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By Root 2302 0

to destroy, and I would wrestle with him to save it, as I had fought through all the years to save him from his grave. Then would come days when Sasha would vanish into the woods to escape human contact, to escape me, and above all to escape himself and the ghosts that had come to life since he had begun to write. I would torment myself to find the right way and the right word with which to soothe his harassed spirit. It was not only because of my affection for him that I took up this struggle each day; it was also because I perceived in the very first chapter of his writing that Sasha was in the birth-throes of a great work. No price on my part seemed too high to help it to life. [ ... ]

In January 1911 Ben and I again started on our annual tour. Before we left, my selected lectures, Anarchism and Other Essays, came off the press. The book also contained a biographic sketch of the author by Hippolyte Havel, comprising the most significant events of my public career. Some of the lectures in the volume had been repeatedly suppressed by the police. Even when I had been able to deliver them, it had never been without anxiety and travail. They represented a mental and spiritual struggle of twenty years, the conclusions arrived at after much reflection and growth. I owed the inspiration to write the book to Ben, but the main assistance, including the revision and the reading of proofs, was due to Sasha. It was hard to say which of us was the happier at seeing my first literary effort in print. [ ... ]

During the summer Sasha and I again went out to our retreat on the Hudson and he resumed work on his book. [ ... ] I could devote my time to Sasha and look after his comfort. I sought to encourage him in his work: with him I had lived through the agony of his prison years, and now the turmoil of his spirit re-echoed in my heart.

The end of the summer saw his Prison Memoirs completed. It was a document profoundly moving, a brilliant study of criminal psychology. I was filled with wonder to see Sasha emerge from his Calvary an artist with a rare gift of music in his words.

“Now for New York and the publishers!” I cried; “surely there will be many who will appreciate the dramatic appeal of your work, the understanding and sympathy for those you have left behind.”

We hastened back to the city and I began to canvass the publishers. The more conservative houses refused even to read the manuscript the moment they learned the author’s name. “Alexander Berkman, the man who shot Frick!” the representative of a large firm exclaimed; “no, we can’t have him on our shelves.” “It is a vital literary work,” I urged; “aren’t you interested in that and in his interpretation of prisons and crime?” They were looking for such a book, he said, but they could not afford to risk the name of the author.

Some publishers asked whether Alexander Berkman would be willing to use a pseudonym. I resented the suggestion and pointed out that Prison Memoirs was a personal story, the product of years of suffering and pain. Could the writer be expected to hide his identity concerning something that was flesh of his flesh and blood of his blood?

I turned to some of the “advanced” publishers and they promised to read the manuscript. I waited anxiously for weeks, and when they at last requested me to come, I found them enthusiastic. “It is a remarkable work,” one said, “but would Mr. Berkman leave out the anarchist part?” Another insisted on eliminating the chapters relating to homosexuality in prison. A third suggested other changes. Thus it went on for months. I clung to the hope that someone of literary and human judgment would accept the manuscript. I still believed that we could discover in America what Dostoyevsky had found in tsarist Russia—a publisher courageous enough to issue the first great American study of a “House of the Dead.”1 In vain. Finally we decided to publish the book ourselves. [ ... ]

When I informed Gilbert [Roe]2 that Sasha’s manuscript had been turned down by many publishers, and that we wanted the Mother Earth Publishing Association