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Irwin Shaw
1913-1984
original name Irwin Gilbert
Shamforoff
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Prolific
American playwright, screenwriter, and author of
international bestsellers, of which
the
best-known
are
THE
YOUNG
LIONS
(1948),
one
of
the
most
famous
novels
about
World
War
II,
RICH
MAN, POOR MAN (1970),
and BEGGAR, THIEF (1977). Critics have generally
agreed that Shaw was a
masterful
storyteller,
but
also
observed
that
his
commercial
fiction
hurt
his
literary
reputation.
As a short story
writer with the skill to create memorable
characters Shaw have been compared
to
Hemingway, John Cheever, and John O'Hara.
'Segal,' said the major, 'after this
war is over, it will be necessary to salvage
Europe. We
will all have to live
together on the same continent. At the basis of
that, there must be
forgiveness. I know
it is impossible to forgive everyone, but there
are millions who never did
anything...'
'Like you?'
'Like me,'
said the German. 'I was never a member of the
Party. I lived a quiet middle-class
existence with my wife and three
children.'
'I am getting very
tired,' Segal said, 'of your wife and three
children.'
(from Retreat and
Other Stories, 1970)
Irwin
Shaw was born in Bronx in New York to Jewish
immigrants from Russia. His parents, William
Shamforoff and Rose (Tompkins)
Shamforoff, changed their family's name to Shaw
and moved to
Brooklyn, where Irwin
spent most of his childhood. He was educated at
the Brooklyn College and
graduated
with
a
B.A.
in
1934.
During
these
years
Shaw
wrote
for
the
school
newspaper
and
started
his
career
as
a
writer
at
age
21
by
producing
scripts
for
radio
shows,
adapting
episodes
for
Tracy
rise
from
their
graves,
was
produced
in
1936
as
his
screenplay,
THE
BIG
GAME.
Shaw's
co-operation
with
experimental Group Theatre continued in 1939 with
THE GENTLE PEOPLE. In 1946 his play THE
ASSASSIN
closed
early
due
to
negative
criticism
and
he
abandoned
playwriting
for
a
number
of
years.
Between 1947 and 1948 he wrote drama
criticism for
New Republic
,
in Washington D.C.
In the late 1930s
Shaw wrote stories for such magazines as
The New Yorker
and
Esquire
. These
'socially
conscious'
tales
also
appeared
in
book
form,
THE
SAILOR
OFF
THE
BREMEN
in
1939
and
WELCOME
TO THE CITY in 1942.
The collections contain some of his best works,
including 'The Sailor off
the Bremen',
'The Girls in their Summer Dresses', 'Second
Mortgage', and 'The Eighty-Yard Run'.
They
are
now
considered
20th-century
American
classics
as
enduring
as
those
by
John
Cheever,
John
O'Hara, and J.D. Salinger.
During World War II Shaw served in the
U.S. Army, becoming a warrant officer. In 1947-48
he was
an
instructor
in
creative
writing
at
New
York
University.
Shaw's
war
experiences
in
Europe
provided
the
basis
for
his
novel
THE
YOUNG
LIONS
(1948),
which
became
a
huge
success.
Shaw
served
in
North
Africa
and
Europe
and
witnessed
the
liberation
of
Paris
as
a
member
of
a
documentary
film
unit.
The
Young
Lions
is a panorama of the conflict in
Europe, told from the perspectives of one German
and two American soldiers.
In 1951 Shaw's second novel was
published, THE TROUBLED AIR, depicting the rise of
McCarthyism.
In
the
same
year
he
left
the
United
States,
living
for
the
next
25
years
in
Europe
in
such
locations
as Paris, the
Riviera, and various Swiss resorts. He continued
to write several bestsellers,
including
TWO
WEEKS
IN
ANOTHER
TOWN
(1960),
EVENING
IN
BYZANTIUM
(1973),
which
depicts
a
Hollywood
producer who goes
to Cannes to test his screenplay, and RICH MAN,
POOR MAN (1970), a modern Cain
and Abel
story, that was also adapted into a television
series. The story follows an upstate New
York family and takes the reader from
the post-war years to the troubles and
complexities of the
present. In
ACCEPTABLE LOSES (1982) a small incident changes
the life of the protagonist. Roger
Damon, a literary agent, receives a
mysterious telephone call. It starts the process
of Damon's
self-examination, in which
he must face his past and his mistakes, a plot
device Shaw employs
in his earlier
novel BREAD UPON THE WATERS (1981), in which a
rich lawyer starts to fulfil the
wishes
of an ordinary family but his generosity has
unforeseen consequences.
essence,
then,
Bread
Upon
The
Water
is
a
summation
of
what
Mr.
Shaw
has
learned
to
date
about
the world surrounding
him and the people who inhabit it. He has learned
a great deal and has
thoughtfully
assimilated it. In today's critical climate, the
word ''professional'' has taken
on
negative overtones. Irwin Shaw is a thorough
professional, a word used here with admiration
and respect.
(Evan Hunter in The New York Times,
August 23, 1981)
Two Weeks
in Another Town
is the story of Jack
Andrus, a Hollywood star and an alcoholic, at the
crossroads of his life. In the course
of two weeks he is forced to relieve his past in
the
international film colony in Rome;
Andrus encounters his old wife Carlotta, and a new
mistress,
the young and beautiful
Veronica. He is also reunited with his former
friend, the brilliant and
corrupt movie
director who put Andrus at the top of his
profession, and then helped to destroy
him. The book was adapted for the
screen in 1962.
go from
success to success. In the American artist, of any
kind, it is the equivalent of the
optimistic businessman's greed of the
continually expanding economy. The intermittent
failure,
the cadenced rise and fall of
the level of a man's work, which is accepted and
understood by
the European artist, is
fiercely rejected as a normal picture of the
process of creation. A dip
is not a dip
to an American artist, it is a descent into an
abyss, an offence against his native
moeurs
and
his
compatriots'
most
dearly
held
beliefs.
In
America,
the
normal
incidence
of
failure,
either real or imagined, private or
public, which must be expected in such a chancy
and elusive
endeavour as writing novels
or putting on plays or directing motion pictures
in regarded, even
by the artist
himself, as evidence of guilt, as self-
betrayal.
(from Two Weeks in
Another Town)
Shaw
received
several
award,
including
O
Henry
awards
for
'Walking
Wounded'
(1944)
and
'Gunner's
Passage' (second prize, 1945), National
Institute of Arts and Letters grant (1946), and
Playboy