward an author seemingly not destined to develop into a bestselling novelist; after reading Lives of Girls & Women, she commented, “there’s no question that the lady can write but it’s also clear she is primarily a short story writer,” and anticipated that the book would be “easily overlooked.” Jones rejected the novel, which was published in New York by McGraw-Hill in 1972, to great acclaim. Ironically, the success of Munro’s first novel encouraged McGraw-Hill New York to subsequently publish Munro’s first book of short stories in 1973—nearly five full years after its first appearance in Canada.

 

In an interview with The New Yorker in 2012, Munro stated that “for years and years, I thought that stories were just practice, till I got time to write a novel. . . . Then I found that they were all I could do, and so I faced that.”

 

Since 1968, Munro has published 14 short story collections, almost all of which have been translated and distributed worldwide.

 

Please click on the thumbnails below to view larger images.

 

Knopf editor Judith Jones’s 1969 rejection sheet for Alice Munro’s short story collection, “Dance of the Happy Shades.”
Knopf editor Judith Jones’s 1969 rejection sheet for Alice Munro’s short story collection, “Dance of the Happy Shades.”
The book jacket of the first American edition of “Dance of the Happy Shades” (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973).
The book jacket of the first American edition of “Dance of the Happy Shades” (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1973).
Knopf editor Judith Jones’s 1971 rejection sheet for Alice Munro’s first novel, “Lives of Girls & Women.”
Knopf editor Judith Jones’s 1971 rejection sheet for Alice Munro’s first novel, “Lives of Girls & Women.”
The book jacket of the first Canadian edition of Alice Munro’s first novel, “Lives of Girls & Women” (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryersen, 1971).
The book jacket of the first Canadian edition of Alice Munro’s first novel, “Lives of Girls & Women” (Toronto: McGraw-Hill Ryersen, 1971).
The signed title page of Alice Munro’s 1986 short story collection, “The Progress of Love.” Publisher Douglas Gibson, whose name appears on the page, encouraged Munro to continue writing short stories despite commercial pressure to produce novels. When told that Munro had won the Nobel Prize, Gibson reported that he was “walking on air.”
The signed title page of Alice Munro’s 1986 short story collection, “The Progress of Love.” Publisher Douglas Gibson, whose name appears on the page, encouraged Munro to continue writing short stories despite commercial pressure to produce novels. When told that Munro had won the Nobel Prize, Gibson reported that he was “walking on air.”

Filed Under: Authors, Books + Manuscripts Tagged With: Alfred A. Knopf Inc., Alice Munro, Dance of the Happy Shades, Judith Jones, Lives of Girls & Women, McGraw-Hill Ryerson, Nobel Prize in Literature, Peter Englund, short story

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