The Wages of Expectation

The flamboyant and irascible Edward Dahlberg (1900-1977) wrote twentybooks including, most notably, Because I Was Flesh, his autobiographical masterpiece, which Alfred Kazin called “A work of extraordinary honesty, eloquence, and power.” According to Sir Herbert Read: “A great achievement. The magnificent portrait of the author’s mother is as relentless, as detailed, as loving as a late Rembrandt.”Consigned to the Jewish Orphan Home in Cleveland, Ohio, by his mother, a lady barber, Dahlberg’s vagabond life took him to Berkeley, California, expatriate Paris, in the late twenties, and Greenwich Village; but always back to Kansas City, home of the Star Lady Barbershop, and his mother.Dahlberg’s stormy literary career spanned five decades and brought him into contact (and conflict) with many of the luminaries of his time, including D.H. Lawrence (who wrote the Introduction to his first novel, Bottom Dogs), Granville Hicks, Sidney Hook, James T. Farrell, Ford Madox Ford, Robert Graves, Robert Creeley, Charles Olson, Alice Neel, and Allen Ginsberg. Charles DeFanti was a close friend of Edward Dahlberg for the last four years of Dahlberg’s life, conducted hundreds of interviews for this book and has written an Afterword for this edition.