The Broken Tower (Magill’s Literary Annual 1991-2005)
At a glance:
- Author: Paul Mariani
- First Published: 1999
- Type of Work: Literary biography
- Time of Work: 1899-1932
- Setting: Cleveland and Akron, Ohio; New York City; Washington, D.C.; Isle of Pines; London; Paris; Marseilles; Mexico City
- Principal Characters: Harold Hart Crane, Clarence Arthur Crane, Grace Edna Hart Crane, Emil Opffer, Jr., Otto Kahn, Yvor Winters, William Carlos Williams
- Genres: Nonfiction, History, Biography
- Subjects: New York, North America or North Americans, Northeast, U.S., United States or Americans, France or French people, Gay men, Homosexuality or homosexuals, Authors or writers, New York City, Midwest, Ohio, Poetry or poets, Paris, 1910’s, 1920’s, 1930’s, London, Mexico or Mexicans
- Locales: New York, NY, Paris, France, Washington, D.C., London, England, Cleveland, OH, Akron, OH, Mexico City, Mexico, Marseilles, France, Isle of Pines
To understand Hart Crane’s work, it is necessary first to appreciate that he was homosexual and, second, to realize what it meant to be homosexual in the United States in the early twentieth century. Three Crane biographies that precede The Broken Tower—Philip Horton’s Hart Crane: The Life of an American Poet (1937), Brom Weber’s Hart Crane: A Biographical and Critical Study (1948), and John Unterecker’s massive Voyager: A Life of Hart Crane (1969)—are valuable in their own rights, but all the authors deal only obliquely with the salient question...
[The entire page is 1909 words long]
Join eNotes
Over 3,500 study guides, question and answer forums, literature criticism, reference content, and much more!
