08/07/2024
FEAR AND LOATHING
Experiencing a buttoned-up, early 20th century childhood in Philadelphia, a hot-house of professional rivalries in pre-war Cyprus, and the deadly uncertainties of WW II spy craft in the Mediterranean, George H. McFadden dodged the vagaries of a life that was always on the line.
The Inventive Life of George H. McFadden by Richard Carreño traces McFadden’s rocky journey from an awkward beginning as the gay scion of wealth and prominence; to Cyprus as a famed University of Pennsylvania archaeologist of ancient Greek treasures; to war-time Germany, France, Greece, and, lastly, from Egypt where he faced down the N**i war machine as an American spy. McFadden also found time in his abbreviated, multi-faceted life for work as an accomplished poet, a pioneering translator of Homer, and as a scholar of ancient Greece and German literature.
Biographer Richard Carreño details a tale of back-stabbing, envy, and homophobia that dogged McFadden’s life on three continents. The intrigue, continuing to this day, surrounding McFadden’s unexplained—perhaps nefarious—death in 1953 in a boating mishap off the dark. indigo waters of southern Cyprus gets a full, first-ever airing. His death came just two days short of his forty-six birthday.
Despite a life salted with daring, enterprise, and high drama, George H. McFadden bore a weight of inescapable melancholy. He was estranged from his parents. His siblings were remote. He never married. Personal relationships were founded more by association than friendship. They were often muddied by conflict; seldom, to his chagrin, by mutual respect. He was close to only a few. He closeted his homosexuality, knowing its disclosure would result in professional and social ruin.
His was inventive life, marred by fear and loathing.
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