John Gunther- Assessing Reading and Writing Difficulties
John Gunther
John Gunther, the son of Eugene and Lizette Guenther, was born in Chicago on 30th August, 1901. Both his parents were children of German immigrants. His father was an unsuccessful salesman while his mother became a schoolteacher. John and his sister, Jean, both suffered from ill-health as children. John later recalled: "We were lonely children. We both disliked games." John hated sport and spent about of his spare-time reading books.
Gunther enrolled at the University of Chicago. At starting time he studied Chemistry but after changed to History and English. Gunther'southward pupil friend, Vincent Sheean, later recalled: "The University of Chicago, one of the largest and richest institutions of learning in the world, was partly inhabited by a couple of yard young nincompoops whose ambition in life was to get into the right fraternity or social club, become to the correct parties, and get elected to something or other."
Unlike most of his beau students, Gunther took his studies seriously. He was especially interested in modern literature and was very impressed with Sinclair Lewis, the author of the highly successfulPrincipal Street, which questioned the morality of small town, middle-America. Gunther also liked the work of James Branch Cabell, whose novel, Jurgen, A Comedy of Justice, was suppressed for several years after its publication on grounds of obscenity.
Gunther became a member of staff of The Chicago Maroon, the academy paper. He specialized in book reviews and in 1921 his work was published by various newspapers. The following year, H. L. Mencken deputed an commodity on Higher Learning in America: The Academy of Chicago , for his magazine, Smart Set (April 1922). Soon later on Gunther provided a regular cavalcade for the Chicago Daily News, that had a circulation of 375,000.
In July 1923 Gunther met Helen Hahn, an older sister of Emily Hahn. Gunther fell for her the moment they met. Ken Cuthbertson, argued in Inside: The Biography of John Gunther (1992): "When Helen was working or otherwise engaged, John dated her two older sisters, Rose and Dauphine, and occasionally the younger Emily... John was deeply and hopelessly in love with Helen. He was also jealous of her many other suitors. John was determined to ally Helen, and during a yr of dogged pursuit he became a familiar figure around the Hahn's Due north Side home... Helen eventually made information technology clear to John that she regarded their relationship as generally platonic. He was insistent that it exist something more... She enjoyed his company and spent much time with him, but she did not discover him physically attractive; the chemistry just was non at that place."
Upset past her rejection Gunther decided to resign from his $55-per-week chore with the Chicago Daily News to seek work in England. On 22nd October, 1924, he left the United States on the RMS Olympic . On his arrival he visited the CDN office on Trafalgar Square to meet agency chief Hal O'Flaherty. After a brief word, O'Flaherty offered him a chore equally his assistant. This involved writing several articles about leading writers such as Hugh Walpole, G. M. Chesterton and Frank Swinnerton.
During this menstruation Gunther met Raymond Gram Swing, who was working at the London bureau of the Philadelphia Daily Ledger and the New York Mail. Despite a fourteen-year-age deviation, the ii men became close friends. Swing also introduced Gunther to some other journalist, Dorothy Thompson, who was before long to be appointed as the Berlin agency master. Ken Cuthbertson has pointed out: "Thompson, who was taken with John Gunther, befriended him both equally a boyfriend and a pupil. Theirs was an intimate, albeit platonic (as far as is known), relationship which endured through adept times and bad."
At a meeting addressed past Emma Goldman, Gunther met Rebecca Westward. The two before long became lovers. West described Gunther every bit my "young and massive Adonis with curly blond hair." Gunther, who was 9 years younger than West wrote to Helen Hahn proverb that he was "a niggling agape of her". According to Victoria Glendinning, the writer of Rebecca Westward: A Life (1987): "Rebecca entertained John Gunther, smothered him in maternal affection, and introduced him to writers and loved him dearly in a carefree fashion."
During this period he likewise met the young English critic-novelist, J. B. Priestley, who had just published English Comic Characters (1925). Gunther was very impressed and wrote to Helen Hahn: "Please put him (Priestley) down in some book and underline him with red ink. Then, 20 years from now, thank me for first discovering a cracking critic. I mean this very seriously - Priestley is a comer." Gunther was correct in his assessment and 3 years later he published the best-selling novel, The Skillful Companions.
Rebecca W introduced Gunther to Eric Maschwitz, who worked for a publisher but actually wanted to write novels. The two men presently became close friends and decided to go on holiday together in France. Eric's wife, the actress, Hermione Gingold, too joined them on their visit. Notwithstanding, after a calendar week Maschwitz ran out of coin and was forced to render to London.
While in Paris Gunther met Frances Fineman, a pretty, blonde-haired departer from New York City. The two soon became lovers. Francis also introduced Gunther to Ford Madox Ford and Ernest Hemingway. Gunther described Ford as "England'south most promising young man for near 40 years." He was more impressed with Hemingway and told Helen Hahn: "Put that name down. Ernest Hemingway. He can think straight and he can write English. Heaven knows 2 such joined accomplishments are rare nowadays."
In 1926 Martin Secker agreed to publish Gunther's first novel, The Red Pavilion in London and Cass Canfield at Harper & Brothers in New York City. The novel was based on Gunther'south relationship with Helen Hahn. The Spectator praised the novel as "one of the best, near cultivated and man of recent American books". The New York Times also liked the novel and commented on Gunther's mastery of the "technique of this genuinely sophisticated novel." However, The Saturday Review dismissed the book every bit "exceedingly pretentious and at times irritating". The sales of the volume improved when it was banned in Boston because it was claimed that the novel was "morally objectionable".
Gunther continued to work for Chicago Daily News and became close friends with other American foreign correspondents including Dorothy Thompson, Hubert Knickerbocker, Vincent Sheean, George Seldes, Raymond Gram Swing, Walter Duranty and William 50. Shirer. He was peculiarly close to Shirer and Sheean. Shirer recalled: "We were, the three of us, Chicago kids, and nosotros all had a lot of luck. Jimmy was the best writer of the three of us and a deeper thinker than John or me, I call back."
Gunther married Frances Fineman in Rome on 16th March, 1927. According to Ken Cuthbertson Francis had come from a troubled groundwork: "In 1911 her mother ran off with a well-to-do Texan named Morris Dark-brown, whom she eventually married. She and then took her girl with her when she went to live at her new married man's home in Galveston... Frances had been deeply attached to her natural begetter. Her feelings of betrayal at the breakup of her parents' spousal relationship turned to hatred for a stepfather who sexually abused her. The depth of Frances' emotional trauma manifested itself in later life in the class of a self-destructive ambivalence towards men. She was filled with a seething mistrust and resentment of males, yet she craved the paternal affection that had been denied her."
Gunther spent his spare time writing his second novel, Eden for Ane: An Amusement. "The story is about Peter Lancelot, a small-scale boy with a penchant for dreaming. When a magician named Mr. Dominy causes Peter'southward every want to come up true, the male child promptly wishes himself into an idyllic new globe for which, Mr. Dominy conjures up an island, a garden, a castle, a friend, and a lover. But in a moralistic twist, life in this paradise inevitably goes sour." When it was published by Harper & Brothers in New York City in the fall of 1927 it received poor reviews.
In Baronial 1928 Gunther spent fourth dimension with Walter Duranty in Moscow: He wrote in the Chicago Daily News: "Perhaps the first impression is the virtually full absence of automobiles. The few that nosotros do see are relics of an almost neolithic past, foreign monsters with distorted body lines, paintless fenders, grotesquely fanciful hoods." Gunther later on admitted in his autobiography that he provided data that he picked upwards from these visits to American and British officials: "Naturally, we (American foreign correspondents) cultivated friendships with American officials and diplomats, besides every bit those of other countries."
Gunther fabricated his radio broadcasting debut on Chicago station WMAQ. The Chicago Daily News reported: "The first few words were fuzzy, while engineers had fumbled with equipment, but so Gunther's vocalism was heard with remarkable clarity." One critic claimed that Gunther had a clear radio voice that reminded him of moving picture histrion James Stewart. Gunther considered radio easy work and easy coin simply dismissed broadcasting as not beingness "serious journalism".
Judith Gunther was born on 25th September, 1928. Unfortunately she died iv months later. An autopsy revealed that she was a victim of an undiagnosed thymus ailment known as status thymicolymphaticus. Ken Cuthbertson has pointed out: "Tortured by feelings of guilt at having aborted several unwanted pregnancies, she now became obsessed with the notion that Judy'southward death was a cruel form of divine retribution for her past indiscretions." A son, Johnny, was born in 1929.
Gunther also wrote freelance articles and in October, 1929, Harper'due south Magazine published a much acclaimed commodity on Al Capone and other gangsters in Chicago. Entitled, The Loftier Cost of Hoodlums , Gunther argued that 600 hoodlums had succeeded in terrorizing Chicago's three million citizens. He pointed out that gangsters could have an enemy "bumped off" for every bit piddling every bit $50. However, the going-rate for a newspaper man, like himself, was $1,000. Although his work was existence praised Gunther believed that he was a deeply flawed journalist: "I'm terribly limited. I completely lack intensity of soul. I'thou not original. I'm actually merely a competent observer who works terribly hard at doing a chore well."
In June 1930, Gunther became the Chicago Daily News journalist based in Vienna. He presently became close friends with Marcel Fodor, who worked for the Manchester Guardian. Another friend working in the city was William L. Shirer. The ii men played tennis together. They also explored the metropolis together and Gunther later recalled that it was "the friendliest city in Europe". Shirer argued that Gunther was an first-class announcer: "John Gunther would go to a state and he'd immediately want to know who had the power, who made the decisions, who had the coin, those sorts of things. Wherever he went, he'd ever want to interview the king, or the president, or the prime minister."
Dorothy Thompson and Sinclair Lewis in Vienna in 1930.
Dorothy Thompson, Hubert Knickerbocker, Edgar Ansel Mowrer, Robert Henry Best and George Seldes were other paper friends who likewise spent a lot of time in the city during this catamenia. They used to run across at the Café Louvre. A student, J. William Fulbright, on a visit to the city, later recalled: "Yous could find a group of journalists there most evenings. I remember hearing Fodor hold forth, and he and I became friends. Fodor was a short, stocky man with a mustache, and it was obvious that he was very intelligent; he spoke with swell authority on an phenomenal range of subjects."
Richard Rovere described Gunther in the 1930s as beingness "alpine and blond, with a bulldozer frame, blue eyes, a ruddy complexion, and incongruously delicate features." When he met the flick extra, Tallulah Bankhead for the first time, she said: "I'm in a helluva fix, because I think you're a writer, yet you lot wait similar a football player." Gunther asked why this mattered and she replied: "Because I don't know whether to be witty or sexy".
Gunther's biographer, Ken Cuthbertson, pointed out in Inside: The Biography of John Gunther (1992) that: "John Gunther was a larger-than-life figure who embraced life with passion... Gunther was an amiable, off-white-haired bear of a man. His constant passions in life were not political, but rather skilful visitor, gourmet nutrient and drink, fine clothing, and cute women. As someone one time noted, he had no friends, but best friends." Gunther had expensive tastes and his financial situation was not helped by his refusal to accept coin from the Austrian government paid to well-nigh foreign journalists in return for favorable news coverage.
In 1932 John Gunther was elected president of the correspondents' clan. One of his duties was to suit breezy weekly luncheons for local and visiting celebrities and dignitaries. People that Gunther invited to these luncheons included Oswald Garrison Villard, Margot Asquith, H. Grand. Wells, Rebecca West and Engelbert Dollfuss.
Gunther became infatuated with the young actress, Luise Rainer. Although she was only twenty years old she had already appeared in a couple of German-linguistic communication films and was clearly a future big star. Gunther's friend, William L. Shirer, pointed out that this caused bug for his relationship with his wife, Frances Fineman Gunther: "He vicious for her to an extent that I don't think Frances was pleased. John had a roving center and liked to flirt." Rainer subsequently recalled: "He was tall, husky, and blond. He was, of form, very bright and had a groovy sense of humor. I idea he was a terribly nice fellow... However, I must say something but and brusquely: I was never in dear with him, or annihilation of that kind."
In the summertime of 1934 Gunther and Marcel Fodor visited the birthplace of Adolf Hitler. In the Austrian town of Braunau, they sought out and interviewed Hitler'southward surviving relatives, including a disabled get-go cousin, an aged and poverty-stricken aunt, and his godfather. This was the first time foreign journalists had delved into Hitler's background. The Gunther-Fodor betrayal appeared in several European newspapers and magazines. Hitler was furious and instructed the Gestapo that the two men were to exist hanged if they were caught.
On 25th July, 1934, a group of 144 well-armed Austrian Nazis mounted a putsch aimed at toppling the authorities of Engelbert Dollfuss past storming the chancellery. Gunther was 1 of the first journalists on the scene: "The tawny oak doors were close and a few policemen were outside, but otherwise nothing seemed wrong." However, the right-fly fanatics were inside the building. Faced with the prospect of surrendering or fighting to the death, the rebels laid down their artillery in render for a hope of safe passage out of the building. Gunther raced upstairs to discover that Dollfuss had been shot in the throat at betoken blank range and had bled to death. Gunther wrote: "His murder marked the entrance of gangsterism into European politics on an international basis... Dollfus died to keep anarchy out of Primal Europe; and this is his best memorial."
In 1934 Cass Canfield of Harper & Brothers approached Hubert Knickerbocker, who had recently won the Pulitzer Prize for reporting, and suggested that he wrote a serious and comprehensive book nigh Europe. Knickerbocker was in the heart of another project and replied: "Try John Gunther. He'southward the only one with the brains, the brass, and the gusto to write the book you desire." Gunther too said he was too decorated. In his book, A Fragment of Autobiography (1962) Gunther wrote: "I persisted in saying no to the project, and finally Miss Baumgarten asked me what, if whatsoever, financial advance would induce me to change my mind. To cut the whole matter off, I named the largest sum I had ever heard of - $5,000." Canfield said yes and in his autobiography, Up, Downwards and Effectually (1972) argued: "I had the potent feeling that the book would non only sell just blaze a new trail."
Gunther subsequently recalled in the Atlantic Magazine how he did his research for the volume. This included having meetings with his many contacts in Europe. "I should equip myself to be able to requite data, since information technology's always easier to ask for something if you lot offer something in exchange. Journalism is really a process of barter between two people who each know something and discover it to their reward to exchange or pool their knowledge." His wife, Frances Fineman Gunther, helped him with the research and in 1935 he visited London, Paris, Rome, Berlin, Warsaw and Moscow. Gunther also met Hubert Knickerbocker who was based in Nazi Frg at the fourth dimension. Knickerbocker shared his vast shop of immediate inside data on Adolf Hitler, Joseph Stalin and Benito Mussolini.
Gunther finished his 190,000-word manuscript in only seven months. He typed the last words in the early hours on 2nd December, 1935. He celebrated past drinking "about a dozen beers" and dancing in the streets. It was typeset but Gunther connected to send updates until just before information technology was printed. This included the news that Anthony Eden had replaced Samuel Hoare in the British authorities.
Cass Canfield published the volume in its entirety in the United States only decided to hire three British lawyers to look at the manuscript before information technology was published in London. Several passages were removed including a reference to Joseph Goebbels "Goebbels never kicks a man until he's downwards". Another passage that was not published in Britain was the comment that Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Spousal relationship of Fascists, was the "head of a dwindling motion". The British regime made information technology clear that they wanted nada published if it damaged Anglo-German language relations. It was the aforementioned business concern that kept Winston Churchill from being allowed to announced on British Broadcasting Corporation radio programs.
The 510-page Inside Europe was published in January 1936. It included a 4,000-give-and-take profile of Adolf Hitler. As the writer of Within: The Biography of John Gunther (1992) has pointed out: "The profile revealed in a matter-of-fact way the baroque character of a human who eschewed friends, coin, sexual practice, religion, and concrete activity in his Machiavellian quest for unbridled power; Hitler emerged as a unsafe, unpredictable ascetic, a peasant with insatiable drives." Hitler was outraged and banned the book in Nazi Germany.
The publisher, Cass Canfield, later admitted: "We figured that Inside Europe ought to sell just nearly 5,000 copies. That way, nosotros'd accept paid off our part of the advance and fabricated a fairly decent profit." The kickoff print run of 5,000 was sold out within days. The main reason for this was that the book received very proficient reviews. Raymond Gram Swing, writing in The Nation, pointed out that Inside Europe filled a real need at a fourth dimension when America was reawakening from its cocky-imposed isolationism. "The vigor and near impudent candor of this book marking information technology as distinctly American. I cannot imagine a homo of any other nationality writing information technology." Lewis Gannett of the New York Herald Tribune argued that Inside Europe was the "liveliest, all-time-informed picture of Europe's chaotic politics that has come my way in years."
Eventually full sales reached 500,000 in the Us and Britain. Foreign sales amounted to at to the lowest degree 100,000. George Seldes later pointed out: "Everybody was envious of Gunther'due south success. Nosotros all asked ourselves why we hadn't thought of writing the aforementioned kind of book. I guess maybe many of the states had, and that's why some people felt they could accept done a better job than Gunther did. But the fact was that you lot really had to hand it to him - he did an excellent job."
The publication of Inside Europe turned John Gunther into a well-known figure. The journalist, Richard Rovere, claimed in The New Yorker that in the tardily 1930s Gunther occupied an exalted position alongside Franklin D. Roosevelt and Charles Lindbergh as "one of a half-dozen or so authentic international celebrities" of the era. It is estimated that his syndicated reports, which were carried by more than 100 newspapers across North America and had a major influence on public opinion.
Gunther held strong opinions about the Spanish Civil War and agreed with Archibald MacLeish that information technology was a "political battlefield between democracy and reaction". In June 1938 he attended the League of American Writers' Congress at Carnegie Hall in New York City. Speakers included Donald Ogden Stewart, Earl Browder, Ernest Hemingway and Joris Ivens.
Cass Canfield was and so pleased with the sales of Inside Europe that he commissioned Inside Asia. After a long tour of the region the manuscript was delivered to Canfield in Apr 1939. It was published 2 months afterward. The New York Times reviewer claimed that the volume provided a "vivid panorama". The New Yorker praised the book equally "a aspersion" and added that it was "the plain duty of all anti-parish-pump citizens to send due east of Suez at once with John Gunther every bit their dragoman". Time Magazine was more restrained in its review describing the volume as "lively, gossipy, not as well profound but interesting encyclopedia of present-day Asia." The book received a hostile reception in Britain with several reviewers lament nearly his "anti-British Empire sentiments".
On the outbreak of the Second Earth War Gunther was interviewed by Walter Winchell, who at the time was arguing in favour of United States intervention confronting Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini. Gunther argued: "I would exist the greatest isolationist in the land, if isolation were possible, but it isn't. We accept to negotiate with these dictators, and to do that we take to accept some shoulders and muscles to show that we have to be listened to."
As Gunther was one of the leading figures arguing for intervention, was invited to London and on 13th September 1939, Winston Churchill, who had recently entered the regime as First Lord of the Admiralty, agreed to an interview. Gunther later recalled: "Churchill... looked like an extraordinary kewpie doll made of atomic number 26 and shiny pink leather. I noticed that his powerful trunk rose atop sparse legs." Churchill was mainly interested in what he had discovered in his recent trip to the Soviet Wedlock. "There were not many observers in London then who had been in Moscow a fortnight before and who could give a firsthand account of Russian moods and challenges."
John Gunther died on 29th May, 1970.
Chief Sources
(1) John Gunther, Atlantic Magazine (April, 1937)
I should equip myself to be able to requite information, since it'south always easier to inquire for something if you offer something in commutation. Journalism is really a procedure of barter betwixt two people who each know something and find information technology to their reward to exchange or pool their cognition.
(2) George Seldes, interview with Ken Cuthbertson (1st November, 1986)
Everybody was envious of Gunther's success. Nosotros all asked ourselves why we hadn't idea of writing the same kind of volume. I guess possibly many of us had, and that'south why some people felt they could have done a meliorate chore than Gunther did. But the fact was that you really had to mitt information technology to him - he did an excellent job.
(3) Cass Canfield, Upward and Down and Effectually (1971)
Gunther's next volume was Inside Asia. When we discussed this volume in its initial stages, I ventured the ascertainment that, while he'd spent several years in Europe, he'd never been farther east than Beirut, where lie had stayed only a few days. He replied that he thought prevarication could bone upwardly on Asia - which he did. As was his habit, lie read intensively before starting to write, and talked to academic experts as well as to people in Washington before going on his trip. At one point I introduced him to Nathaniel Peffer, a Columbia professor and an dominance on the Far East, and, later a long lunch during which Gunther scribbled like mad on a big yellow pad, I suggested that lie cancel his trip to Japan because it couldn't peradventure provide him with more data than he had obtained from Peffer.
Gunther was 1 of the most bright characters I have ever known, and 1 of the about indefatigable workers. He was helped enormously by his beautiful and intelligent married woman Jane, an astute observer with a souvenir for factual accuracy.
I recollect sitting at a cafe in the Piazza San Marco in Venice and noticing a lovely young woman striding toward me, followed by a tired, droopy homo; they were the Gunthers. John complained bitterly at having been dragged through the Accademia picture gallery lie was done in... A fortnight passed and the scene was repeated, in contrary. This fourth dimension a brilliant-looking fellow walked briskly toward us, followed past a tired lady dragging her feet; the Gunthers again. During those two weeks they had been traveling in Yugoslavia, where John had interviewed scores of people. The explanation of the reversal in their roles was that the endless working sessions in Yugoslavia had acted on John like a shot of adrenalin, while Jane had found the experience utterly exhausting.
I of Gunther'south remarkable qualities was his timing. Again and once more it looked as if one of his Within books would be hopelessly out-of-date by the fourth dimension it was published, but there was a piffling alarm clock tucked abroad somewhere in the back of John's head which never seemed to fail him. He started Within Europe just as Hitler was emerging as a dominant figure; he began Inside Africa when the nations of that continent were in the process of breaking away from colonization. An astonishing man.
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