Because I Was Flesh

The Autobiography of Edward Dahlberg

Edward Dahlberg

• Publisher: Tannenberg Publishing
• Year: 2017
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781787203877
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: History

Few books in the history of New Directions have received such praise as came to Edward Dahlberg's autobiography, Because I Was Flesh, which is now on our paperback list.
Alfred Kazin wrote: "A work of extraordinary honesty, eloquence and power, it redeems with one mighty creative act the suffering of a lifetime. It is one of the few important American books published in our day." And Allen Tate spoke of "the hair-raising honesty, the profound self-knowledge, and the formal elegance of the style,...a combination that has not previously appeared in an autobiography by an American." Sir Herbert Read called the book, "A great achievement. A masterpiece. The magnificent portrait of the author's mother is as relentless, as detailed, as loving as a late Rembrandt."
Because I Was Flesh is the story of Edward Dahlberg's life as a child and young man—in Kansas City, in a Cleveland orphanage, in California and New York—and of the remarkable woman, his mother Lizzie, who shaped it. Seldom has there been so ruthless, and yet so tender a dissection of the mother-son relationship. And from it Lizzie Dahlberg, the lady barber of Kansas City, emerges as one of the unforgettable characters of our literature. This is a book of many dimensions, an authentic record from the inferno of modern city life, and a testament of American experience.

Table of contents

• Title page
• TABLE OF CONTENTS
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• I
• II
• III
• IV
• V
• VI
• VII
• VIII
• IX
• X
• XI
• XII
• REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER