Meyer Levin
Meyer Levin (1905-1981) was a notable American Jewish writer whose diverse body of work spanned fiction, journalism, and film. Born in Chicago to immigrant parents, Levin's literary journey began in elementary school, leading him to earn a degree from the University of Chicago. His career kicked off with the Chicago Daily News and later included roles as an associate editor for Esquire magazine. Levin's creative pursuits also encompassed marionette plays and documentaries during World War II, where he reported on the experiences of Jewish concentration camp prisoners. His most recognized works include the novel "Compulsion," often credited as the first nonfiction novel, and his efforts to publish "The Diary of Anne Frank." Despite facing legal challenges regarding the factual accuracy of his writing, Levin remained dedicated to portraying the Jewish experience. His literary contributions earned him several accolades, marking him as a significant figure in American Jewish literature and an innovator in narrative forms. Levin's work is characterized by a blend of styles, reflecting the complexities of Jewish identity in the twentieth century.
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Subject Terms
Meyer Levin
Novelist
- Born: October 8, 1905
- Birthplace: Chicago, Illinois
- Died: July 9, 1981
- Place of death: Jerusalem, Israel
Biography
Meyer Levin was born October 8, 1905, in Chicago, Illinois, to Joseph, a tailor, and Goldie (Basiste) Levin. He began writing in elementary school. His education continued at the University of Chicago where he received a Ph.B. in 1924. Later he attended an art school, the Academie Moderne, in Paris, France. In 1934 he married Mabel Foy; and they had one child, Eli. After their divorce in 1944, he married a French novelist, Tereska Szwarc with whom he had two children, Gabriel and Mikael.
Levin’s career as a writer began at the Chicago Daily News from 1923 to 1929, where he was a reporter, feature writer, and columnist. From 1933 to 1938, he served as an associate editor of Esquire magazine in Chicago. He produced marionette plays in New York City at the New School for Social Research and even worked in a collective farm community in Palestine, before the country became Israel. His other professions included film critic, film writer, producer and director. During World War II, he made documentary films for the United States Office of War Information. Later he was a war correspondent for the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, investigating and reporting on the fate of Jewish concentration-camp prisoners.
After the war, he went to Palestine and made a film and wrote a novel about his experiences there, which was published in 1947. He was instrumental in getting The Diary of Anne Frank published as well. His play adaptation of the book, however, was suppressed for many years. His honors and awards include the Harry and Ethel Daroff Fiction Award in 1966 for The Stronghold, the Isaac Siegel Memorial Juvenile Award of the Jewish Book Council of America in 1967 for The Story of Israel. He received a special citation from the World Federation of Bergen/Belsen Associations for “excellence and distinction in literature of the Holocaust and Jewish destiny.”
Levin sometimes faced lawsuits when the “facts” of his works were disputed, but he maintained a commitment to being first and foremost an American Jewish writer. When he died in 1981, in Jerusalem, he left a diverse body of work chronicling the development of the Jewish consciousness during the twentieth century. He was an innovator with a versatility of styles including documentary, satiric humor, psychoanalytic thriller, and historic epic. One of his works, Compulsion, is considered the first nonfiction novel, a technique later used by Truman Capote and Norman Mailer. Writing novels, autobiography, juveniles, translations, plays and documentary films over a span of sixty years, he tried always to write in “the tradition of the realists,” with his models being the work of John Dos Passos and Theodore Drieser. Many consider him “the most significant American Jewish writer” of the twentieth century.