A Memoir of Thomas McGrath

Beeching’s friendship with McGrath dates back to the year following the end of WW II. They met in England where McGrath had come as a Rhodes Scholar and Beeching describes in some detail the antifascist literary circle McGrath moved in at the time. The memoir explores significant moments in McGrath’s life when he and Beeching were particularly close, geographically or otherwise. Those include the years of McCarthyism when McGrath was on the West Coast, times in Gran Canaria under the Franco regime and in Greece shortly before the Colonels’ coup as McGrath was writing Letter to an Imaginary Friend, Part II, plus the days of protest against the Vietnam War, a stay in Italy showing McGrath as a father, and McGrath’s trial in Minnesota for the accidental shooting of an Indian, among others. Beeching recounts numerous anecdotes casting light on McGrath’s personality, including thoughts on his radical politics, on his commitment to his work as a poet and on his approach to teaching. Samples of their passionate debates on the subject of poetics are presented, along with McGrath’s preference for a brand of communism not wholly disciplinarian and his ultimate faithfulness to and belief in the Communist Party USA. Additional themes offer insight into: McGrath’s Irish-Celtic background; his nuanced attitude towards Catholicism; and his attachment to his early life in the farm community of Sheldon, North Dakota, contrasting this fondness with his difficult relationship with aspects of his home state. Beeching’s approach to his subject is at the same time deeply personal and historically informative.