Blasts from the Past: 40 Overlooked Masters Who Still Stire our Souls

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Robert Edmond Jones (1887?1954)
Nineteenth-century theatrical sets looked like elaborate oil paintings: so visually cluttered, you could barely make out the actors. Drawing on innovations in Europe, and working with giants like Eugene O?Neill, Robert Edmond Jones gave American scene design the vigor of modern art. He created stripped-down, expressive sets bathed in subtle, emotionally rich lighting?thus adding visual poetry to the poetry of the new drama. (Book: The Dramatic Imagination, by Robert Edmond Jones, Methuen Theater Arts Books, 1987)
?Jon Spayde

John Dos Passos (1896?1970)
A roaring lion of ?20s and ?30s American literature who expressed sharply radical views in acclaimed novels, Dos Passos seems now to have left his mark only on a jazz-pop vocal group named after one of his great works, Manhattan Transfer. This is surprising, since his groundbreaking style?incorporating headlines, song lyrics, historical sketches, and slice-of-life scenes in cinema-like montages?fits so perfectly into the postmodern sensibility that dominates the arts today. (Book: USA trilogy, by John Dos Passos; Library of America, 1996)
?Jay Walljasper

Fran?ois Villon (1431?1463)
Bad-boy and bad-girl storytellers from Arthur Rimbaud to Public Enemy have an ancestor in this great poet of the mean streets of medieval Paris. Villon?s rap sheet began with a murder in 1453; later, his adventures with thieves inspired him to write ballads in slang. His Testaments are bitterly ironic wills, leaving his possessions to friends and enemies. And the haunting ?Ballad of the Hanged Men? was probably written when he himself was awaiting the noose. (Book: Fran?ois Villon?s The Legacy and the Testament, translated by Louis Simpson; Story Line Press, 2000)
?Jon Spayde

Mary Wollstonecraft (1759?1797)
A radical freethinker and protofeminist, Wollstonecraft hurried to France in 1792 to observe the revolution firsthand. Back in London, she threw in her lot with Thomas Paine, William Blake, and other literary radicals, writing passionate accounts of the revolution, as well as children?s books, reviews, and travelogues. Her enduring A Vindication of the Rights of Women is a scathing critique of a philosophy of women?s education that left women caged ?like the feathered race, [with] nothing to do but to plume themselves, and stalk with mock majesty from perch to perch.? (Book: A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, by Mary Wollstonecraft; Modern Library, 2001)
?Joseph Hart

B. Traven (1890?1969)
No one knows the true story of the man behind the name, though 20 years after his death, his wife identified him as Ret Marut, a German anarchist who fled Europe to save his life. But Ret Marut was also an assumed name, and his true identity remains a mystery. Even though his origins are obscure, his prose is unmistakably clear. In dozens of stories and novels (including Treasure of the Sierra Madre, the famous chronicle of the process by which ?man becomes the slave of his property?), Traven?s taut, masculine style makes Hemingway seem fussy. Yet he shows great sensitivity to the nuances of character and a moralist?s unflinching clarity in depicting the subtle shades of human cruelty. (Book: The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, by B. Traven; Hill and Wang, 1996)
?Joseph Hart

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