[lit-ideas] Re: Lowelliana
- From: "" <dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> (Redacted sender "Jlsperanza@xxxxxxx" for DMARC)
- To: lit-ideas@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Fri, 21 Nov 2014 17:44:15 -0500
In a message dated 11/21/2014 3:49:07 P.M. Eastern Standard Time,
lawrencehelm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx writes: "JL, I reread "Sailing Home from Rapallo"
and
wasn't as disappointed as when I first read it, probably because my
expectations weren't as high. It's okay -- clever -- worth reading perhaps.
I also reread "91 Revere Street." I don't really see his mother's
influence in this piece. I do see the influence of Commander Billy Harkness,
his
father's friend. Lowell writes, "The man who seems in my memory to sit
under old Mordecai's portrait is not my father, but Commander Billy -- the
Commander after Father had thrown in his commission. There Billy would sit
glowing, perspiring, bragging. Despite his rowdiness, he even then breathed
the power that would make him a vice-admiral and hero in World War II."
I attempted to find this hero of World War II Vice-Admiral Billy Harkness
using Google and failed. Wouldn't someone like that have an article
written about him some place? Could Lowell have made him up?
Well, according to this:
http://www.newcriterion.com/articles.cfm/The-achievement-of-Robert-Lowell-16
11
he did!
"Part Two is a twenty-five-page prose piece, “91 Revere Street,” which
provides background and many details that could not easily be conveyed in
verse. This piece has its comic and satirical moments—a side of Lowell not
previously revealed in his writing—and has one purely fictional character,
Billy Harkness, supposedly an Annapolis classmate of Lowell’s father."
Cheers,
Speranza
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