SILVERMAN, Kenneth 1936-

PERSONAL: Born February 5, 1936, in New York, NY; son of Gustave (a builder) and Bessie (Goldberg) Silverman; married Sharon Medjuck, September 8, 1957 (divorced, 1976); children: Willa, Ethan. Education: Columbia University, B.A., 1956, M.A., 1958, Ph.D., 1964.

ADDRESSES: Home—7-13 Washington Sq. N, New York, NY 10003. Offıce—Department of English, New York University, 19 University Place, New York, NY 10003.

CAREER: University of Wyoming, Laramie, instructor in English, 1958-59; New York University, New York, NY, beginning 1964, began as instructor, became professor of English and codirector of program in American civilization. Institute of Early American History and Culture, member of executive council. Also performed as a magician, under the name Ken Silvers.

MEMBER: Modern Language Association of America (chair of bicentennial committee, 1973-76), PEN American Center, American Antiquarian Society, Society of American Historians (honorary member), Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Danforth associate, 1968-71; bicentennial grant from National Endowment for the Humanities, 1973-76, for A Cultural History of the American Revolution: Painting, Music, Literature and the Theater in the Colonies and the United States from the Treaty of Paris to the Inauguration of George Washington, 1763-1789; Pulitzer Prize in biography and Bancroft Prize in American history, Columbia University, both 1985, for The Life and Times of Cotton Mather.

WRITINGS:

(Editor and author of introduction) Colonial AmericanPoetry, Hafner (New York, NY), 1968.

Timothy Dwight, Twayne (New York, NY), 1969.

(Editor and author of introduction) Literature inAmerica: The Founding of a Nation, Free Press (New York, NY), 1971.

(Editor and author of introduction) Selected Letters ofCotton Mather, Louisiana State University Press (Baton Rouge, LA), 1971.

A Cultural History of the American Revolution: Painting, Music, Literature, and the Theater in the Colonies and the United States from the Treaty of Paris to the Inauguration of George Washington, 1763-1789, Crowell (New York, NY), 1976.

The Life and Times of Cotton Mather, Harper (New York, NY), 1984.

(Compiler, with Francis Hodgins) Adventures inAmerican Literature: Curriculum and Writing, Harcourt (New York, NY), 1985.

(Editor and author of introduction) Benjamin Franklin:The Autobiography and Other Writings, Penguin Books (New York, NY), 1986.

Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1991.

(Editor) New Essays on Poe's Major Tales, Cambridge University Press (New York, NY), 1993.

Houdini! The Career of Ehrich Weiss, American Self-Liberator, Europe's Eclipsing Sensation, World's Handcuff King, and Prison Breaker, HarperCollins (New York, NY), 1996.

Notes to Houdini, Richard Kaufman (Washington, DC), 1996.

Lightning Man: The Accursed Life of Samuel F. B.Morse, Knopf (New York, NY), 2003.

Contributor to scholarly periodicals in his field. Member of editorial board, Early American Literature, 1971-73, 1977-80, and William and Mary Quarterly, beginning 1985.

SIDELIGHTS: Kenneth Silverman has written studies of American literature and culture of the colonial period and biographies of a diverse collection of literary and historical figures, including Cotton Mather, Edgar Allan Poe, and Harry Houdini. Silverman has a reputation for doing exhaustive research on his subjects and for writing evenhanded accounts.

A Cultural History of the American Revolution: Painting, Music, Literature, and the Theater in the Colonies and the United States from the Treaty of Paris to the Inauguration of George Washington, 1763-1789, was published during the nation's bicentennial year. Silverman's study follows the progress of American arts from the time of the French and Indian War through the inauguration of George Washington. In the Washington Post Book World, John Seelye suggested that few readers "will finish Silverman's book without an overwhelming impression of the richness and variety . . . of the culture generated by the events leading up to, including and immediately following the Revolution." Alden Whitman, a New York Times reviewer, called the volume "one of the best of the Bicentennial books for the searching light it throws on the beginnings of the arts in this country." "Silverman's research is awesome," Whitman continued. "If at the conclusion of the period covered by his book a distinct American culture is visible, the facts underlying it can be found in one place. That is no small feat, so one should 'rally round the flag, boys,' for Professor Silverman."

Even more renowned than A Cultural History of the American Revolution is Silverman's The Life and Times of Cotton Mather, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biography of the famous Puritan minister who was undeniably the most prolific writer of colonial America. "Silverman has almost literally moved heaven and earth to do justice to the most learned minister . . . of the early American church," wrote Anatole Broyard in the New York Times. The author performed extensive research for The Life and Times of Cotton Mather, even finding pertinent records at a country auction in Amherst, Massachusetts, and in the basement of a Veterans Administration hospital in Grafton, Massachusetts. He also visited a dozen archives in the United States and Great Britain, including one in Boston that contained the Supreme Judicial Court records from Mather's time. The thoroughness of Silverman's investigation led Broyard to speculate, "He appears to have read all 388 of Mather's published works, which range from church history to a summary of seventeenth-century medical practice."

Mather, a third-generation member of a prominent Boston Puritan family, followed in the footsteps of his father and grandfathers and pursued a career in the ministry. With his father, he presided over the largest religious congregation in Boston from 1689, when he was only twenty-six, until shortly before he died in 1728. Central to Silverman's treatment of Mather is a psychological study based partly on Mather's relationships with his Puritan forebears, partly on his ambivalent and varying reactions to life in colonial Boston, and partly on the restraints imposed upon his personality by the Puritan faith. Edmund S. Morgan of the New York Review of Books felt that although Cotton Mather has been "miscast in the popular mind as the typical Puritan," Silverman's work "gives us an inside view . . . of what it meant to be an American Puritan." John Demos, in an article for the New Republic, similarly claimed: "The author seems virtually to have taken up residence inside Mather's head and heart; and the reader is repeatedly invited to see the world as Mather himself would have done—looking out."

Controversial in his own time for his reluctant support of the Salem witch trials, his political maneuverings, and his advocacy of the smallpox vaccine, Mather has been reviled by authors as famous as Nathaniel Hawthorne, William Carlos Williams, and Robert Lowell. Indeed, some modern writers have tended to portray Mather as, in the words of Newsweek reviewer David Gates, "the prototype of Calvinist self-loathing transmuted into self-righteous malice." David Levin, reviewing The Life and Times of Cotton Mather in the Washington Post Book World, commented that Silverman skillfully conveys a sense of why Mather has been the object of such derision. But the critic maintained that Silverman's portrait is unjustifiably harsh because "the narrative too often stumbles over Mather's difficult personality, which Silverman found repellent. Perhaps such pejorative judgment helps to tilt the narrative against a favorable interpretation of Mather's behavior on several important issues," including the Salem witchcraft trials.

Many reviewers, however, believed as Demos does, that Silverman's biography presents Mather as "a figure of depth, complexity, and surpassing interest—someone who still surprises and confounds us, even as we recognize his all-too-human strengths and weaknesses." The Life and Times of Cotton Mather is, according to Demos, "large in meaning and significance. For what Silverman achieves can well stand as a model for biographers and historians in general. . . . If it were nothing else [it] would surely be the most beautifully-composed biography of the year." The Puritan minister who has been maligned through nearly three centuries has finally found judicious treatment, in the view of Anatole Broyard. "Few men," Broyard wrote, "have been so handsomely rewarded by posterity as Cotton Mather is in Mr. Silverman's book. It is a splendid day of judgment, in which Cotton Mather stands radiant in all his virtues and failings." Noting that other modern scholars have taken a fresh look at Mather, Dictionary of Literary Biography contributor Dennis Barone noted that Silverman's book is nevertheless "the first full-length, balanced, analytical portrait of Mather. . . . Silverman's volume is a synthesis and culmination of all modern studies of the Mathers."

Edgar Allan Poe, the subject of Silverman's next biographical work, is to many people one of the most fascinating figures of American literature. Poe's continuing fame derives both from his work—macabre short stories and poetry, pioneering detective fiction, and vitriolic critical pieces—and his brief, unhappy life. Most of Poe's loved ones died young, and he sought to dull the pain with alcohol, which may have contributed to his death at age forty in 1849. In Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance, Silverman analyzes Poe's literary output, his personality, and his environment.

In doing so, Silverman avoids the obvious approach, wrote Christopher Benfey in the New Republic. "The temptation to treat Poe's life as he himself conceived it—tragic, heartbreaking, star-crossed, forlorn—must be strong for any biographer," Benfey noted. "Silverman's perspective, by contrast, is primarily comic; he takes a tonic pleasure in Poe's own sense of personal grandeur and lost entitlements." The author details Poe's life "in an admirably clear and surefooted narrative," Benfey observed, but leaves some questions unanswered. "At the end of the book, one is left wondering how so harassed and so haunted a man could have found the time and strength to write as consecutively and well as Poe did," the reviewer remarked. Still, he concluded, "Silverman's brisk and enjoyable book invites a fresh look at Poe, if freshness, with such a subject, is possible."

Phoebe Pettingell, critiquing the book for the New Leader, found Silverman's analysis of Poe's mental state lacking: "He fails to demonstrate any understanding of the psychological mechanics of bereavement beyond what might be gleaned from a popular article." In regard to Poe's work, she added, Silverman provides only "superficial critical readings limited to plot synopses or to pointing out obvious parallels between Poe's life and events described in his writing." Pettingell did praise the biographer's explanation of the appeal of Poe's writings and his portrait of nineteenthcentury literary society. The latter, she wrote, is "one outstanding feature" of the book.

A biography of the magician Harry Houdini may seem something of a departure for Silverman, but the author has a particular affinity for this subject; as Skeptical Inquirer reviewer Massimo Polidoro pointed out, Silverman is "a member of magic organizations and a former performer under the name of 'Ken Silvers.'" Silverman's Houdini! The Career of Ehrich Weiss, American Self-Liberator, Europe's Eclipsing Sensation, World's Handcuff King, and Prison Breaker is a product of the author's customary exhaustive research; his sources took up a separate volume, Notes to Houdini. Because of Silverman's thoroughness, the book "is a virtually all-new biography," declared Raymond Joseph Teller—himself a magician, part of the team of Penn and Teller—in the New York Times Book Review. "Instead of retelling the standard Houdini anecdotes, Mr. Silverman examines the evidence with a fresh eye and a sleuthlike determination not to be snowed by Houdini's notorious 'improvements' of the facts. Best of all, he is able to place Houdini in the context of his own times—and ours."

Silverman's book details how Houdini, born Ehrich Weiss, rose from an impoverished immigrant background to become the most renowned magician of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Houdini boosted his reputation through tireless self-promotion and an ability to exploit the trends of his times. He was frequently critical of other magicians, and late in his career he became devoted to exposing spiritualist tricksters who claimed to be able to communicate with the dead. Another important facet of Houdini's life was his excessively close relationship with his mother.

There have been numerous biographies of Houdini, Polidoro noted, but added that "what sets this book apart from most of the others is its exclusive attention to facts rather than folklore, hearsay, and undemonstrated suppositions and theories." Silverman has consulted many sources not used by other Houdini biographers; these include the magician's diaries, letters, and scrapbooks. "This leads to the discovery of many previously unknown facts and to the debunking of often repeated errors and myths in the Houdini story," Polidoro asserted. Silverman provides new insights into Houdini's art and his persona; details the magician's outside interests, including aviation and filmmaking; and provides documentation of an extramarital affair with Charmian London, the widow of writer Jack London.

Moreover, Silverman avoids falling into the academic mindset of treating his subject as a symbol rather than an individual, according to New Republic contributor Jackson Lears. "While he frequently links Houdini to broader historical and cultural developments, he also implicitly acknowledges throughout that his subject was sui generis," Lears commented. Teller, admitting to "minor reservations" about some aspects of the book—such as Silverman's psychological analysis of Houdini—concluded that the biography is a "remarkable achievement," just the same. "To uncover so many previously unknown details of the master mystifier's life would be enough to merit applause," proclaimed Teller. "To examine Houdini and his world with such originality and depth deserves a standing ovation."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

books

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 111: American Literary Biographers, Second Series, Gale (Detroit, MI), 1991.

periodicals

Atlantic, April, 1984.

Commentary, August, 1984.

New Leader, March 23, 1992, Phoebe Pettingell, review of Edgar A. Poe: Mournful and Never-Ending Remembrance, p. 15.

New Republic, August 13, 1984, John Demos, review of The Life and Times of Cotton Mather; February 4, 1992, Christopher Benfey, review of Edgar A.Poe, pp. 38-41; February 17, 1997, Jackson Lears, review of Houdini! The Career of Ehrich Weiss, American Self-Liberator, Europe's Eclipsing Sensation, World Handcuff King, and Prison Breaker, p. 32.

Newsweek, April 2, 1984, David Gates, review of TheLife and Times of Cotton Mather.

New Yorker, August 30, 1976; April 23, 1984.

New York Review of Books, July 15, 1976; May 31, 1984, Edmund S. Morgan, review of The Life and Times of Cotton Mather.

New York Times, August 14, 1976, Alden Whitman, review of A Cultural History of the American Revolution: Painting, Music, Literature, and the heater in the Colonies and the United States from the Treaty of Paris to the Inauguration of George Washington, 1763-1789; March 17, 1984, Anatole Broyard, review of The Life and Times of Cotton Mather.

New York Times Book Review, March 25, 1984; December 15, 1996, Raymond Joseph Teller, review of Houdini!

Publishers Weekly, August 26, 1996, p. 87.

Saturday Review, June 26, 1976.

Skeptical Inquirer, May-June, 1997, Massimo Polidoro, review of Houdini!, pp. 47-48.

Washington Post Book World, July 4, 1976, John Seelye, review of A Cultural History of the American Revolution; December 12, 1976; April 29, 1984, David Levin, review of The Life and Times of Cotton Mather.*