THOMAS BOYD
Lost Author of the 'Lost Generation'

NEW copy (still in shrinkwrap). Hardcover with dust jacket. (Akron: University of Akron Press, 2006). First Edition. Chronology, extensive notes, bibliography, index, 188 pages.

The first biography of the author of Through the Wheat, one of the finest WWI novels written by an American. Thomas Boyd served in France with 75th Company, 1st Battalion, 6th Marines from July 1917 to April 1919. He participated in actions in the Verdun trenches, at Belleau Wood, Soissons (where he was awarded the Croix de Guerre), St Mihiel, and Blanc Mont (where he was severely gassed).

From the Introduction:
~~~~ Today the phrase the “lost generation” calls to mind romantic images of Hemingway scribbling in a notebook in a Paris café, Fitzgerald on a drunken spree in New York or the south of France, or the members of the Algonquin Round Table arguing about plays, books, and art over lunch. While many Americans recognize the names of Hemingway and Fitzgerald and may have read one of their books, few people know the name or work of American author Thomas Boyd and fewer still would place him alongside the other, more famous authors of the “lost generation.” But of all the American authors of this period, Gertrude Stein’s phrase more aptly describes the life of Thomas Boyd than the lives of his more famous contemporaries. No American author’s life and work were more affected by World War I and the events of the first third of the twentieth century than Boyd’s.
~~~~ Compared to Boyd, Fitzgerald and Hemingway had all the advantages. Both Hemingway and Fitzgerald were born into middle-class or upper-middleclass homes and had at least one devoted parent and the opportunity to receive a first-class education. Boyd grew up a virtual orphan without his father and separated from his mother, and had a sporadic education. During World War I, Fitzgerald served as an officer in a unit that never left the United States, and Hemingway served as ambulance driver in the Italian army. Boyd joined the Marine Corps and served as a combat infantryman at the battles of Belleau Wood, Soissons, Saint-Mihiel, and Blanc Mont. He was wounded in a gas attack and probably suffered from post-traumatic stress. After the war Fitzgerald and Hemingway pursued their dreams of becoming writers without serious thought or concerns about earning money. Boyd struggled to find work and to find his niche in society while keeping alive his desire to be a writer. Eventually, Boyd gained the confidence to try his hand at being a newspaper reporter, and from there he became a literary editor of a Minnesota newspaper. By the time Boyd sat down to write his first book, Fitzgerald had already published his second. During their careers Fitzgerald and Hemingway received high praise for their writing and innovative approaches to fiction, were paid top dollar for their short stories, and earned substantial royalties from the sale of their books. Of all Boyd’s books, only Through the Wheat, his autobiographical World War I novel, received broad and universal critical praise and only three of his books sold more than five thousand copies. Fitzgerald’s and Hemingway’s struggles to sustain literary greatness contributed to their self-destructive behavior. Boyd’s fight to get his work into print and to earn a living as a writer led to his decision to embrace communism. While Fitzgerald and Hemingway eventually committed suicide, either by drink or gunshot, Boyd died of a cerebral hemorrhage brought about in part by wounds he suffered during the war. Unlike Fitzgerald and Hemingway, who strove for literary greatness, Boyd entertained few such notions. Boyd wrote for much simpler reasons. He wrote because he liked being a writer. He wrote in order to earn a living. And he wrote because he had stories that he wanted to tell and believed needed to be told.
~~~~ Boyd never belonged to any school of literature or followed any distinct literary style. If he was a realist it was because realism suited the subject of his books and his personality. If he was a romantic it was because he romanticized people and events from the past that were the subjects of most of his books. His books can be loosely grouped into three categories: autobiographical books, Ohio books, and Marxist propaganda. These three categories represent the things Boyd cared most about: his experiences and those of his family, Ohio and its history, and, at the end of his life, advancing the communist cause. All of his books, regardless of their subject or the category they fit into, are about men placed in trying situations who often emerge dissatisfied and misunderstood. The struggle of the individual against difficult or impossible circumstances is the theme that unified Boyd’s work and reflects the way he saw his own life.
~~~~ And Boyd led a fascinating life. In his thirty-six years, he was an orphan, a military school cadet, a Marine, a recipient of a medal for bravery, a factory worker, a husband, a socialist, a reporter, a literary editor, a father, a friend and protégé of Sinclair Lewis and F. Scott Fitzgerald, a novelist, a biographer, an adulterer, a failed screenwriter, a communist, and a politician. Throughout his life Boyd searched for acceptance, success, and meaning. This quest made him open to the social and cultural movements that changed the United States. In many ways Boyd’s own life mirrored those changes.
~~~~ It is the purpose of this book to preserve a record of Boyd’s life and work for those with an interest in the period and in the “lost generation,” to provide a new perspective on the world of American letters during the 1920s and 1930s, and to encourage a reexamination of the life and work of one of America’s least-known authors.

$40.00