[Steve Lichtman is having some trouble getting his mailer
configured, and asked me to forward this for him]
>From:
Sllichtman@aol.com
>Date: Tue, 20 Mar 2001 16:28:50 EST
>Subject: (no subject)
According to the introduction to the Prion edition of March's
"The Bad Seed" (available for under five pounds/$8 from
amazon.co.uk; there is also an Ecco press edition available
from amazon's US site for under $10 - not sure if its the
same as the UK edition I have), the book was published in
April 1954 to great success: big sales, critical acclaim from
the Atlantic Monthly and the New York Times, and praise from
the likes of Hemingway, Dos Passos, Carson McCullers and
Eudora Welty.
Maxwell Anderson's stage version of the story opened on
Broadway at the end of 1954 and ran for 322 performances, and
two years later Mervyn LeRoy filmed the story for Warner
Bros. using most of the original stage cast. The film
received four Oscar nominations, though critics lamented the
studio's substituting a happy ending for a . . . not-so-happy
ending. According to Elaine Showalter, who wrote the
introduction to the Prion edition, and where I'm getting all
this information from, it was March's book that introduced
the phrase and image of the "bad seed" to connote an evil
child.
March died of a heart attack in May, 1954, soon after
publication of the book. He was already sixty years old, and
prior to "The Bad Seed" was the author of many short stories
and novels over the years published to no great acclaim.
Apparently there should be in existence somewhere "A William
March Omnibus", edited by his friend Alastair Cooke, and
published in 1954. There is also apparently a critical
biography called "The Two Worlds of William March", published
in 1984 by Roy S. Simmonds. March was born in 1893 in Mobile,
Alabama (the setting of "The Bad Seed").
March's given name was William Edward Campbell. He spent his
youth in Alabma, and his family went from wealth to modest
means during his childhood, a turn of events which seems to
have left its scars. March moved to New York in 1916, where
he lived with his sister before enlisting in World War I.
March served with distinction in France and won several
medals. After the war he had a successful career with a
shipping firm, making a lot of money. His work for the
company included stints overseas, notably in Berlin.
March eventually moved to London where he underwent
psychoanalysis in the 1930s. His analyst, Edward Glover,
encouraged him to move back to New York and resume writing.
March did that, and his Southern Gothic novels garnered him a
name in New York literary circles, though not any commercial
success. However, his financial success in business enabled
him to devote himself to writing and to become a figure in
New York's literary and party life in the 1940s. He also
became a discriminating art collector.
According to Showalter, March led a troubled life, suffering
several severe breakdowns early on and becoming increasingly
alone and bizarre over they years, obsessed with sex and
criminality. He was obsessed with the sex lives of his
friends and of strangers, but very reticent about his own.
Clearly he was homosexual, but very conflicted about it (not
surprising given his birthplace and era) when not outright
repressing it
(homosexual repression is a theme of the book). He apparently
liked to look out his Central Park Window with a pair of
binoculars and watch the comings and goings and sexual
pairings in the park below.
March suffered another serious breakdown in 1946 and spent
six months in a Southern sanitarium. He moved to New Orleans
in 1950 and settled in the French Quarter. He finished "The
Bad Seed", which he had been working on
(and talking to friends about) for years. The manuscript was
rejected as too shocking by Little, Brown, but accepted by
Rinehart with minor changes.
Amazon.co.uk also has available inexpensively the play based
on the novel. Amazon's US site also has listed a University
of Alabama Press paperback edition of "Company K", March's
tales from WWI.
--Steve Lichtman
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