Dahlberg, Edward (1900–1977), born in Boston, the illegitimate son of the Junoesque owner of the Star Lady Barbershop of Kansas City, as he describes in his autobiography,
Because I Was Flesh (1964). This work also tells of his years in a Jewish orphan asylum in Cleveland, his education at the University of California (1922–23) and at Columbia (B.S.). For some time after 1926 he was an expatriate in Europe. His novels include
Bottom Dogs (England, 1929), about a boyhood like his own, giving a sense of the horror of orphanage, slum, and hobo experiences;
From Flushing to Calvary (1932), depicting the sordid lives of slum dwellers in New York City; and
Those Who Perish (1934), treating the effects of German Nazism upon American Jews. His prophetic, mystical literary criticism, in the vein of his friend D. H. Lawrence, is printed in
Do These Bones Live? (1941), revised as
Sing O Barren (1947) and
Can These Bones Live? (1960). Other works include
Flea of Sodom (1950), essays and parables indignantly attacking contemporary civilization;
The Sorrows of Priapus (1957), on the dichotomy of mind and body in Hellenic, Hebraic, and pre‐Columbian cultures;
Truth Is More Sacred (1961), correspondence with Herbert Read about modern literature;
Cipango's Hinder Door (1966), poems;
The Carnal Myth (1968), subtitled “A Search into Classical Sensuality”; and
The Olive of Minerva (1976), a comic novel about sex and cuckoldry.
Epitaphs of Our Times (1967) collects his letters, and
Confessions (1971) contains reminiscences.
