Calverton, V F
Entry updated 12 September 2022. Tagged: Author.
Pseudonym of US author George Goetz (1900-1940), who also signed himself more fully Victor Francis Calverton, and who was, as an interbellum American radical and founder of the Modern Quarterly in 1923, a significant contributor to debates on sex, literature and politics; he was notorious for espousing bohemian values; alcoholism killed him young. Among his voluminous writings is an sf novel, The Man Inside: Being the Record of the Strange Adventures of Allen Steele Among the Xulus (1936), which describes some strange experiments in Hypnosis conducted in darkest Africa by a scientist who attempts to gain liberated access to the inner sub-rational "mind" (see Psychology) through experiments with natives; fatally, he also causes the dead to rise. Calverton wrote widely about American Negro figures (see Race in SF), publishing authors like Langston Hughes (1902-1967); his racial views were unorthodox for their time, almost certainly a sign of enlightenment. [JC]
George Goetz
born Baltimore, Maryland: 6 June 1900
died Baltimore, Maryland: 20 November 1940
works
- The Man Inside: Being the Record of the Strange Adventures of Allen Steele Among the Xulus (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936) [dust jacket gives "Allan Steele" in error: hb/Charles Alston]
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