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The Scarlet Professor
The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal | Barry Werth
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During his thirty-seven years at Smith College, Newton Arvin published groundbreaking studies of Hawthorne, Whitman, Melville, and Longfellow that stand today as models of scholarship and psychological acuity. He cultivated friendships with the likes of Edmund Wilson and Lillian Hellman and became mentor to Truman Capote. A social radical and closeted homosexual, the circumspect Arvin nevertheless survived McCarthyism. But in September 1960 his apartment was raided, and his cache of beefcake erotica was confiscated, plunging him into confusion and despair and provoking his panicked betrayal of several friends. An utterly absorbing chronicle, The Scarlet Professor deftly captures the essence of a conflicted man and offers a provocative and unsettling look at American moral fanaticism. From the Trade Paperback edition.
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"This is a fascinating and devastating biography on Newton Arvin, a brilliant Smith College professor (and former lover of Truman Capote) who was fired after thirty-seven years at the school when he was outed after a raid on his apartment. This is an exceptional biography that gets everything right about why Arvin's treatment was so wrong." - @Liberty #FunFridayPhoto

read_diverse_books Loving all these Nonfiction November recs! 8y
tpixie Sounds similar situation as with WWII hero Touring 8y
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