By the mid-1960s, American writer Kay Boyle was in possession of a
three-book contract from Doubleday publishers in New York. The
cornerstone of this deal was to be a history of Germany, a manuscript she
began in the late 1950s. Boyle encountered difficulties completing this
work, and after lobbying successfully to write a history of German
women instead, she eventually abandoned the project altogether. To help
her meet her professional obligations, Boyle hoped that Doubleday would
accept a new plan to republish Three Short Novels, a work that had
appeared under the Beacon imprint in 1958. That publisher still had four
thousand copies of the book in its warehouse, however, and Doubleday
editor Ken McCormick was unable to agree to Boyle’s proposal.
McCormick suggested instead that she undertake work revising Robert
McAlmon’s 1938 autobiography, Being Geniuses Together. Indeed, in the
years following his death in 1956, Boyle had been unsuccessful in locating
an American publisher for her friend’s book, so when Doubleday brought
forward an edition of the work in 1968, it contained alternate chapters
written by Kay Boyle, herself. McAlmon’s original text is approximately
one hundred and ten thousand words in length; Boyle’s edition is one
hundred and sixty thousand words, only seventy thousand of which were
written by Robert McAlmon. ‘‘This present book is his,’’ Boyle wrote of
McAlmon’s achievement in her 1984 afterword (333), and while one
might argue that this is the case, no one can question the fact that his book
was altered substantially from its original form.
Kay Boyle and Caresse Crosby: Devoted Friendship
