John Hersey | |
|---|---|
 John Hersey, 1958, photographed byCarl Van Vechten | |
| Born | (1914-06-17)June 17, 1914 Tianjin, China |
| Died | March 24, 1993(1993-03-24) (aged 78) Key West, Florida, U.S. |
| Occupation |
|
| Education | Yale University (BA) Clare College, Cambridge |
| Notable works | Hiroshima (1946) |
| Notable awards | Pulitzer Prize forA Bell for Adano |
| Spouses | |
| Children | 5 |
John Richard Hersey (June 17, 1914 – March 24, 1993) was an American writer and journalist. He is considered one of the earliest practitioners of the so-calledNew Journalism, in whichstorytelling techniques of fiction are adapted to non-fiction reportage.[1] In 1999,Hiroshima, Hersey's account of the aftermath of theatomic bomb dropped onHiroshima, Japan, was adjudged the finest work of American journalism of the 20th century by a 36-member panel associated withNew York University's journalism department.[2]
Hersey was born inTianjin, China,[3] the son of Grace Baird and Roscoe Hersey,Protestantmissionaries for theYMCA in Tianjin. Hersey learned to speak Chinese before he spoke English. Later he based his novel,The Call (1985), on the lives of his parents and several other missionaries of their generation.[4]
John Hersey was a descendant of William Hersey (or Hercy, as the family name was then spelled) ofReading, Berkshire, England. William Hersey was one of the first settlers ofHingham, Massachusetts in 1635.[5]
Hersey returned to the United States with his family when he was ten years old. He attended public school inBriarcliff Manor, New York, includingBriarcliff High School for two years. At Briarcliff, he became his troop's firstEagle Scout.[6][7][8] Later he attended theHotchkiss School. He studied atYale University, where he worked for theYale Daily News[9] and was a member of theSkull and Bones Society along with classmatesBrendan Gill andRichard A. Moore.[10]: 127
Hersey lettered infootball at Yale, where he was coached byDucky Pond,Greasy Neale, andGerald Ford. He was a teammate ofLarry Kelley andClint Frank, Yale's twoHeisman Trophy winners.[11] He subsequently was selected as aMellon Fellow for graduate study atClare College, Cambridge.
After his time at Cambridge, Hersey got a summer job as private secretary and driver for authorSinclair Lewis during 1937. He chafed at those duties, and that autumn he began work forTime,[12] for which he was hired after writing an essay on the magazine's dismal quality.[13] Two years later (1939) he was transferred toTime'sChongqing bureau. In 1940,William Saroyan lists him among "contributing editors" atTime in the playLove's Old Sweet Song.[14]
During World War II,Newsweekly correspondent Hersey covered the fighting in Europe and Asia. He wrote articles forTime andLife magazines. He accompanied Allied troops on theirinvasion ofSicily, survived four airplane crashes,[15] and was commended by theSecretary of the Navy for his role in helping evacuate wounded soldiers fromGuadalcanal.[16] Before writingHiroshima, Hersey published his novelOf Men and War, an account of war stories seen through the eyes of soldiers rather than a war correspondent. One of the stories in Hersey's novel was inspired by futurePresident John F. Kennedy, who also happened to be a former paramour of Hersey's wife Frances Ann. During theSolomon Islands campaign, Kennedy commanded aPT-109 that was cut in half by a Japanese destroyer. He led the rescue of his crew, personally towing the injured to safety.[17]: 37
After the war, during the winter of 1945–46, Hersey was in Japan, reporting forThe New Yorker on the reconstruction of the devastated country, when he found a document written by aJesuit missionary who had survived the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The journalist visited the missionary, who introduced him to other survivors.[15]
At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.
— Opening sentence,Hiroshima, John Hersey, 1946[13]
Soon afterward John Hersey began discussions withWilliam Shawn, an editor forThe New Yorker, about a lengthy piece on the previous summer's bombing. Hersey proposed a story that would convey the cataclysmic narrative through individuals who survived.
In May 1946, Hersey traveled to Japan, where he spent three weeks doing research and interviewing survivors. He returned to America during late June and began writing the stories of six Hiroshima survivors: a German Jesuit priest, a widowed seamstress, two doctors, a minister, and a young woman who worked in a factory.[18]
The resulting piece was his most notable work, the 31,000-word article "Hiroshima", which was published in the August 31, 1946, issue ofThe New Yorker. The story dealt with theatomic bomb dropped on that Japanese city on August 6, 1945, and its effects on the six survivors. The article occupied almost the entire issue of the magazine – somethingThe New Yorker had never done before.[18][19]
Hersey often decried theNew Journalism, although he had helped create it. He would probably have disagreed that his "Hiroshima" article should be described as New Journalism. Later, theascetic Hersey came to feel that some elements of the New Journalism of the 1970s were not rigorous enough about fact and reporting. After publication ofHiroshima, Hersey noted that "the important 'flashes' and 'bulletins' are already forgotten by the time yesterday morning's paper is used to line the trash can. The things we remember are emotions and impressions and illusions and images and characters: the elements of fiction."[20]
Soon after writingHiroshima, the former war correspondent began publishing mostly fiction. Hersey's war novelThe Wall (1950) was presented as a rediscovered journal recording the genesis and destruction of theWarsaw Ghetto, the largest of the Jewishghettos established byNazi Germany duringthe Holocaust. The book became a bestseller.[21] It also won theNational Jewish Book Award in 1950,[22] the second year after the award was established;[23] and won theSidney Hillman Foundation Journalism Award.[24]
In 1950, during theRed Scare, Hersey was investigated by theFBI for possible Communist sympathies related to his past speeches and financial contributions, for example to theAmerican Civil Liberties Union. The activities of his brother and other reporters were also investigated.[17]: 164
His article "Why Do Students Bog Down on First R? A Local Committee Sheds Light on a National Problem: Reading" (1954), about the dullness of grammar schoolreaders in an issue ofLife magazine, inspired Dr. Seuss's children's storyThe Cat in the Hat. He also criticized the school system in his novelThe Child Buyer (1960), aspeculative fiction.
Hersey's first novelA Bell for Adano, about the Allied occupation of a Sicilian town during World War II, won thePulitzer Prize for the Novel in 1945. It was adapted that year as a movie of the same name,A Bell for Adano, directed byHenry King, and featuringJohn Hodiak andGene Tierney. His 1956 short novel,A Single Pebble, recounts the journey of a young American engineer traveling up theYangtze on a river junk during the 1920s. He learns that his romantic concepts of China brings disaster. In the novelWhite Lotus (1965), Hersey explores the African-American experience prior to civil rights, as reflected in analternate history in which white Americans are enslaved by the Chinese after losing "the Great War" to them.
Hersey wroteThe Algiers Motel Incident (1968), a non-fiction work about a racially motivated shooting of three young African-American men by police during the12th Street Riot inDetroit, Michigan, in July 1967.
From 1965 to 1970, Hersey was master ofPierson College, one of twelveresidential colleges atYale University. His outspoken activism and early opposition to theVietnam War made him controversial with alumni but admired by many students.[25] After the trial of theBlack Panthers inNew Haven, Connecticut, Hersey wroteLetter to the Alumni (1970). He sympathetically addressed civil rights and anti-war activism – and attempted to explain them to sometimes aggravated alumni.
Hersey also pursued an unusual sideline: he operated the college's smallletterpress printing operation, which he sometimes used to publish broadsides. During 1969 he printed an elaborate broadside of anEdmund Burke quote forElting E. Morison, a Yale history professor and fellow residential college master.
For 18 years Hersey taught two writing courses, in fiction and non-fiction, to Yale undergraduates. Hersey taught his last class in fiction writing at Yale during 1984. In his individual sessions with undergraduates to discuss their work, the Pulitzer Prize-winning author was sometimes known to write his comments in the margin. After discussing his suggestion with the student, he would take out his pencil and erase the comment. As Master of Pierson College, he hosted his old bossHenry Luce – with whom Hersey had become reconciled after their dispute years prior – when Luce spoke to the college's undergraduates.Time founder Luce was a notoriously dull public speaker, and his address to the Pierson undergraduates was no exception. Afterward Luce privately revealed to Hersey for the first time that he and his wifeClare Boothe Luce had takenLSD while supervised by a physician. Hersey later said that he was relieved that Luce had saved that particular revelation for a more private audience.
In 1969 Hersey donated the services of his bulldog 'Oliver' as mascot for the Yale football team, but he was concerned about his dog's interest level asHandsome Dan XI (the Yale bulldog's traditional name). Hersey wondered aloud "whether Oliver would stay awake for two hours."[26] That year, with the new mascot, the Yale team finished the season with a 7–2 record.
During 1985 John Hersey returned to Hiroshima, where he reported and wroteHiroshima: The Aftermath, a follow-up to his original account.The New Yorker published Hersey's update in its July 15, 1985 issue. The article was subsequently appended to a newly revised edition of the book. "What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it's been memory", wrote Hersey. "The memory of what happened at Hiroshima".
Anne Fadiman described Hersey as a "compulsive plagiarist". For instance, she said he used complete paragraphs from theJames Agee biography byLaurence Bergreen in his ownNew Yorker essay about Agee. She said that half of his book,Men on Bataan, came from work her mother,Annalee Jacoby, and her then husband,Melville Jacoby, filed forTime .[27]
A longtime resident of Vineyard Haven, Martha's Vineyard, Massachusetts – chronicled in his 1987 workBlues – John Hersey died at his winter home inKey West, Florida, on March 24, 1993, at the compound he and his wife shared with his friend, writerRalph Ellison.[28][29][30] Ellison's novelInvisible Man was one of Hersey's favorite works, and he often urged students in his fiction-writing seminar to study Ellison's storytelling techniques and descriptive prose. Hersey's death was front-page news in the next day'sNew York Times.[31] The writer was buried near his home on Martha's Vineyard.[32] He was survived by his second wife,Barbara Jean Day (the former wife of Hersey's colleague atThe New Yorker, artistCharles Addams), Hersey's five children, one of whom is the composer and musicianBaird Hersey, and six grandchildren. Barbara Hersey died on Martha's Vineyard 14 years later on August 16, 2007.[33]
On October 5, 2007, the United States Postal Service announced that it would honor five journalists of the 20th century with first-class rate postage stamps, to be issued on Tuesday, April 22, 2008:Martha Gellhorn, John Hersey,George Polk,Rubén Salazar, andEric Sevareid.Postmaster GeneralJack Potter announced the stamp series at theAssociated Press managing editors meeting in Washington, D.C.
In 1968,John Hersey High School inArlington Heights, Illinois was named in his honor.
Soon before Hersey's death, then Acting President of YaleHoward Lamar decided the university should honor its long-serving alumnus. The result was the annual John Hersey Lecture, the first of which was delivered March 22, 1993, by historian and Yale graduateDavid McCullough, who noted Hersey's contributions to Yale but reserved his strongest praise for the former magazine writer's prose. Hersey had "portrayed our time", McCullough observed, "with a breadth and artistry matched by very few. He has given us the century in a great shelf of brilliant work, and we are all his beneficiaries."[34]
The John Hersey Prize at Yale was endowed during 1985 by students of the author and former Pierson College master. The prize is awarded to "a senior or junior for a body of journalistic work reflecting the spirit and ideals of John Hersey: engagement with moral and social issues, responsible reportage and consciousness of craftsmanship." Winners of the John Hersey Prize include David M. Halbfinger (Yale Class of 1990) and Motoko Rich (Class of 1991), who both later had reporting careers forThe New York Times, and journalistJacob Weisberg (Class of 1985), who would become editor-in-chief ofThe Slate Group.[35] Among Hersey's earlier students at Yale wasMichiko Kakutani, formerly the chief book critic ofThe New York Times, as well as film criticGene Siskel.
During his lifetime, Hersey served in many jobs associated with writing, journalism and education. He was the first non-academic named master of a Yale residential college. He was past president of the Authors League of America, and he was electedchancellor by the membership of theAmerican Academy of Arts and Letters. Hersey was an honorary fellow ofClare College, Cambridge. He was awarded honorary degrees byYale University, theNew School for Social Research,Syracuse University,Washington and Jefferson College,Wesleyan University,The College of William and Mary and others.[36]
Hersey's books include:
john hersey new journalism.
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