The tragic story of one of America’s great literary minds whose life and career

were shattered by the “Pink Scare.” Newton Arvin (1900---1963) was an

esteemed literary critic. As a scholar and writer, Arvin focused on the secret,

psychological drives of such American masters as Melville and Hawthorne, and identified the witch-hunt mentality that lies deep in the American psyche.

 

Arvin was a social radical and an unproclaimed homosexual. He came through the Red Scare relatively unscathed, but when the national anti-smut campaign followed, his apartment in Northampton, Massachusetts, where he was a distinguished professor at Smith College, was searched and relatively mild homoerotic materials were confiscated. He was arrested for possession of pornography, accused of being a leader of a “smut ring,” and forced to choose between friendship and survival. After naming several men, he despaired at his own guilt and confusion, and banished himself to the state mental institution overlooking the Smith campus.

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Barry Werth probes into the virulence with which even the most marginal “sins” are pursued in the fever of America’s recurring puritanical crusades and provides a forthright perspective on the dangers of a society where the possibility of a “private life” no longer exists. But this is not just a political parable. It also a story of redemption.

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Praise for The Scarlet Professor:

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“Exceptional…I cannot recall a book of nonfiction in the [past] decade that has demonstrated such a mastery of the craft.”

–Samuel Freedman

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“Werth’s wonderfully crafted biography of the brilliant, tormented critic captures the politics, social climate and culture of fear of the America that Arvin experienced.”

–Booklist

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“A riveting account of a gentle man overwhelmed by one of the waves of

American hysteria that occasionally obliterate our common sense.”

–Kirkus (starred review)

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“A hell of a story…Werth puzzles out the tormented, self-absorbed Arvin with the intelligent empathy Arvin gave his subjects.”

–Newsweek

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“Mesmerizingly well written.”

–Andrew Halloran

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“Penetrating and compassionate.”

–Brill's Content

 

“Barry Werth has told (Arvin’s) story with sympathy but utterly without

sentimentality or special pleading. He writes about Arvin’s sexual torments with refreshing and instructive dispassion…He understands that it is quite enough — indeed, it is all that really matters — to tell it as a human story, about a man who was denied happiness by his sexual nature, his private character, and the society in which he lived.”

–Washington Post​