Although born and raised in the central Massachusetts industrial city of Worcester, where his father was a mailman, he spent summers in Gloucester on the coast, which became the focus of his most important work,
The Maximus Poems. He was a champion orator in high school, winning a tour of Europe as a prize. He chose Wesleyan over Harvard on the advice of his high-school debating coach, continuing there for an M.A., writing a thesis on Melville and tracking down Melville's personal library as part of his research. He eventually went to Harvard for further study in a newly begun American Studies program, completing all course work for the Ph.D.; but he left without the degree after receiving a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1939 for a book on Melville (the 400-page draft was abandoned but emerged after World War II in remarkably different form as
Call Me Ishmael). During the war he was assistant chief of the Foreign Language Division of the Office of War Information, until resigning in protest against bureaucratic meddling and inefficiency.
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