With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Carleton Beals
Journalism/Non-Fiction
1893 – 1979
A prominent radical literary journalist of the mid-twentieth century, Beals wrote with a progressive critical perspective on a range of subjects including the politics of fascism during the 1930s and World War II, the emerging nations of Latin America in the post war period, Cuba in the 1930s and during the Castro administration, and local history of the Connecticut shoreline.
- Biography/Description of Work
Beals’ family moved from Kansas to Pasadena, California in 1897 so their sons could attend the University of California. Carleton studied engineering as an undergraduate but also excelled in history and economics. He won a scholarship for graduate study at Columbia University and this brought him east where he earned a Masters degree in 1917 along with a teacher’s certificate. His brother became a noted anthropologist at the University of California Los Angeles. Beals was a conscientious objector in World War I, after which he traveled to Mexico City, and spent three years there teaching and writing. He traveled to Spain and Italy, back to Mexico, and then to New York City, writing about land reform, politics, and religion in Mexico, and fascism in Europe. Beals was hired by The Nation, The New York Herald Tribune, and other publications, to report on the Sandino rebellion in Nicaragua (1927-33) and became widely known as a radical journalist covering Central American affairs. He married his first wife, Elizabeth Daniel of San Antonio, Texas, in 1931 in Mexico City. In 1932 his book, “Banana Gold” on Honduras and Central America, Beals used a first-person point of view to provide an account of events from the perspective of a participant observer. This established him as a literary journalist, a new genre that entailed writing not as an objective observer but as an involved commentator and interpreter (not recognized and respected until the 1970s). Techniques of fiction used to create an engaging story, such as setting scenes, using dialogue and character development, became a way of dramatizing factual evidence, in contrast with the traditional form answering the five “W”s – Who, What, Where, When, and Why. Also in 1932, Beals spent time in Cuba investigating the dictator Geraldo Machado and a general strike in Cuba. He was by then well-established as a radical journalist, critical of dictatorships, capitalist business, and the colonialism of the developed countries including the United States. In the mid-1930s he returned to the United States, and settled in Guilford. Following his 1956 marriage to Carolyn Kennedy, the couple moved to Killingworth, home until Beals’ death. Beals continued to be a prominent commentator on Central America, making appearances and writing for the news media into the 1970s. He focused also on domestic issues, writing about national and regional history, political figures such as Huey Long of Louisiana, and some fiction. He published over 50 books during his career, 15 of them while living in Killingworth.
- Sources view
- Applegate, Edd. Literary Journalism: a Biographical Dictionary of Writers and Editors HRI, Killingworth Architectural & Historical Survey. CRERPA, 1978. Killingworth Historical Society archives.
- Associated Resource(s)