The Scarlet Professor: Newton Arvin: A Literary Life Shattered by Scandal (Stonewall Book Award Winner) Paperback – March 5, 2002

This was a fascinating biography of a man who was both a scholar and a tortured soul. As a Smith alumna, I was unaware of Newton Arvin or his contributions to understanding the motivations of writers like Hawthorne, Melville and Emerson. Barry Werth does a marvelous job helping the reader to understand the challenges that Arvin faced as a closeted gay man in this society in the 1920's through the early sixties. I was disappointed about the way Smith College was portrayed but I realize that this was a different time and I may have my own biases. This would not have come across my radar had it not been for our discussion group. The book is a great read and will provide thought-provoking discourse for any discussion group or class on human behavior in the social environment.

Written with the eye and ear of a contemporary witness, the story of Professor ARVIN and the medieval witch-hunt that surrounded him and scraped him and ultimately defeated him unfolds in a way that honors the protagonist without glorifying him.Part biography, part history, part journalism, the book was researched meticulously and reaches surprisingly far.

I read this book and wrote a review for it for 'The Denver Rocky Mountain News' newspaper. You can see the full review by going to to the paper's web site, but the long and short of it is that this was not a very good book. Although the life of Arvin and his persecution is somewhat interesting from a historical and societal standpoint, Arvin, as a person, is far from interesting. Or even likeable. Barry Werth does nothing to try to make Arvin likeable, or even somewhat tolerable. Also, Werth makes assertions about the possibility of an affair between Nathanial Hawthorne and Herman Melville in the book, but never backs this up beyond one line written in a letter by Hawthorne in which he says that Melville is a magnet he is drawn to. Well, this could of course have been a reference to a physical attraction between the two. It could also have been a reference to how Hawthorne was drawn to the intellect and brooding nature of the author of "Moby Dick". Werth, though, never considers this second possibility, and never backs it up with any other source material or even attempts to find parallels between this statement and anything that went on in Newton Arvin's life. Overall, this was somewhat interesting to read, but was so very infuriating because of the shoddy reporting and research.

This is a well crafted biography of an important, but now almost forgotten American literary critic, [Fredrick] Newton Arvin. Although somewhat dated now, Arvin produced a series of ground breaking literary biographies of mid-19th Century authors including Herman Melville. During his productive years he was an English professor at Smith College (then an elite all girl Vermont college). As this biography makes clear, although quite successful as both a teacher and author, Arvin was dogged his entire life by his homosexuality which was like a dark shadow always ready to engulf him.Indeed as Werth implies the homosexuality that was a hidden part of Arvin's entire adult life contributed to his frequent mental collapses and breakdowns, but also may have allowed him to have brilliant insights into the lives of his subjects such as Walt Whitman (an acknowledged homosexual) and Hawthorne and Melville (apparently both sexually ambiguous writers).Arvin was also what used to be called `a man of the left' and although he found the American Communist Party too intellectually bankrupt for his tastes, he was a `fellow traveler' who supported labor and socialist movements. Yet he also tried to be objective in his analysis of American poetry and fiction and was a knowledgeable, conscientious, and honest teacher of young ladies. His political views colored his scholarship, but did not on the whole distort it.Arvin, who was born in 1900, lived his life in a period in which homosexuality was considered either a crime or a mental illness or both. In his younger days he alternately fought his desires or gave into them in various clandestine relationships. Apparently Arvin also had an aversion to emotional intimacy that would doom him to loneliness his entire life. His life ended tragically in disgrace in 1960 when he was arrested for possessing what postal authorities claimed was 'homosexual pornography'. By that time, he was mentally and physically too fragile to deal with this sort of idiocy and died in 1963.Werth is to be commended for producing a good biography of a 20th Century American intellectual who produced serious critical analysis of works of the best mid-19th Century American authors.

Great. Just what I expected.

Well written account of the life of Newton Arvin, writer, scholar and educator and the horrible scourge of witch hunts that occurred after the McCarthy era . Very realistic depiction of how so many careers and lives were ruined by campaigns to expose gays in the field of education by right wing and religious intolerance. Many of those convicted and exposed, later had those convictions dismissed or overturned, but not before the damage was done. Many people never recovered from the injustice done to them by these scourge campaigns. A strong documentation of the damage done by intolerance.

An intriguing and fascinating (but also sad) story of one of the 'mentors' of Truman Capote. Very far from being a 'cut and paste job' - this is an example of how to do deep research, not wear it too heavily on your sleeve, and present it in a captivating and riveting style. A sympathetic approach (but not overly so). It created a sense of sympathy in me for Newton Arvin but Werth does not obscure facts and recollections which show that Arvin could be frustrating. A small gem of a book.