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Harold Edmund Stearns

Born

in Barre, Massachusetts, The United States

May 07, 1891

Died

August 13, 1943

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Harold Edmund Stearns was known as a prolific critic, journalist, editor and essayist during the 1920's and 1930's. He was a member of the American expatriate group in Paris along with other notable exiles such as Ernest Hemingway, Elliot Paul, F. Scott Fitzgerald, Glenway Wescott, John Dos Passos and Robert Coates. It was also Stearns who encouraged New York publisher Horace Liveright to publish Hemingway's In Our Time. For many chroniclers of the era, Stearns was the quintessential expatriate - a symbol of the 'exile' period in American literature.

However, Stearns was also referred to by his intimates as a "picturesque ruin" for what he had left behind him in America was "the broken promise of a brilliant career—essays in The New Republic ...more

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Harold Edmund Stearns’s books

Average rating: 3.78 · 9 ratings · 2 reviews · 5 distinct works

	The Confessions of a Harvard Man : The Street I Know Revisited: A Journey Through Literary Bohemia, Paris & New York in the 20's & 30's by Harold Edmund Stearns, Hugh D. Ford (Editor), Kay Boyle (Preface) really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 1935 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Civilization in the United States; An Inquiry by Thirty Americans really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 3 ratings — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	America and the young intellectual really liked it 4.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1921 — 2 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	Liberalism in America: Its Origin, Its Temporary Collapse, Its Future it was ok 2.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 1919 — 6 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars
	America Now 0.00 avg rating — 0 ratings — published 1922 — 3 editions	Error rating book. Refresh and try again. Rate this book Clear rating 1 of 5 stars 2 of 5 stars 3 of 5 stars 4 of 5 stars 5 of 5 stars

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Quotes by Harold Edmund Stearns (?)

“Something must be radically wrong with a culture and a civilisation when its youth begins to desert it. Youth is the natural time for revolt, for experiment, for a generous idealism that is eager for action. Any civilisation which has the wisdom of self-preservation will allow a certain margin of freedom for the expression of this youthful mood. But the plain, unpalatable fact is that in America today that margin of freedom has been reduced to the vanishing point. Rebellious youth is not wanted here. In our environment there is nothing to challenge our young men; there is no flexibility, no colour, no possibility for adventure, no chance to shape events more generously than is permitted under the rules of highly organised looting. All our institutional life combines for the common purpose of blackjacking our youth into the acceptance of the status quo; and not acceptance of it merely, but rather its glorification.”
― Harold Edmund Stearns, America and the young intellectual

tags: acceptance, adventure, america, civilization, desertion, emigration, experimentation, flexibility, freedom, idealism, institutionalized, looting, lost-generation, possibility, rebellion, revolt, status-quo, youth

15 likes

“We are homeless enough in this world under the best of circumstances without going to any special effort to test our capacity to be more so.”
― Harold Edmund Stearns, The Confessions of a Harvard Man : The Street I Know Revisited: A Journey Through Literary Bohemia, Paris & New York in the 20's & 30's

tags: abroad, home, homeless, homelessness, lost-generation, travel

10 likes

“When distinction of any kind, even intellectual distinction, is somehow resented as a betrayal of the American spirit of equal opportunity for all, the result must be just this terror of individualistic impulses setting us apart, either above or below our neighbours; just this determination to obey without questioning and to subscribe with passion to the conventions and traditions. The dilemma becomes a very real one: How can this sense of democratic equality be made compatible with respect for exceptional personalities or great minds? How can democracy, as we understand it today, with its iron repression of the free spirit, its monotonous standardisation of everything, learn to cherish an intellectual aristocracy without which any nation runs the risk of becoming a civilisation of the commonplace and the second-rate?”
― Harold Edmund Stearns, America and the young intellectual

tags: america, civilization, conventions, distinction, equality, individualism, intellectualism, lost-generation, repression, second-rate, standardisation, traditions

5 likes

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