Ben Field (US author)

Ben Field (aka Moe Bragin)
Born Moses Brahinsky[1]
(1901-10-15)October 15, 1901
Russia.
Died June 14, 1986(1986-06-14) (aged 84)
South Pasadena, California, U.S.
Occupation Writer, teacher
Years active 1930–1972
Spouse(s) Jeanette Slotnick (1907–1984; 1 son)

Ben Field (pseudonym of Moe Bragin), (October 15, 1901 – June 14, 1986),[2][3] was an American writer who authored four novels and numerous short stories, poems, and essays.

Life and career

Moe Bragin was four years old when he arrived at Ellis Island on March 25, 1906[1] with his then 26-year-old mother, Bessie, and a younger brother Jacob. They were to join their father, Joseph Bragin, who had come earlier. He attended the New York City public schools and got his baccalaureate degree from the City College of New York in 1923 and his Master of Arts degree from Columbia University in 1928.[4] Although primarily a writer, he taught for many years at the Hebrew Institute of Boro Park.[2] In earlier years and in the summers, when a steady income was needed, he worked variously as a machinist, a logger, a farmhand.[5]

He started writing during the Depression Years using his own name and started to use the pseudonym, Ben Field, in 1934.[6] The thirties and forties was a productive period for him as a creative author. His early reputation was established by short stories that are anthologized with the likes of William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, Katherine Porter, Eudora Welty and John Steinbeck.[7][8][9][10][11][12] His first major work was a collection of short stories, The Cock's Funeral, published in 1937 with an introduction by Erskine Caldwell.[13] This was followed by three novels, Outside Leaf, Piper Tompkins, The Last Freshet, all published in the forties.[14][15][16][17] Although he continued to write short stories, it was not until 1971 that he wrote his fifth novel, Jacob's Son[18][19] He died in South Pasadena, California in June 1986. He was a member of the League of American Writers.

Recent Research

With the advent of the Internet, a lot of information has surfaced regarding Ben Field's works. A recent article by Michael Whitworth[20] describes how the Scottish poet Hugh Macdiarmid extensively used and adapted prose from sources that include Ben Field's (Moe Bragin's) essay "Obituary for Jewish Art Theater"[21] for MacDiarmid's poem, 'Etika Preobrazhennavo Erosa'. Some personal correspondence between Ben Field and novelist Jack Conroy are preserved among Conroy's papers at the special collections of the Newberry Library in Chicago, Illinois.. Some recent books on the literary left of the twentieth century cite a few of Moe Bragin's writings.[22][23][24]

Published Works

Major Works

Short Stories and Poems

Essays

References

  1. 1 2 Lines 16–18 of the ship manifest available through Ellis Island Foundation for S.S. Pretoria on March 25, 1906. Retrieved August 11, 2016
  2. 1 2 "Death notice of Moe Bragin",” New York Times, New York City, June 22, 1986
  3. ↑ In Memoriam: Ben FIeld (1901–1986)”,” Jewish Currents, 1986
  4. ↑ NY: Catalogue of Columbia University, New York, 1929–1930, p. 421.
  5. ↑ "Who's Who" in Copy, 1930: Stories, Plays, Poems, and Essays. NY: D. Appleton and Company, 1930.
  6. ↑ "The Sheep Dip" in Partisan Review, Vol. I, Number 1, February–March 1934, p. 24-31.
  7. ↑ Dorothy Scarborough, ed. Selected Short Stories of Today. NY: Farrar & Rinehart, 1935, pp. 174–188.
  8. ↑ Jack Salzman, ed. Years of Protest: A Collection of American Writings of the 1930's. NY: Pegasus., 1967,
  9. ↑ Nicholas Moore, Ed., The Book of Modern American Short Stories. London: Editions Poetry, 1945.
  10. ↑ New Directions in Prose & Poetry, 1941. Mount Vernon: New Directons, 1941
  11. ↑ Kerker Quinn and Charles Shattuck, eds. Accent Anthology. NY: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1946
  12. ↑ Joseph Gaer, Ed. Our Lives: American Labor Stories. NY: Boni and Gaer, 1948
  13. ↑ Ben Field, The Cock's Funeral, NY: International Publishers, 1937.
  14. ↑ Ben Field, Outside Leaf, NY: Reynal & Hitchcock, 1943.
  15. ↑ John Chamberlain, "Books of the TImes," New York Times, December 16, 1963.
  16. ↑ Ben Field, Piper Tompkins, Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1946.
  17. ↑ Ben FIeld, The Last Freshet . Garden City, NY: Doubleday & Company, Inc., 1948.
  18. ↑ Ben Field, Jacob's Son, NY: Crown Publishers, Inc., 1971.
  19. ↑ Jack Conroy, "Books of the Times: Even the Farm Animals have Identities," The Kansas City Star, August 1, 1971, p. 4E.
  20. ↑ Michael Whitworth, "Forms of Culture in Hugh MacDiarmid's 'Etika Preobrazhennavo Erosa'," International Journal of Scottish Literature, Issue Five, Autumn/Winter 2009,
  21. ↑ Moe Bragin, "Obituary for Jewish Art Theater" in The Hound & Horn , Vol. XX, January–March 1932, pp. 283–287.
  22. ↑ Douglas Wilson, Worker-Writer in America: Jack Conroy and the Tradition of Midwestern, University of Illinois Press, 1998.
  23. ↑ Susan G. Davis, ““Ben Botkin’s FBI File”,” Journal of American Folklore, Volume 122, Number 487, Winter 2010,
  24. ↑ Josh Lambert, American Jewish Fiction, JPS Books (Philadelphia, 2009)
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