A Village Apollo

After a return of his mysterious backache, Max Eastman seeks a cure at Dr. Gehring’s sanatorium in Maine, where he falls for the beautiful Swedish maid/nurse Anna Carlson. He joins Crystal in New York, studies philosophy with John Dewey at Columbia University, and begins to teach as an associate instructor. During summers spent at Glenora he perfects his diving technique but cannot rid himself of his sexual inhibitions. In two searching essays he celebrates Walt Whitman as a sexual healer, learning to reject his mother’s insistence on spiritual purity. Moving in with Crystal, Max becomes interested in woman’s suffrage and helps found the Men’s League for Woman Suffrage in New York. Max becomes a sought-after and well-paid speaker at suffrage events, reinventing himself as a “man suffragette.” Dewey accepts one of Max’s essays on Plato in lieu of a dissertation. Plato’s struggle to reconcile his enjoyment of beauty with morality is a metaphor for Max’s own inner conflict; he never submits his dissertation. The painful death of Annis Ford Eastman in 1910 leaves Max and Crystal bereft.