Cosmic Scholar: The Life and Times of Harry Smith

by John Szwed

published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux

416 pages

on sale: August 2023

This new biography by author John Szwed focuses on an elusive, mysterious character, of whom it would seem that only the testimonies of the people who knew him remain. However, his artistic imprint has remained in history, influencing other artists of greater renown. It is very likely that this book will give some much needed and overdue notoriety to Harry Smith, who in life, ironically, would seem to have sought anonymity. Making a timeline of Smith’s life was hard work on the part of the author, as Smith left very few interviews or correspondence after his death, and the legacy he left us are his experimental short films, some of his paintings and, mainly, the great musical work of having compiled the famous and seminal Anthology of American Folk Music (for which he was posthumously awarded the Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award in 1991). It is for this type of work that he remains known today, but author Szwed also reminds us of the great anthropological work that Smith did at a very young age by collecting everything possible about American Indian tribes: from their music, dances, and crafts; research that, while not professional — since Smith never technically studied anthropology — influenced other researchers who studied these communities, which until that time, were not quite in academics’ interest. Like many artists, Smith lived very close to poverty despite being awarded one of the first Guggenheim grants, and what he did to subsist was to borrow money from his artist friends, who were not doing so well financially either. Smith would stop eating in order to buy books that interested him, be it anthropology or occultism (a subject on which he became an expert), or to be able to buy vinyl albums, as his obsession as a collector encompassed many subjects. His inclination to know everything was because he believed in the theory that all artistic works were in one way or another influenced by each other and represented a unified culture, hence his disposition in trying to connect the different artistic methods, from tattoos to Ukrainian Easter eggs. His, apparently, scattershot interests were also reflected in his eccentric personality: he was prone to anger fits and over drinking, which made the people around him feel at the same time uncomfortable and in awe. The difficult task of obtaining testimonies from the people who knew Smith is accomplished by author Szwed, who has written biographies of off-the-radar characters before, and here he offers us a rich overview not only of Smith’s wide-ranging interests but also of the state of experimental cinema, the nascent anthropology and the American art scene. While Smith might seem a difficult person to sympathize with, at the very least this biography should be read to learn about his many contributions to culture that influenced many more well-known figures such as Jonas Mekas, Bob Dylan, Stan Brakhage or Allen Ginsberg. ~