Aldridge, John W.

John (Jack) Watson Aldridge was an esteemed literary critic and professor of English at the University of Michigan (1964-1991). As a critic, Aldridge devoted himself to what he called "the ideal of creative independence and free critical dissent which has come down to us in the central tradition of American thought and letters," ( Current Biography, 1958) and throughout his career he commented upon and critiqued many of the twentieth century's most important writers, including Joseph Heller, Norman Mailer, Ralph Ellison, John Horne Burns, Malcolm Cowley, Arthur Miller, Gore Vidal, Wright Morris, Saul Bellow, William Styron, Philip Roth, and Truman Capote, many of whom he also counted as his friends.

John W. Aldridge was born on September 26, 1922 in Sioux City, Iowa to Walther Copher and Nell Madge (Watson) Aldridge. Aldridge spent his early years in Iowa, until the age of twelve, when the family moved to Chattanooga, Tennessee. Aldridge attend the University of Chattanooga (now the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga) from 1940 to 1943, and studied English during the summer of 1942 at Middlebury College's School of English at Bread Loaf in Vermont, prior to enlisting in the Army and serving in World War II as an infantry rifleman and information specialist (July 1943- August 1945). Following his military service, during which he earned a Bronze Star and five battle stars for Normandy, Northern France, Rhineland, Central Europe, and the Ardennes, Aldridge enrolled at the University of California at Berkeley in 1946. At Berkeley, Aldridge worked as the editor of the school's Occident literary magazine, and earned his Bachelor of Arts in 1947.

Prior to coming to the University of Michigan, Aldridge was a lecturer and later assistant professor at the University of Vermont (1948-1950, 1954-1955), a lecturer for the Christian Gauss Seminars in Criticism at Princeton University (1953-1955), and a visiting professor at Sarah Lawrence College (1956-1957), Queens College of the City of New York (1957), and New York University (1958). Aldridge also served as a Fulbright Lecturer at the University of Munich (1958-1959) and the University of Copenhagen (1962-1963), and as critic-in-residence and visiting professor at Hollins College (1959-1962).

Aldridge came to the University of Michigan in 1964 as a visiting associate professor of English language and literature, and was promoted to professor in 1965. Aldridge was well-known at Michigan for his lectures on the contemporary novel, and his students heralded his teaching abilities. In addition to guiding the scholarship of scores of graduate and undergraduate students, Aldridge also served as the chair of the editorial board of the Michigan Quarterly Review (1978-1992), and director of the Hopwood Program at the University of Michigan and chair of the Hopwood Writing Awards Committee (1975-1988).

In addition to traditional academic appointments, Aldridge also served as a Special Ambassador for American Studies at the American Embassy in Bonn, Germany (1972-1973), as a book commentator and reviewer for "The MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour" on public television, and as a book critic for the New York Herald Tribune Book Week (1965-1966) and the Saturday Review (1970-1979). Aldridge was also the recipient of a Rockefeller Humanities Fellowship for the 1976-1977 academic year.

Aldridge was an active writer and critic throughout his career, publishing numerous essays and book reviews in a wide range of publications, including Harper's Magazine, Saturday Review, New York Times Book Review, Partisan Review, Nation, Playboy, Commentary, The Sewanee Review, Michigan Quarterly Review, The American Scholar, Chronicles, Esquire, Chicago Tribune Book World , New Republic, New York Herald Tribune Book Week, and Life . Aldridge was also a cofounder, with author Vance Bourjaily, in 1951 of Discovery magazine, an influential literary magazine published by Pocket Books.

In addition to writing regular essays and book reviews, Aldridge was the author of numerous works of literary criticism, a novel, The Party at Cranton, and a sociological study of youth culture, In the Country of the Young. Aldridge considered his literary criticism of contemporary writers his most important work, however, telling Contemporary Authors (Gale, 2002), "I am, and have always wanted to be, a critic of the literature of my own time. With the exception of my novel, The Party at Cranton, and an informal sociological study, In the Country of the Young, my books have all been studies of current literature, primarily American fiction. I have never considered criticism in any sense a minor or inferior literary form, and one of my ambitions has been to write criticism in such a way that it can be seen to have the qualities of style, structure, and dramatic development which are normally associated with fiction." Aldridge placed such primacy on his critical works that he devoted a substantial portion of his unpublished autobiography, Against the Current, to discussions of the intellectual bases of his criticism and the sometimes laudatory, sometimes negative, reception it received.

Aldridge's first book of criticism, After the Lost Generation (1951), was one of the first critical treatment of major post-war writers such as Norman Mailer, John Horne Burns, Truman Capote, Gore Vidal, and others, and earned Aldridge high acclaim in the literary world and established his reputation as one of the foremost literary critics of his generation. When After the Lost Generation was reprinted in 1985, Norman Mailer wrote in the "Introduction," that "Aldridge was the nearest guideline to absolute truth that the working novelist had in my young days. I wonder if there was ever a critic who understood any better the roots of the problems that beset the novelists of his own generation." Aldridge's literary criticism incited strong reactions amongst those in the literary world, with Gore Vidal including him in a list of "literary gangsters." Aldridge, however, relished the impassioned responses to his work, saying, "I suppose I have had what is called a 'controversial' career. All my books have provoked argument and discussion. And, I am pleased that this should be so, for I function best in an atmosphere of controversy and would very probably die if I were ever read with indifference." ( World Authors, 1950-1970, 1975)

During the long course of his career Aldridge contributed introductions, forewards, and essays to numerous works, in addition to serving as an editor for Critiques and Essays on Modern Fiction (1952) and Selected Stories of P.G. Wodehouse (1958). Aldridge was also the author of nine books: After the Lost Generation (1951), In Search of Heresy: American Literature in an Age of Conformity (1956), The Party at Cranton (1960), Time to Murder and Create (1966), In the Country of the Young (1970), The Devil in the Fire (1972), The American Novel and the Way We Live Now (1983), Talents and Technicians (1992), and Classics and Contemporaries (1992).

Aldridge retired as an University of Michigan professor of English in 1991. While in retirement with emeritus status (1991-2007), Aldridge maintained an active scholarly lifestyle and continued producing articles and book reviews, as well as writing two unpublished manuscripts, In the Company of Lions, a work of criticism, and Against the Current, a memoir. Married five times and the father of five sons, John W. Aldridge died February 7, 2007.

From the guide to the John W. Aldridge papers, 1942-2006, 1950-2000, (Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan)