Lewis Galantière
Lewis Galantière was a noted American translator, man of letters, and sometime government official. He is particularly remembered for his friendships with the "Lost Generation" American expatriate writers in Paris.
Early life
Galantière was born in a tenement room in Chicago's Jewish section. Both parents were immigrants from Riga, Latvia; they earned their living making cigars and cigarettes in the room. His schooling in the Chicago settlement house movement was excellent, and by his teens he had learned French and read widely in European 18th- and 19th-century authors. In 1908 his family moved to Los Angeles, and his basic education ended then. He was 13 years old. His first job was as a clerk for the Santa Fe Railroad, where he continued to read French, English, and German literature. In 1910 he became a salesman at the Andrews Talking Machine Company, which led to an invitation to join the Union League Club. There he learned the manners of the educated and successful. He attended the University of Southern California law school during the summer of 1911, but did not continue, and in 1914 was accepted into the Librarian Training Program offered by the Los Angeles Public Library. His year in the training program formed the entirety of his advanced education in literature.Degree in hand, Galantière returned to Chicago to join Kroch's bookstore as a salesman. Through the store he became friends with Sherwood Anderson, Ben Hecht, Carl Sandburg, and other aspiring authors. In early 1918, however, he left the bookstore, and returned to live with his parents in Los Angeles. After his father's death, Galantière became a librarian first at the San Diego Library, and subsequently with military libraries, during which time he began to publish a number of book reviews in newspapers and magazines including The Dial and The New Republic. By a chance meeting, he was invited to become assistant to the American Commission to the newly created International Chamber of Commerce in Paris, where he arrived in late 1920.
Paris days
When Sherwood Anderson and his wife arrived at Paris in May 1921, Galantière introduced them to Sylvia Beach, James Joyce, and Ezra Pound. Later that year, Galantière would become acquainted with a young Ernest Hemingway and his wife Hadley shortly after their arrival in late December. Anderson, who had met Hemingway earlier in Chicago, had written the young writer a letter of introduction to Galantière. Clearly Lewis Galantière was on excellent terms with the literary community in Paris, for when Joyce's Ulysses was issued on the writer's birthday, but only two copies could be printed at that time, Joyce inscribed one to his wife, the other to Galantière. During the next few years, Galantière supplemented his ICC salary by publishing reviews and translations of Jean Cocteau.When his ICC work drew to a close in 1926, Galantière returned to New York City, where he earned a meager living as a translator of Remy de Gourmont, Leon Daudet, Paul Morand, Jean Maurice Pouquet, Raymond Escholier, and Jakob Wassermann. Almost miraculously, however, in February 1928 he was offered a job in Paris with the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He accepted and returned to Paris.
Through his job, Galantière met John Houseman, then a grain trader. After the stock market crash in 1929, Houseman invited Galantière to join him in authoring a comedy – Lovers, Happy Lovers – based on Sacha Guitry's L'Illusioniste. It was a modest success, and they subsequently collaborated on adapting a French farce, Trois et une, for Broadway. Galantière's introduction to Virgil Thomson led to Houseman's role in producing Four Saints in Three Acts, and onwards to a career in show business.
Galantière remained at the bank until February 1939, performing translations on the side. The most celebrated was his book of excerpts from the Goncourt Journal, published in 1937. He also organized and translated Wind, Sand, and Stars by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, which won that year's National Book Award for nonfiction.