"Whitman now is a central figure in the American canon, but his Pfaff's pals are all but forgotten. In Rebel Souls, biographer Justin Martin brings them wonderfully to life in his enjoyable romp through the milieu. Whitman is the emotional core of the book - Martin's passages on Whitman's romantic travails and his experiences tending to wounded soldiers during the Civil War are unforgettably moving. But the other members of the Pfaff's coterie almost steal the show."—BostonGlobe
"The book is a veritable who's who of the 19th-century's movers and shakers."—CapeCod Times
"Martin's historical scope and elegiac prose, laced through with parlance of the period, is not only grandly entertaining to read, it rescues this bit of cultural history and gives Whitman a more human dimension past the iconic image."—NewYork Journal of Books
"Anyone who loves history, and particularly literary history, will want to read this book."
—HudsonValley News
"Fascinating and eye-opening."—WaterburyRepublican-American
"In this captivating study, Martin transports the reader to the 1850s inside smoky Pfaff's saloon-the meeting place of the US's first Bohemians...Thanks to meticulous research, Martin was able to re-create the Bohemian scene, and Whitman's place in it, in vivid detail. This book is a lively and entertaining read for students of American literature, history, and culture...Summing Up: Essential. All readers."—Choice
"[A] well-written account of the New York Bohemians who gravitated around Pfaff's Saloon on Broadway...A lively tale, informative and well-told."—MarkTwain Forum
"Does a great service in shining light on the younger man who still had a lot of hard-dues-paying years before he sauntered into legend and the ages...A valuable-and very readable-addition to the body of critical work about America's greatest poet."—InternetReview of Books
"Places are ever-changing, Manhattan real estate most especially. But, as Rebel Souls proves, biography can play a provocative role in preserving their mystique and also their impact."—NewBooks in Biography
"Martin takes us into the scintillating world of Pfaff's saloon in the 19th century...What happened in Pfaff's saloon in the 1850s is stuff of literary legend...The Greenwich Village saloon was finally paid the homage it deserves with the release of Rebel Souls."—NewYork Press
"[A] compelling, insightful group biography...Vividly describes not only Pfaff's heyday, but also how Clapp's coterie, once it was dispersed by the chaos, duties, and opportunities brought by the Civil War, came to define an unmistakably American species of rebel artist...Martin sets himself an ambitious task, and rises to it in the structure and reach of his telling. In 1860, the war scatters his protagonists, whose fates he follows for the latter two-thirds of Rebel Souls like a literary LoJack...Martin's done a remarkable job bringing 'those times, that place' very much alive through his painstaking research...Pfaff's rebel souls, Martin makes plain, are all around us."—LosAngeles Review of Books
"A highly informative look at the very first attempt here in America where novelists, poets, actors, dancers, visual artists and journalists, came together and tried to create a society...Martin does an excellent job in Rebel Souls, in drawing insightful portraits of some of the main characters like Whitman, which is the heart of his book."—NeworldReview
"What a cable TV series this would make."—BuffaloNews
"Engaging...The idea of the artist as outsider or rebel (at least the American version of it)-and, indeed, the thing that, a century later, would be called a counterculture-can be traced to Clapp and Pfaff's. Martin's book is a lively and intelligent entree into that heretofore mostly forgotten world."—ClevelandPlain Dealer
"A vibrant and well-researched tale that shows how this first bohemian culture seeded and nurtured an American tradition of rebel art that continues to this day."—Queerty.com
"Martin has blown the dust off of the New York City of the pre-Civil War era. He's magically made both the period and the people who inhabited it relevant, stirring and captivating with his true account of a New York City bar and its clientele."—DecaturTribune
"[An] entertaining cultural history...The author's solid research into the connections of these curiously varied men and women makes this a wonderful story of one of the world's odd little cultural cliques."—KirkusReviews, BEA & ALA BookGuide
"An engaging history of a literary underground...Though Walt Whitman is the best-known of the group, readers may find themselves drawn to his lesser-known comrades...Martin's writing rises to the occasion...A worthwhile read...Introduces armchair literary historians to a dazzling cast of eccentrics."—PublishersWeekly
"This is popular history the way it should be, well-researched and authoritative yet demotic in idiom and unpretentious in presentation, a darn good read."—Booklist, starred review
"Martin brings the legendary group to life, painting a vibrant portrait of the radical artists who frequented Pfaff's saloon...Rebel Souls is a curious beast of a book: it is in part American history circa 1850's, part biography and, to a lesser degree, part a critical examination of Whitman's poems...Historically accurate and painstakingly researched...It is easy to get lost in this book: the descriptions mixed with remarkably well retained dialogue are occasionally so powerful that they transport the reader to their own seat in Henry Clapp's circle...An invigorating read."—TheJournal
"Long before New York artists and writers convened regularly at the Algonquin and, later, Elaine's, an eclectic group distinguished largely by crushing poverty and creative potential gravitated to a subterranean saloon-decidedly not a salon-named Pfaff's. In Rebel Souls, Justin Martin invites readers to belly up to this forgotten basement bar...Almost every page provides an intoxicating high without the hangover."—NewYork Times
"The story of how a subterranean New York City saloon helped alter the course of Whitman's life."—Vox.com
"Martin convincingly shows that although only Whitman attained literary longevity, Manhattan's bohemians nevertheless succeeded in pioneering a mode of existence which still reverberates today."—TimesLiterary Supplement
"[Martin] is a fine historian and great writer...This is a wonderful book about bohemian culture, a fascinating history that reverberates yet today. Thanks to Mr. Martin for his painstaking research and the obvious care of his subject that come out so nicely in his writing."—HeartsAndMindsBooks.com
"Rebel Souls illuminates an intriguing but poorly documented page in American cultural history."—SantaFe New Mexican
"A convincing case that Walt Whitman's drinking buddies were an 1800s version of the Beats and that all their bending elbows actually improved their work."—KansasCity Star
"[A] biography of the man and his eclectic counter-culture, a model for artistic, intellectual non-conformity well into the twentieth century."—CurledUp with a Good Book
"Whitman is that iconic American poet but [Martin has] really humanized him in [his] book."—SullivanStreet Press
2014-08-04
Walt Whitman (1819-1892) is only the best known of Martin's (Genius of Place: The Life of Frederick Law Olmsted, 2011, etc.) gallery of the 19th-century bohemians who haunted Pfaff's Saloon in New York City. The leader of this boisterous set was Henry Clapp (1814-1875), an irreverent moral relativist who thrilled in playing off his coterie of writers and artists for the best put-downs and bons mots. Clapp's attitude sprang from his experiences in Paris' Latin Quarter, where he met the true bohemians who formed the basis of La Vie de Bohème. They sat in Café Momus discussing, rather than producing, their art and drinking strong coffee and stronger alcohol. Mostly, they had no money, no prospects, multiple romances and lots of talk. Ultimately, these circumstances brought Clapp back to the saloon on the corner of Broadway and Bleeker Street to interact with the fascinating crowd he met there night after night. Though Whitman was often there, he was not always with Clapp's crowd. He also spent time with new friends in the larger room, where one's sexuality was not a matter of discussion. Many of the figures in Martin's entertaining cultural history failed miserably, and many died young. Some like actor Edwin Booth (brother to John Wilkes) and humor writer Artemus Ward, left their marks, while others faded away. As they spread across America and the Atlantic, they met writers as diverse as Mark Twain and Charles Dickens. Clapp vigorously promoted Whitman's Leaves of Grass and gave Twain his first national break in the Saturday Press. Martin truly opens up the characters of these creative, sensitive men, examining their lives before the Civil War and the ways in which they reacted to it. The author's solid research into the connections of these curiously varied men and women makes this a wonderful story of one of the world's odd little cultural cliques.
