Fineman, Irving, 1893-

Variant names

Dates:

Birth 1893

Biographical notes:

Irving Fineman (1893-1976) was a Jewish-American novelist and author. Born in New York City, he earned degrees in civil engineering from both the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard in 1917. Following a term in the U.S. Navy as an engineer officer (1918-1922), he returned to civil engineering, working in the field designing and constructing bridges, subways, etc and also teaching theoretical and applied mechanics at the University of Illinois. In 1928, taken with the idea of writing a novel, he began work on This Pure Young Man, which won a $7500 prize in 1930. By 1932 he was at work on his second novel and had taken a teaching position at Bennington University in Bennington, Vermont. "It was only when I undertook to teach the subject that with my students I made a thoroughgoing and conscious study of literature and the techniques of writing; but by then I had written two books."

In the late 1930s Fineman spent a year or two in Hollywood writing for several studios, but he found that "while motion picture producers were intrigued by the idea of getting something fresh from a serious writer, they almost invariably got cold feet when it came to putting something unusual or controversial before the cameras." By 1950 he had retired from teaching and other occupations to devote his full attention to writing, though he still took time out for projects that interested him. He served as editorial consultant for the RAND Corporation in 1957 and spent a year as scholar in residence at Duke University (1965-1966).

In addition to seven novels and a biography of Henrietta Szold, the founder of Hadassah, Fineman published short stories, poems, and literary criticism in literary and general interest magazines such as Nation, Harper's, Yale Review, New Yorker, New York Times, Saturday Review, and the Los Angeles Times .

From the guide to the Irving Fineman Papers, 1919-1976, (Special Collections Research Center, Syracuse University Libraries)