Irwin Shaw 1913-1984

One of the most prominent American novelists, short-story writer and playwright of the twentieth century, Irwin Shaw (real name Irwin Gilbert Shamforoff), was born on 27 February, 1913 in Bronx, New York in the family of immigrants from Russia. Irwin left Brooklyn College after failing in freshman mathematics, worked in a cosmetic factory, a department store and a furniture company as a message boy. During his life he tried different other jobs - he worked as a driver, a professional football player, and a teacher.

On his return to the college he worked in the students' magazine and wrote plays for a dramatic society. After graduation from, the college in 1934 with a bachelor's degree he went to Hollywood to create screenplays. Later he remembered that he had been writing under a great influence of Ernest Hemingway whom he considered to be his literary teacher.

During World War II Irwin Shaw served in the American Army, fought in Northern Africa and Europe, and witnessed the liberation of Paris.

Irwin Shaw took up writing realizing that it was his inborn vocation. In 1936 he completed his first work, the play Bury the Dead and enjoyed country-wide popularity at once. It was a rapid-fire grotesque, an antiwar drama: killed soldiers revolted against being buried, they came up outside their burial places giving no peace to the alive with a call to join them in their march against human annihilation. Then appeared his other works: a collection of short stories Sailor Off the Bremen (1939), the novels Five Decades (1940), Young Lions (1948). After a short break there appeared The Troubled Air (1951), Rich Man, Poor-Man (1970).

Rich Man, Poor Man. It is a story about the fate of the Jordache family, the parents Axel and Mary Jordache and their three children -Tommy, Rudolf and Gretchen. Nurtured on traditional views of American success, each pursues the illusion of happiness in his own way, determined to achieve his "brightright." Starting with their teen-age years in a Hudson River town, Irwin Shaw follows the Jordaches from Greenwich Village to Hollywood, from a small town in Ohio to a luxury resort in the Mediterranean. Robert Cromie wrote in Saturday Review, that "Irwin Shaw has the gift of all great storytellers: he creates characters as genuine as that odd couple across the street, the curious patrons of the corner bar, the tragic figures from the headlines. They are individuals who walk into the living room of your mind, ensconce themselves, and refuse to be dislodged."

Axel Jordache fled from Germany where he had killed a man, robbed him and came to America. "God bless America. He had killed to get there," Axel thinks to himself. Here he marries a young girl Mary Pease. But there was never love between them. "It was only a year after the wedding, but he already hated her... She knew that she had entered upon her sentence of life imprisonment." Problems rolled over very fast. Gretchen, a neat, proper, beautiful girl (as Rudolph thought about her) after an unsuccessful try to sell her body to two black soldiers whom she attended at the hospital where she worked after her job at the Boylan Brick and Tile Works for the offer of eight hundred dollars, became the mistress of Teddy Boylan, a man without enthusiasm, self-indulgent and cynical. Later she got married to Willie, but the marriage was not happy either. She succeeded later in theatrical and cinema business somehow. Thomas (who smelled like a wild animal, as Rudolph said about him) had soon to leave school and leave his family and the town. He was sent to live at his uncle's place. But there too he got into trouble and was accused of statutory rape. His father had to go there to settle the matter. He paid five thousand dollars to the man to free Thomas from prison. But he did that not for Thomas. He did it for Rudolph. He didn't want his beloved son to start life with a brother in a jail which could ruin him as a promising successful politician and businessman. Thomas was like a rolling stone, getting all the time from one trouble into another, and finally was killed, leaving his son Wesley to move, on his own in the cruel world.

After Axel spent all the money he had saved during his life keeping a bakery in a rented house, he and his wife quarreled. It sent Axel into grief and depression. He even thought that maybe he would meet an Englishman here in America, would kill him as he had killed a man in Germany, and get back from where he came. He got too tired to live. For the last time he made the portion of rolls. Before putting them in the oven, "he kneaded the poison into the roll thoroughly, then reshaped the roll and put it back into the pan. My message to the world, he thought." He left the bakery, went to the river, got in the boat and let it be carried in the middle of the stream, and drowned himself. His body had never been found.

Rudolph had a talent for music and played the trumpet in the school band. He was handsome, well-mannered, well-spoken, admired by his teachers, affectionate. He was the only child in the family who 'kissed his mother when he left for school and when he came back. He was the hope of the family, unlike the younger son, Thomas, and their daughter - they were, as mother says "inhabitants of her house. Rudolph is her blood". He really succeeded in life and became the Mayor of Whitby. He cared about his parents, and he tried to help Gretchen and Thomas in their life. When Thomas intended to return five thousand dollars, he owed to the family, the money collected for the education of Rudolph, he didn't take it. He put the money in the bank in Thomas's name. It made the capital of sixty thousand dollars soon for Thomas. But it didn't bring him happiness, it didn't save him from death he was coming to all his life.

The deep changes in the life of the American society in the late 70s inspired Shaw to create Evening in Byzantium and Bread Upon the Water.

Irwin Shaw is also known as a playwright. He is the author of such works as Plain People, The Brooklyn Idyll, Sons and Soldiers, The Assasin.

Irwin Shaw spent the last years of his life in France and Switzerland where he mostly wrote memoirs and critical essays. In 1979 he visited the USA and it proved the creation of the novel The Top of the Hill. Some other works of Irwin Shaw are novels Voices of a Summer Day, Lucy Crown, Two Weeks in Another Town and short story collections Welcome to the City, Act of Faith, Mixed Company, Love on a Dark Street.

Irwin Shaw died on 16 May 1984 in Switzerland.

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