Early Life

Nathan Comments

George Jean Nathan was born on February 14, 1882 in Fort Wayne, Indiana. His father Charles Navret Nathan was of French heritage and his mother Ella Nirdlinger was of German descent. Nathan’s father owned a wine vineyard in France, and a coffee plantation in Brazil, but the majority of his income came from a whole sale liquor business, because of this Nathan’s early education was spent with tutors both in America and abroad. His father left the family when Nathan was a teenager, shortly thereafter Nathan’s mother took the family to Cleveland, Ohio where Nathan spent the remainder of teenage years and graduated from high school. During these years George Jean Nathan received the inspiration for his future career from his two maternal uncles, Charles Frederic Nirdlinger, and Samuel Nixon-Nirdlinger, Charles was a playwright, and Samuel was a theatre manager. Both men whole heartedly encouraged young Nathan to enter into journalism and eventually theatre.

Education

After high school Nathan went to Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and graduated from there in 1904. While attending Cornell Nathan was the editor of the college newspaper the Daily Sun as well as the college humor magazine The Widow. In 1904, after leaving the University there is speculation that Nathan went to Bologna University, but other sources say this is false due to the humor of Nathan and future friend H. L. Mencken; both men wrote false biographies during the 1920s, and some say that Nathan’s dry humor was the inspiration for him wanting it to be believed that he went to “Baloney U.”

Career

In 1904, Nathan began work at the New York Herald, where he stayed for four years before becoming disheartened and left in 1908. After leaving the Herald, Nathan went on to work on the literary magazine The Smart Set. It was during his time at The Smart Set where Nathan made his most important partnership with fellow journalist H. L. Mencken. Mencken and Nathan became the editors of The Smart Set in 1914 and with in a few years became known as the authoritarians for what the “flaming youth” of the 1920s deemed worthwhile reading. Nathan and Mencken chose what turned out to be the most artistic writing of the era. In 1924 Nathan and Mencken founded the American Mercury, but left a year later. In 1932 Nathan was the co founder another enterprise with Eugene O’Neil known as the American Spectator Yearbook, and was the editor from 1932 to 1935. Throughout these years, and till the end of his lifetime, Nathan wrote over 34 books, most were collections of his criticisms, as well as one autobiography.

Convictions

Nathan’s criticisms were marked with sardonic humor and harsh wit that was unknown during his time, he also rarely liked anything. However, when he did like something he backed it whole heartedly. Two examples of this are his aides to both F. Scott Fitzgerald, and Eugene O’Neil. In 1919 while working at The Smart Set Nathan paid Fitzgerald, who at the time had received 122 rejections for 19 of his stories, thirty dollars for his story “Babes in the Wood.” This was Fitzgerald’s first commercial sale as a writer. Afterward, Nathan continued to help Fitzgerald’s career by publishing five more of his stories before Fitzgerald became famous. Later on, to show his thanks, Fitzgerald offered other stories to Nathan before any other publication could have them at a lower cost than what they were worth. From this point on the two men became close friends, and often partied together in New York City. Nathan’s support for Eugene O’Neil started in much the same way. While writing at The Smart Set Nathan wrote rave reviews of O’Neil’s work. In addition to this, Nathan knew of O’Neil’s earlier experimental plays that were being performed in Greenwich Village, and as a result used his connection with John Williams to get Beyond the Horizon produced on Broadway. For the rest of Nathan’s career he was O’Neil’s champion as well as close friend. During these years Nathan was also close friends with other playwrights of the day including Sean O’Casey and George Bernard Shaw.

The Legend

George Jean Nathan was not an ordinary critic. He was a revolutionary, before him no other critic paid attention to the quality of a work’s artistry or intelligence, other critics wrote just about what they liked and felt like that was enough, but Nathan changed criticism. Nathan made criticism matter, he also made sure that his critiques never suffered at the hands of ward politics, he wrote how he felt, and as a result he was disliked by many. George Jean Nathan was indeed a hostile critic who scorned more than he praised, but the few that he did praised he pushed into the forefront of American Drama of the Era, and those were the ones that became giants of the American Renaissance. His which combined both with and cynicism with humor made him the most famous, highest paid, as well as the most read and translated critic in the world. He created and new way to critique drama and as a result helped to develop modern theatre. Nathan’s unique personality lives on in the characters Maury Nobles in Fitzgerald’s The Beautiful and the Damned, and in Addison De Witt in the film All about Eve. Nathan died in 1958, and in his will created the George Jean Nathan Award for drama criticism.

Some of his Books

Mr. George Jean Nathan Presents (1917)

The Critic and the Drama (1922)

Autobiography of an Attitude (1925)

The Testament of a Critic (1931)

Since Ibsen (1933)

Sources

http://www.nndb.com/people/236/000048092/

http://www.arts.cornell.edu/English/nathan/bio.html

http://reading.cornell.edu/nathan.htm