 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
In Memoriam: Franklin Rosemont (1943-2009)
Apr 13, 2009
We were shocked and saddened to hear today that Franklin Rosemont, co-founder of the Chicago Surrealist Group , preeminent Wobbly historian and folklorist, and managing co-editor of the Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, passed away on the night of April 12th in Chicago. Franklin's involvement with the international Surrealist movement dated to his 1965 meeting with André Breton in Paris - an encounter which crystallized into over 4 decades of activity as a partisan of the radical imagination. With his wife Penelope Rosemont, he co-founded the Chicago Surrealist Group - one of the most active and politically ingenious Surrealist formations in the second half of the 20th Century. The Chicago Group's declarations, manifestos, poetry, collage, and other interventions - much of it collected in their occasional journal Arsenal: Surrealist Subversions - has without a doubt inspired an entire new generation of revolution in the service of the marvelous.
His work on the history of the IWW, and especially on it's unparalleled cultural experimentation and innovation, remains an absolutely essential touchstone for anyone interested in the underground history of American radicalism. His book Joe Hill: The IWW & the Making of a Revolutionary Workingclass Counterculture is the definitive text on the Wobbly bard and martyr. Other books he wrote or edited for the Charles H. Kerr Company (the oldest labor press in the U.S., which he helped revive in the 1970's) or its Surrealist imprint, Black Swan Press, include the magnificient Haymarket Scrapbook, The Big Red Songbook, Jacques Vaché and the Roots of Surrealism, The Forecast is Hot! Tracts & Other Collective Declarations of the Surrealist Movement in the U.S., 1966-1976, and many, many more.
Several of us at Red Emma's had the amazing opportunity to know Franklin well - he was always quite supportive of the project, which we occasionally dared to hope reminded him in some small way of the legendary Solidarity Bookshop he helped run in Chicago in the 1960's. Sitting down with Franklin was always an incredible experience - between the history he himself helped create and the history he helped uncover, Franklin was never without a story to tell - about the IWW, SDS, Hobohemia in Chicago, the Rebel Worker, about the past 100 years or so of radical publishing in the US, or about the international network of Surrealists who seemed to always be passing through the Rosemont's Rogers Park home. He was a comrade, a teacher, and a friend, and he will be deeply, deeply missed.
.