Tess Slesinger
Tess Slesinger was an influential American fiction writer and screenwriter during the Depression era, known for her critical portrayal of a specific segment of American culture in the 1930s. Born to Hungarian-Russian Jewish parents and raised in New York City, she attended Swarthmore College and later the Columbia School of Journalism. Slesinger's first marriage to Herbert Solow connected her to a circle of Jewish intellectuals, which inspired her acclaimed novel, *The Unpossessed*. This work, published in 1934, diverged from typical Depression narratives by exploring the lives of intelligent, idealistic individuals grappling with emotional hollowness and commitment issues, all conveyed through humor and satire.
Slesinger also produced notable short stories, with her first collection, *Time: The Present*, published in 1935. Many of her stories and reviews appeared in prestigious magazines of the time. After moving to California, she transitioned to screenwriting, contributing to films such as *The Good Earth* and *A Tree Grows in Brooklyn*. Despite her untimely death at age thirty-nine, Slesinger's writing continues to resonate, capturing the complexities of character and moment in dynamic social settings. Her work remains a significant reflection of the era's cultural landscape.
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Subject Terms
Tess Slesinger
Writer
- Born: July 16, 1905
- Birthplace: New York, New York
- Died: February 21, 1945
- Place of death: Los Angeles, California
Biography
Tess Slesinger, a promising fiction writer of the depression era and later of Hollywood screenplays, proffered a critical look at a particular segment of American culture in the 1930’s. Alhough she died young, at age thirty-nine, she had, in her novel and short stories, created characters as representative of her era as F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Daisy and Tom Buchanan.
The daughter of Hungarian-Russian Jewish parents, Slesinger grew up in New York City in a comfortable, stable childhood. She attended Swarthmore College and then the Columbia School of Journalism, where she took her B.A. degree in 1925. Her first marriage was to Herbert Solow, a classmate. He became a political journalist connected with New York Jewish intellectuals and political leftists such as Lionel Trilling, Clifton Fadiman, Elliott Cohen, and Phillip Rahv, all of whom published in the Menorah Journal. This group of intellectuals and their circle of friends became the inspiration of her highly acclaimed novel, The Unpossessed. After her divorce, Selsinger moved to California and married Frank Davis. They had two children.
Slesinger began writing book reviews for the New York Post and stories for Menorah Journal. Stories also appeared in various other magazines such as Scribner’s, Story, Forum, Vanity Fair, Redbook, and American Mercury. After divorcing Solow in 1932, Slesinger accepted a position teaching writing at New York’s Briarcliff Manor, a private girls’ school. The story “The Answer on the Magnolia Tree,” later printed in her collection, resulted from her impressions and experiences there. She sold the screen rights to this story, which was adapted to the film Girls’ School.
In 1934, the novel The Unpossessed, appeared. It met with immediate success and was resurrected three times since, with the 2002 publication including an introduction by Elizabeth Hardwick. This novel explores the lives of the New York intelligentsia, a circle Slesinger participated in while married to Herbert Solow. Quite the opposite of many depression-era novels that presented the misery and suffering of the times, The Unpossessed describes the lives of intelligent, idealistic people who hold strong beliefs about how to change the world. With humor and satire, Slesinger presents sketches of people who long to be possessed by meaningful passions, but are, in fact, emotionally hollow and afraid of limiting their lives by commitments to the mundane aspects of life such as love and family.
Her short stories, collected first in 1935 as Time: The Present and reprinted as On Being Told that Her Second Husband Has Taken His First Lover, and Other Stories, present characters at crucial junctions in their lives, dramatizing their moments of self-understanding or alternately of indecisiveness or submission.
Slesinger moved to California, leaving behind the social life she described and satirized. In California, she wrote screenplays, including The Good Earth, and she collaborated on the screenplay, A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, with her husband, Frank Davis. In both her novel and her stories, she articulates certain defining moments in the lives of the characters she creates.