The BURIED Book Club discussion

(with a nod to Jonathan for first championing her around here)

Margery Bodine Latimer (1899-1932) was an American writer, feminist theorist, and social activist. She moved to New York City before finishing college and became involved in its cultural life. Latimer published two highly acclaimed novels, We Are Incredible (1928) and This is My Body (1930), and two collections of short stories, Nellie Bloom and Other Stories (1929), and Guardian Angel and Other Stories (1932). A later edition of the Guardian Angel collection was published by The Feminist Press as a selection from the two prior collections and is the only book of her that currently remains in print today.

Her formally experimental fiction was greatly influenced by the modernism of the 1920s. Reviewers of the period compared her to Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and D. H. Lawrence. Her work reflects her feminist, socialist, and anti-racist ideals.

Latimer died in childbirth at the age of 33. She had married the poet Jean Toomer only ten months before her death.

"Because of her interest in women as artists and her attention to the details of repressed lives, Latimer has been called both a midwestern Nathalie Sarraute and a feminist Sherwood Anderson." (The Feminist Press)

Contemporary American writer and professor Joy Castro completed a dissertation on Latimer and has published various essays about her. It's unclear how effective these admirable attempts to stoke interest in this buried writer have been. Below are links to a couple of Castro’s essays on Latimer:

• A biographical essay originally published in The Review of Contemporary Fiction

• A short essay about Latimer’s 1924 manifesto ‘The New Freedom’ on experimental writing. Originally published in The Reviewer. The embedded Dropbox link to Latimer’s essay is dead, so I've transcribed the essay in the next comment box.

The New Freedom by Margery Bodine Latimer

(originally published: Reviewer 4 (1924): 139-40)

Everyone knows the sort of person who tells you to break up your thoughts with commas and semicolons instead of periods. And who bewails the ignorance of modern writers. But have you met the man who sends out waving roars from defiant lips because you have murdered a word? You must meet him. Then you will want to keep on murdering words. It will become your favorite pastime. You will spend all your spare hours making coffins and shrouds for your little words before you lay them under the ground. And this isn’t entirely due to the fact that you like to do the things you are told you must not do. It is just that you are finding that words are sometimes more than words, and that their personalities are as flexible as your own. If you have ever watched a word put on its hat and walk down your tongue out into the world you will always want it to do as it pleases. If you believe in vows you will make one at that moment. And now your words will make their own streets and cities and worlds. And you will watch them. If you are grammatical you will shudder at times, but if you are fortunate enough not to be hampered in that way you will sigh long and deeply. Here is ecstasy. Now you are free to add to the race of words as rapidly as you please. Quaint words, crazy words, words with limp arms and broken hearts. Don’t let anyone stop you! Down with birth control!

But he will say:

"Good Lord, there are some two or three hundred thousand words in the English language. Isn’t that enough for you?"

How does one answer? One must look back at those flashing eyes and reply:

"That is not enough for me. One word that I create myself is worth more to me than all the others that have already been created."

"Then don’t bother others with them. We are satisfied with the English language as it stands."

He wants you to wilt but you must not. Instead you must ask him if he minds dying soon because you have been taught manners in the home and cannot bear to harm anyone. And your words hurt his ears! But you are contributing to the race of words and he is only repeating. So you are more important than he is. Ask him often if he minds dying. But then you think of your soul. Your lovely white soul that you put to bed every night. It always weeps when you make others irritable. But one must be strong enough to transcend one’s soul.

Sometime words will have their freedom. They will break away from their drivers and run down the road through the dust. Can’t we give them more space for prancing?

My reviews of Latimer's books:

We Are Incredible
This Is My Body
Nellie Bloom and Other Stories
Guardian Angel and Other Stories

Thanks for the spade-work on these Sean! I still want to check her out, but based on your feedback and the current pricing on the novels I think I'm going to hold off for now.

Understandable given the availability and prices of her books. But if I've done my research correctly, I believe her novels (and probably the rest of her published work) is in the public domain. So it's a matter of whether a publisher will ever take a chance on her. I certainly think that We Are Incredible is worthy of republication.

That's the one I've been most interested in, but it's so pricey on the secondary.

I've finally got a copy of her Guardian Angel which is sitting on the top of the pile ;; very likely my next for short stories. Thanks for the fantastic SPADE=stuff on her, Sean.

Happy to do it. And glad to hear you will be reading her, Nathan.