Waldo Frank

Waldo David Frank (August 25, 1889 – January 9, 1967) was an American novelist, historian, political activist, and literary critic, who wrote extensively for The New Yorker and The New Republic during the 1920s and 1930s. Frank is best known for his studies of Spanish and Latin American literature and culture and his work is regarded as an intellectual bridge between the two continents.

A radical political activist during the years of the Great Depression, Frank delivered a keynote speech to the first congress of the League of American Writers and was the first chair of that organization. Frank broke with the Communist Party, USA in 1937 over its treatment of exiled Soviet leader Leon Trotsky, whom Frank met in Mexico in January of that year.

Biography Early years

Waldo Frank was born in Long Branch, New Jersey, on August 25, 1889, during his family's summer vacation. He was the youngest of four children to Julius J. Frank, a prosperous Wall Street attorney employed by the Hamburg-Amerika Line, and his wife, the former Helene Rosenberg, who hailed from the American South and was the daughter of a Confederate blockade runner during the American Civil War.

The young Frank grew up on the Upper West Side of New York City, where he attended DeWitt Clinton High School.

Frank became a regular contributor to the New Yorker in 1925 under the pseudonym "Search-Light".

Political activity

Frank was an anti-militarist and declared himself a conscientious objector in registering for the draft in 1917. Having also spent time in Spain, writer Ernest Hemingway mocked Frank's ideas in his book, Death in the Afternoon (1932).

Frank's book, Rediscovery of America (1929), also expressed some of his utopian ideas. After this and other books were less commercially successful than he thought they deserved, Frank turned his attention to politics. His thesis about the spiritual strengths of Latin America won him wide acclaim when he toured there in 1929. His lecture tour was organized by the University of Mexico, During his stay in Buenos Aires, Frank was attacked in his apartment by six armed men in response to "some opinions he expressed in regards to Argentine neutrality" in the war. He was pistol-whipped and repeatedly kicked in the head. He suffered a "concussion of marked severity." The attack was believed to be the work of pro-Nazi sympathizers who posed as detectives checking to see if Frank's "papers were in order."

Based on his travels in the region and continuing studies, Frank published South American Journey in 1943 and Birth of a World: Simon Bolivar in Terms of His Peoples in 1951.

Death and legacy

Waldo Frank died January 9, 1967, in White Plains, New York.