Wallace Irwin(March 15, 1875 – February 14, 1959) was anAmerican writer.Over the course of his long career, Irwin wrote humorous sketches, light verse, screenplays, short stories, novels, nautical lays, aphorisms, journalism, political satire, lyrics for Broadway musicals, and the libretto for an opera. His novelThe Julius Caesar Murder Case(1935) represents a subgenre within detective fiction, the mystery novel set in antiquity.[1]
Biography
editA native ofOneida, New York,Irwin grew up in Colorado and went to California to attendStanford University.As editor of two campus publications, he lampooned faculty in verse and was expelled, as he later boasted, for having a character that "savored of brimstone".[2]He moved toSan Franciscoand began his career as a journalist forWilliam Randolph Hearst’sExaminerand other papers. With the encouragement ofGelett Burgess,Irwin branched into poetry withThe Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum(1901), followed byNautical Lays of a Landsman(1904),At The Sign of the Dollar(1905),Chinatown Ballads(1906), andThe Love Sonnets of a Car Conductor(1908). Between 1913 and 1935, fourteen of his novels or short stories were adapted by himself or others for film.[citation needed]
Irwin often wrote under a pseudonym or presented himself as the editor, translator, or sardonic discoverer of works by others.[citation needed]HisRubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Jr.purports to be his translation from a language he calls "Mango-Bornese".[3]Irwin’s most sustained impersonation began in 1907 with the serialization of his "Letters of a Japanese Schoolboy" inColliersmagazine. He wrote in a stereotypical fractured English in the persona of a thirty-five-year-old "boy" Hashimura Togo. The fourth installment of the series, entitled "Yellow Peril", featured Irwin posed in yellow face make-up for a portrait photograph of Togo. The photo fooled readers for months, whereuponColliersproduced twin photos, Irwin as Togo and Irwin "before he was Japanned".[4]Irwin’s racial clichés brought him to the heights of success, including praise fromMark Twainwho found Togo a delightful creation and theNew York Globewhich hailed the book as "the greatest joke in America".[4]Irwin went on to write three more Togo books, and in 1917 Hollywood followed with the silent film comedyHashimura Togo.
The Togo fad was built upon Irwin’s creation of a Japanese caricature at a time when many Americans admired Japan for its recent victory in theRusso-Japanese War,1904–05. However, afterWorld War I,American opinion shifted as the United States and Japan competed for military and economic advantage in Asia. Irwin’s approach likewise turned, resulting inSeed of the Sunwith its dire warning that Japanese immigrants represented both the "nefarious alliance of Asiatics and speculative capital"[5]and their emperor’s plan for them to "marry Euro-American women in order to promote their race".[6]
Success as a humorist allowed Irwin to devote himself to what he considered his serious work, novels and articles with social and political purpose,[7]writing that is now largely forgotten except when cited by historians as representative of widespread pre-World War IIracism.[8]
Irwin was married twice. In 1901 he married Grace Adelaide Luce. Over a year after her death, in January 1916 he married Laetitia McDonald.[9]Wallace and Laetitia had two children. Donald (1917–1991) was a journalist for theNew York Herald Tribuneand theLos Angeles Times,and served as an aide toNelson A. Rockefellerduring the Eisenhower administration.[10]Wallace Jr. (1919–2010) was a speechwriter for several U.S. congressmen and the future PresidentGeorge H. W. Bushduring Bush's time asU.S. ambassador to the United Nations.[11]
Wallace Irwin died inSouthern Pines, North Carolina.That same year, 1959, his personal papers, including manuscripts to novels and poems, correspondence, freelance journalism, and an unpublished autobiography, were donated to the Bancroft Library at theUniversity of California, Berkeley.[2]
References
edit- ^Heli, Richard."The Detective and the Toga".
- ^ab"Guide to the Wallace Irwin papers, 1917-1959".Online Archive of California.
- ^Wallace, Irwin.Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, Jr. 2.
{{cite book}}:|work=ignored (help) - ^abUzawa, Yoshiko. "’Will White Man and Yellow Man Ever Mix?’: Wallace Irwin, Hashimura Togo, and the Japanese Immigrant in America."The Japanese Journal of American Studies.No. 17 (2006). 201-2.
- ^Kim, Daniel. "Racial Forms, National Fictions."Novel.39:2 (2006). 277.
- ^Christopher, Renny. "U.S. Wars in Asia and the Representation of Asians." (Chapter 3, The Vietnam War. U. Mass. Press, 1995.) 128-9.
- ^"The Irwin Brothers."Time.October 8, 1923.
- ^Vials, Chris. "Review of America’s Asia: Racial Form and American Literature, 1893-1945."Journal of Asian American Studies.8:2 (2005). 228-9.
- ^"Kentucky marriage bond for Wallace Irwin and Laetitia McDonald".FamilySearch.
- ^New York Times, March 6, 1991, page B10.
- ^Princeton Alumni Weekly, March 17, 2010
