Irving Fiske was a Brooklyn-born freelance writer, playwright, inventor, and community co-creator. After graduating from Cornell University in 1928 and selling a radio tuning invention of his for a few years, he moved to Greenwich Village and worked for the Federal Writer's Project, a New Deal program that employed artists and writers during the Great Depression. .There he worked on a guidebook, The WPA Guide to New York City, with Richard Wright, among others. The book is presently in print (2022) and creates a vivid picture of 1930s New York. Credited under his family name, Irving Fishman, he later changed it to Fiske, which he said was "more euphonious." He may also have used the name to steer around the virulent anti-Semitism of the time. However, he never denied being born to Russian Jewish immigrants and took immediate, irate action whenever he encountered anti-Jewish attitudes or propaganda.
He published in H. L. Mencken's The American Mercury, the most prestigious literary magazine of the day, among others His piece on Pecos Bill for Mencken later appeared in an anthology of classic American writing.
Another essay," Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake," caught the eye of its subject, playwright George Bernard Shaw, who called it "the best essay ever written about me," and had it reprinted as a pamphlet.
Irving translated Shakespeare's Hamlet into "Modern American Colloquial English " in the 1940s. Shaw and many others praised this work, which seems to be the first modern-English version of Hamlet. Some, however, were offended at anyone's tampering with the work of "The Bard." John Ciardi, the acerbic poetry editor of The Saturday Review, printed some excerpts there in the 1950s, asking readers to choose between the original and the modern version. To Ciardi's surprise and apparent irritation, most said they preferred Fiske's "Hamlet in Modern English," some saying they had never understood Shakespeare before.
On January 8, 1946, Irving Fiske married Barbara (Isabelle Daniel) Hall, an intellectual artist from Tucson, Arizona. She had worked for Harvey Comics as a cartoonist during World War II, drawing "Pat Parker and her Girl Commandoes" and "Honey Blake, the Blonde Bomber." She was a figurative artist in the day of the Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock. Her airy visionary pastels and tempera paintings were distant from that sort of work. The Fiskes, though, had no doubt that Barbara's work would endure long after that of Pollock and de Kooning (who sometimes came to hear Irving hold forth on philosophy and psychology at the Waldorf Cafeteria on Sixth Avenue). At the present moment, she is remembered as one of a very few women who worked as comic artists during WWII, and has figured in several books on these artists.
Irving and Barbara, with Irving's classical composer brother MIlton Fiske and several others, bought 140 acres of land in central Vermont, and named it Quarry Hill. They opened it to "souls," a Greenwich Village name for unconventional people. In the mid- 1960s young people began to stream in -- people Irving Fiske called "an enlightened generation"-- and Quarry Hill became Vermont's oldest. and sometimes its largest, alternative lifestyle group.
The Fiske family never thought of it as a "commune," as some did, because they continued to own the land, and intended it to be an artist's colony. However, there has always had a cooperative quality, not to mention an air something like a Marx Brothers film.) Someone once gave Irving a card that said: "The Forest Wizard: Enchantments/Thaumaturgy" (magic).
In the 1960s, Barbara Hall Fiske opened a storefront as a gallery in the East Village, as it part of the Lower East Side began to be called. She showed her artwork there (till some was stolen), and Irving began to give talks there on Vedanta, Zen, Sufi, and Tibetan Yoga. He advertised his talks in the Village Voice as being on "Tantra, the Yoga of Sex," which drew in a standing room only crowd most nights. He invited people to Vermont and gave out a brochure that offered "Free Vermont Mountain Vacations" (a $10 per week contribution was requested). Other family members also invited the newly hip and others to Vermont.
Irving advised young men not to go to Vietnam and wrote letters to help them get conscientious objector status. When some young people began to ask his advice about other matters, such as what "path" to follow, he said that he was not a guru, but an anti-guru, if anything. He agreed with J. Krishnamurti that "truth is a pathless land " and that each person must seek out enlightenment for himself or herself.
In the 1960s as the hip East Village and the Hippie era were coming into flower, they went to New York City and opened a storefront gallery, The Gallery Gwen, where Barbara showed her artwork and that of friends, and Irving gave talks. He spoke on philosophy, religion, Eastern thought (then fairly new to the USA), and psychology, among other things. His talks were somewhat like those of Alan Watts, who was then also popularizing Eastern philosophy...but almost everyone who heard Irving speak felt that they had not heard anyone like him. His sense of humor, his radical notion that people should live for the fun they could have, and the creativity they could express, plus his joy at meeting with the Sixties Generation ("I love and honor this generation," he later said), made many people feel welcome. He wrote letters for men wishing to escape the draft and Vietnam. Many young people moved to Vermont with the family and built cabins of their own, had children, and shared food, clothing, laughter, disagreements, and many other such things. The North Hollow School, QH's Independent Reporting School, has been said to have been a "Template" for other independent schools in VT. Unlike many agrarian or political communes in VT-- it was said that there were 200 communes in the state during the 1970s-- QH was focused on art, literature, philosophy, sensual enjoyment, and the rights of children. Even today (
quarry Hill is still extant), all are asked not to spank, scold, punish, or neglect kids on the land. Also, no hunting or fishing is allowed (though no one is forced to be a vegetarian).
Irving and Barbara divorced in 1976 but went on as friends, especially after she married a Quaker Professor of Sociology, Dr. Donald W. Calhoun. The three became friends and remained so till Irv's death in Ocala, Fl. He had a stroke on the 24th, which destroyed his brain. However, he was conscious long enough to say, "I have created this myself." Irving did not believe in fate or destiny, but in the power of the individual to create her or his own life. Irving had been swimming every day for most of his life, and his heart was so strong that he did not pass on till the next day in a hospital in Ocala, Fla. His son William was with him (Isabella could not get to FL in time with her baby and the lack of time). Irv's ashes were scattered in the mountains behind Quarry Hill in the summer of 1990. His friends felt his presence and his exuberance.∼Irving Fiske, writer, playwright, pop psychologist, co-founder, with his wife, Isabelle (Barbara) Hall Fiske, of Quarry Hill Creative Center in Rochester, VT., had a reputation as an entertaining, transcendent speaker whose discussions of religion, philosophy, psychology, art, literature, and the rights of children drew people to him and created a mood in which each person felt special and illuminated. He said he was an "Anti-Guru" and that each person must seek out enlightenment for themselves. Still, many people found him captivating and lived with him in his two homes, 140 acres on an old hill farm in VT and a little cabin in the Ocala National Forest, Florida. By the 1970s or 80s, about 90 people lived at QH and many more visited from all over the world each summer. He "translated" Hamlet into "modern American Colloquial English" (of the late 1940s of New York City); wrote an essay now counted classic on Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake, which Shaw loved so much he had it published as a little booklet in 1951 (. It has since been republished. He published many other works and his Hamlet was performed in colleges in America. He worked as a WPA writer and editor in the 1930s on a book now back in print, The WPA Guide to New York City, with Richard Wright and other well-known American writers.
He married Barbara Hall -- then a cartoonist for Harvey Comics-- in 1946 and they bought the land in Vermont, which they made a kind of retreat for unusual and talented people, and which, in the 1960s, became Vermont's largest, oldest, and one of America's most unusual communal living situations. For more on Irving, see his page at Wikipedia.∼Lifelong iconoclast, known as "The Forest Wizard" and co-founder
of New England's oldest and largest alternative community,
Quarry Hill in Rochester, VT, Irving worked for the WPA during the
Depression. He translated HAMLET into modern English, garnering praise
from many including George Bernard Shaw and Orson Welles.
He also wrote many plays of his own-- and the classic pamphlet
on William Blake and George Bernard Shaw, "Bernard Shaw's Debt to
William Blake," which Shaw loved and had republished at his own expense.
Irving hit his stride when he began to speak on comparative religion,
philosophy, and "Tantra, the Yoga of Sex," in the East Village in NYC
during the Sixties, in the Gallery Gwen, his and his wife Barbara's
performance space and gathering-place for freethinkers.
Many visited and some chose to live at Quarry Hill, the land Irving
And Barbara had bought with wedding-gift money. Barbara is an artist
and is still living. They had married on Jan. 8, 1946, and had 2 children
myself, Isabella Fiske McFarlin (8-12-50)a writer, and William Fiske
(2-4-54), a software developer and computer whiz. Irving did not think kids
should have to go to school so we traveled to stay one jump ahead of the law
while Irving, who'd graduated from Cornell at 19, discussed every subject on earth and in heaven with us.
So we received our education.
In the Seventies, many people began to build at Quarry Hill. At its height, it had more than a hundred residents and people visiting from all over the world each summer.
Irving became known as "The Forest Wizard," but always handed a mirror to anyone who tried to give him the appellation of "Guru" and said, "You want a guru? Look here-- every day!"
Irving loved Florida and went there each winter to a little cabin on a lake in the Ocala National Forest. He kept in good shape by swimming, but at the age of 82 suffered a stroke
and died a day later, April 25, 1990, saying "I have created this death myself," several times.
He and Barbara had been divorced in the mid-Seventies. Barbara was happily remarried in 1989, to Dr. Donald W. Calhoun, a Quaker sociologist. The three became and remained friends, often sitting together near the pond at Quarry Hill to watch the kids go by.
He was cremated and his ashes are scattered in the mountains above QH, along with the ashes of his brother, classical composer MILTON FISKE
and Milton's son David. ∼Writer, playwright, Federal Writer's Project writer, and editor, speaker, philosopher, and co-creator of Quarry Hill Creative Center, Vermont's oldest alternative community and family property management business. He translated Shakespeare's Hamlet into modern American colloquial English in the late 1940s, at the time considered by many to be a controversial act. His Hamlet was praised by Orson Welles and many other well-known theatrical figures, particularly George Bernard Shaw, with whom Fiske had a correspondence. He wrote an article for The Shavian (a magazine about George Bernard Shaw and his work) entitled Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake, which Shaw appreciated and had reprinted in pamphlet form. This brief essay is now considered by many scholars of both Blake and Shaw to be a classic in its comparison of the work of both iconoclastic writers. In 1946, Irving Fiske married Barbara Hall (Isabelle Daniel Hall), a visionary painter and cartoonist who drew for Harvey Comics, one of the few female cartoonists of the World War II era. On April 10th of that year, they bought 140 acres of mountain and meadowland in central Vermont, which they made available to their Greenwich Village friends and artists, writers, and other creative and unusual people. Because of its proximity to a marble quarry (which produces a rare marble known as Vermont Verde Antique) they called the land Quarry Hill Creative Center. They had two children, Isabella in 1950, and William in 1954. After corresponding with A. S. Neill, creator of the liberal and children's rights-based Summerhill School in England, Irving and Barbara decided not to send their children to public school in America. At this time homeschooling was rare, and truancy considered a very serious crime. The Fiske family began to travel 1500 miles twice a year to keep the children out of school, while Irving taught them employing the Socratic method. They discussed and questioned all topics that arose on these journeys, and conducted scientific experiments when in either Vermont or Florida. Irving also taught his children to write, and Barbara taught them to draw. They traveled with artistic young women who helped care for the children in exchange for room, board, and art lessons. In the mid-1960s, Barbara decided to open an art gallery in New York City, and so the family rented a storefront in the nascent East Village, under the name The Gallery Gwen. There they met Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, R. Crumb, Trina Robbins, and many other well-known people. Isabella, their daughter (Ladybelle), formed a relationship with many of the Underground Cartoonists and became the girlfriend of Art Spiegelman, author of MAUS. Irving gave talks in the Gallery on religion, philosophy, psychology, art, and personal liberation, often attracting standing room only groups. Some of these persons would then come up to Quarry Hill and as the Sixties and Seventies continued, asked to be allowed to build houses and to live at Quarry Hill. In time, as many as 90 people lived on the property, raising children according to the Fiske's point of view-- no hitting children, no calling them names or making them feel inferior. Children were considered to be "ambassadors from another dimension" and the rule was that they were to be treated as though they were important, rare, and unusual beings with the awareness that transcended any knowledge the adults might have managed to garner due to their years. Quarry Hill became one of the Meccas of the Sixties, a place still extant today. Many persons return each year, and new people continue to arrive. Irving Fiske's death in 1990 created the usual schism between the family and those who considered themselves his "followers," even though he had spoken of himself as an "anti-guru" and insisted that each person must be his or her guru. The division was resolved through mediation, and Quarry Hill continues today as a place in constant change, based on artistic freedom and children's rights, but considered indescribable by many. See Irving Fiske's entry at Wikipedia and Wikiquotes.com, as well as that for Quarry Hill Creative Center at Wikipedia.com.
He published in H. L. Mencken's The American Mercury, the most prestigious literary magazine of the day, among others His piece on Pecos Bill for Mencken later appeared in an anthology of classic American writing.
Another essay," Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake," caught the eye of its subject, playwright George Bernard Shaw, who called it "the best essay ever written about me," and had it reprinted as a pamphlet.
Irving translated Shakespeare's Hamlet into "Modern American Colloquial English " in the 1940s. Shaw and many others praised this work, which seems to be the first modern-English version of Hamlet. Some, however, were offended at anyone's tampering with the work of "The Bard." John Ciardi, the acerbic poetry editor of The Saturday Review, printed some excerpts there in the 1950s, asking readers to choose between the original and the modern version. To Ciardi's surprise and apparent irritation, most said they preferred Fiske's "Hamlet in Modern English," some saying they had never understood Shakespeare before.
On January 8, 1946, Irving Fiske married Barbara (Isabelle Daniel) Hall, an intellectual artist from Tucson, Arizona. She had worked for Harvey Comics as a cartoonist during World War II, drawing "Pat Parker and her Girl Commandoes" and "Honey Blake, the Blonde Bomber." She was a figurative artist in the day of the Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock. Her airy visionary pastels and tempera paintings were distant from that sort of work. The Fiskes, though, had no doubt that Barbara's work would endure long after that of Pollock and de Kooning (who sometimes came to hear Irving hold forth on philosophy and psychology at the Waldorf Cafeteria on Sixth Avenue). At the present moment, she is remembered as one of a very few women who worked as comic artists during WWII, and has figured in several books on these artists.
Irving and Barbara, with Irving's classical composer brother MIlton Fiske and several others, bought 140 acres of land in central Vermont, and named it Quarry Hill. They opened it to "souls," a Greenwich Village name for unconventional people. In the mid- 1960s young people began to stream in -- people Irving Fiske called "an enlightened generation"-- and Quarry Hill became Vermont's oldest. and sometimes its largest, alternative lifestyle group.
The Fiske family never thought of it as a "commune," as some did, because they continued to own the land, and intended it to be an artist's colony. However, there has always had a cooperative quality, not to mention an air something like a Marx Brothers film.) Someone once gave Irving a card that said: "The Forest Wizard: Enchantments/Thaumaturgy" (magic).
In the 1960s, Barbara Hall Fiske opened a storefront as a gallery in the East Village, as it part of the Lower East Side began to be called. She showed her artwork there (till some was stolen), and Irving began to give talks there on Vedanta, Zen, Sufi, and Tibetan Yoga. He advertised his talks in the Village Voice as being on "Tantra, the Yoga of Sex," which drew in a standing room only crowd most nights. He invited people to Vermont and gave out a brochure that offered "Free Vermont Mountain Vacations" (a $10 per week contribution was requested). Other family members also invited the newly hip and others to Vermont.
Irving advised young men not to go to Vietnam and wrote letters to help them get conscientious objector status. When some young people began to ask his advice about other matters, such as what "path" to follow, he said that he was not a guru, but an anti-guru, if anything. He agreed with J. Krishnamurti that "truth is a pathless land " and that each person must seek out enlightenment for himself or herself.
In the 1960s as the hip East Village and the Hippie era were coming into flower, they went to New York City and opened a storefront gallery, The Gallery Gwen, where Barbara showed her artwork and that of friends, and Irving gave talks. He spoke on philosophy, religion, Eastern thought (then fairly new to the USA), and psychology, among other things. His talks were somewhat like those of Alan Watts, who was then also popularizing Eastern philosophy...but almost everyone who heard Irving speak felt that they had not heard anyone like him. His sense of humor, his radical notion that people should live for the fun they could have, and the creativity they could express, plus his joy at meeting with the Sixties Generation ("I love and honor this generation," he later said), made many people feel welcome. He wrote letters for men wishing to escape the draft and Vietnam. Many young people moved to Vermont with the family and built cabins of their own, had children, and shared food, clothing, laughter, disagreements, and many other such things. The North Hollow School, QH's Independent Reporting School, has been said to have been a "Template" for other independent schools in VT. Unlike many agrarian or political communes in VT-- it was said that there were 200 communes in the state during the 1970s-- QH was focused on art, literature, philosophy, sensual enjoyment, and the rights of children. Even today (
quarry Hill is still extant), all are asked not to spank, scold, punish, or neglect kids on the land. Also, no hunting or fishing is allowed (though no one is forced to be a vegetarian).
Irving and Barbara divorced in 1976 but went on as friends, especially after she married a Quaker Professor of Sociology, Dr. Donald W. Calhoun. The three became friends and remained so till Irv's death in Ocala, Fl. He had a stroke on the 24th, which destroyed his brain. However, he was conscious long enough to say, "I have created this myself." Irving did not believe in fate or destiny, but in the power of the individual to create her or his own life. Irving had been swimming every day for most of his life, and his heart was so strong that he did not pass on till the next day in a hospital in Ocala, Fla. His son William was with him (Isabella could not get to FL in time with her baby and the lack of time). Irv's ashes were scattered in the mountains behind Quarry Hill in the summer of 1990. His friends felt his presence and his exuberance.∼Irving Fiske, writer, playwright, pop psychologist, co-founder, with his wife, Isabelle (Barbara) Hall Fiske, of Quarry Hill Creative Center in Rochester, VT., had a reputation as an entertaining, transcendent speaker whose discussions of religion, philosophy, psychology, art, literature, and the rights of children drew people to him and created a mood in which each person felt special and illuminated. He said he was an "Anti-Guru" and that each person must seek out enlightenment for themselves. Still, many people found him captivating and lived with him in his two homes, 140 acres on an old hill farm in VT and a little cabin in the Ocala National Forest, Florida. By the 1970s or 80s, about 90 people lived at QH and many more visited from all over the world each summer. He "translated" Hamlet into "modern American Colloquial English" (of the late 1940s of New York City); wrote an essay now counted classic on Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake, which Shaw loved so much he had it published as a little booklet in 1951 (. It has since been republished. He published many other works and his Hamlet was performed in colleges in America. He worked as a WPA writer and editor in the 1930s on a book now back in print, The WPA Guide to New York City, with Richard Wright and other well-known American writers.
He married Barbara Hall -- then a cartoonist for Harvey Comics-- in 1946 and they bought the land in Vermont, which they made a kind of retreat for unusual and talented people, and which, in the 1960s, became Vermont's largest, oldest, and one of America's most unusual communal living situations. For more on Irving, see his page at Wikipedia.∼Lifelong iconoclast, known as "The Forest Wizard" and co-founder
of New England's oldest and largest alternative community,
Quarry Hill in Rochester, VT, Irving worked for the WPA during the
Depression. He translated HAMLET into modern English, garnering praise
from many including George Bernard Shaw and Orson Welles.
He also wrote many plays of his own-- and the classic pamphlet
on William Blake and George Bernard Shaw, "Bernard Shaw's Debt to
William Blake," which Shaw loved and had republished at his own expense.
Irving hit his stride when he began to speak on comparative religion,
philosophy, and "Tantra, the Yoga of Sex," in the East Village in NYC
during the Sixties, in the Gallery Gwen, his and his wife Barbara's
performance space and gathering-place for freethinkers.
Many visited and some chose to live at Quarry Hill, the land Irving
And Barbara had bought with wedding-gift money. Barbara is an artist
and is still living. They had married on Jan. 8, 1946, and had 2 children
myself, Isabella Fiske McFarlin (8-12-50)a writer, and William Fiske
(2-4-54), a software developer and computer whiz. Irving did not think kids
should have to go to school so we traveled to stay one jump ahead of the law
while Irving, who'd graduated from Cornell at 19, discussed every subject on earth and in heaven with us.
So we received our education.
In the Seventies, many people began to build at Quarry Hill. At its height, it had more than a hundred residents and people visiting from all over the world each summer.
Irving became known as "The Forest Wizard," but always handed a mirror to anyone who tried to give him the appellation of "Guru" and said, "You want a guru? Look here-- every day!"
Irving loved Florida and went there each winter to a little cabin on a lake in the Ocala National Forest. He kept in good shape by swimming, but at the age of 82 suffered a stroke
and died a day later, April 25, 1990, saying "I have created this death myself," several times.
He and Barbara had been divorced in the mid-Seventies. Barbara was happily remarried in 1989, to Dr. Donald W. Calhoun, a Quaker sociologist. The three became and remained friends, often sitting together near the pond at Quarry Hill to watch the kids go by.
He was cremated and his ashes are scattered in the mountains above QH, along with the ashes of his brother, classical composer MILTON FISKE
and Milton's son David. ∼Writer, playwright, Federal Writer's Project writer, and editor, speaker, philosopher, and co-creator of Quarry Hill Creative Center, Vermont's oldest alternative community and family property management business. He translated Shakespeare's Hamlet into modern American colloquial English in the late 1940s, at the time considered by many to be a controversial act. His Hamlet was praised by Orson Welles and many other well-known theatrical figures, particularly George Bernard Shaw, with whom Fiske had a correspondence. He wrote an article for The Shavian (a magazine about George Bernard Shaw and his work) entitled Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake, which Shaw appreciated and had reprinted in pamphlet form. This brief essay is now considered by many scholars of both Blake and Shaw to be a classic in its comparison of the work of both iconoclastic writers. In 1946, Irving Fiske married Barbara Hall (Isabelle Daniel Hall), a visionary painter and cartoonist who drew for Harvey Comics, one of the few female cartoonists of the World War II era. On April 10th of that year, they bought 140 acres of mountain and meadowland in central Vermont, which they made available to their Greenwich Village friends and artists, writers, and other creative and unusual people. Because of its proximity to a marble quarry (which produces a rare marble known as Vermont Verde Antique) they called the land Quarry Hill Creative Center. They had two children, Isabella in 1950, and William in 1954. After corresponding with A. S. Neill, creator of the liberal and children's rights-based Summerhill School in England, Irving and Barbara decided not to send their children to public school in America. At this time homeschooling was rare, and truancy considered a very serious crime. The Fiske family began to travel 1500 miles twice a year to keep the children out of school, while Irving taught them employing the Socratic method. They discussed and questioned all topics that arose on these journeys, and conducted scientific experiments when in either Vermont or Florida. Irving also taught his children to write, and Barbara taught them to draw. They traveled with artistic young women who helped care for the children in exchange for room, board, and art lessons. In the mid-1960s, Barbara decided to open an art gallery in New York City, and so the family rented a storefront in the nascent East Village, under the name The Gallery Gwen. There they met Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, R. Crumb, Trina Robbins, and many other well-known people. Isabella, their daughter (Ladybelle), formed a relationship with many of the Underground Cartoonists and became the girlfriend of Art Spiegelman, author of MAUS. Irving gave talks in the Gallery on religion, philosophy, psychology, art, and personal liberation, often attracting standing room only groups. Some of these persons would then come up to Quarry Hill and as the Sixties and Seventies continued, asked to be allowed to build houses and to live at Quarry Hill. In time, as many as 90 people lived on the property, raising children according to the Fiske's point of view-- no hitting children, no calling them names or making them feel inferior. Children were considered to be "ambassadors from another dimension" and the rule was that they were to be treated as though they were important, rare, and unusual beings with the awareness that transcended any knowledge the adults might have managed to garner due to their years. Quarry Hill became one of the Meccas of the Sixties, a place still extant today. Many persons return each year, and new people continue to arrive. Irving Fiske's death in 1990 created the usual schism between the family and those who considered themselves his "followers," even though he had spoken of himself as an "anti-guru" and insisted that each person must be his or her guru. The division was resolved through mediation, and Quarry Hill continues today as a place in constant change, based on artistic freedom and children's rights, but considered indescribable by many. See Irving Fiske's entry at Wikipedia and Wikiquotes.com, as well as that for Quarry Hill Creative Center at Wikipedia.com.
Irving Fiske was a Brooklyn-born freelance writer, playwright, inventor, and community co-creator. After graduating from Cornell University in 1928 and selling a radio tuning invention of his for a few years, he moved to Greenwich Village and worked for the Federal Writer's Project, a New Deal program that employed artists and writers during the Great Depression. .There he worked on a guidebook, The WPA Guide to New York City, with Richard Wright, among others. The book is presently in print (2022) and creates a vivid picture of 1930s New York. Credited under his family name, Irving Fishman, he later changed it to Fiske, which he said was "more euphonious." He may also have used the name to steer around the virulent anti-Semitism of the time. However, he never denied being born to Russian Jewish immigrants and took immediate, irate action whenever he encountered anti-Jewish attitudes or propaganda.
He published in H. L. Mencken's The American Mercury, the most prestigious literary magazine of the day, among others His piece on Pecos Bill for Mencken later appeared in an anthology of classic American writing.
Another essay," Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake," caught the eye of its subject, playwright George Bernard Shaw, who called it "the best essay ever written about me," and had it reprinted as a pamphlet.
Irving translated Shakespeare's Hamlet into "Modern American Colloquial English " in the 1940s. Shaw and many others praised this work, which seems to be the first modern-English version of Hamlet. Some, however, were offended at anyone's tampering with the work of "The Bard." John Ciardi, the acerbic poetry editor of The Saturday Review, printed some excerpts there in the 1950s, asking readers to choose between the original and the modern version. To Ciardi's surprise and apparent irritation, most said they preferred Fiske's "Hamlet in Modern English," some saying they had never understood Shakespeare before.
On January 8, 1946, Irving Fiske married Barbara (Isabelle Daniel) Hall, an intellectual artist from Tucson, Arizona. She had worked for Harvey Comics as a cartoonist during World War II, drawing "Pat Parker and her Girl Commandoes" and "Honey Blake, the Blonde Bomber." She was a figurative artist in the day of the Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock. Her airy visionary pastels and tempera paintings were distant from that sort of work. The Fiskes, though, had no doubt that Barbara's work would endure long after that of Pollock and de Kooning (who sometimes came to hear Irving hold forth on philosophy and psychology at the Waldorf Cafeteria on Sixth Avenue). At the present moment, she is remembered as one of a very few women who worked as comic artists during WWII, and has figured in several books on these artists.
Irving and Barbara, with Irving's classical composer brother MIlton Fiske and several others, bought 140 acres of land in central Vermont, and named it Quarry Hill. They opened it to "souls," a Greenwich Village name for unconventional people. In the mid- 1960s young people began to stream in -- people Irving Fiske called "an enlightened generation"-- and Quarry Hill became Vermont's oldest. and sometimes its largest, alternative lifestyle group.
The Fiske family never thought of it as a "commune," as some did, because they continued to own the land, and intended it to be an artist's colony. However, there has always had a cooperative quality, not to mention an air something like a Marx Brothers film.) Someone once gave Irving a card that said: "The Forest Wizard: Enchantments/Thaumaturgy" (magic).
In the 1960s, Barbara Hall Fiske opened a storefront as a gallery in the East Village, as it part of the Lower East Side began to be called. She showed her artwork there (till some was stolen), and Irving began to give talks there on Vedanta, Zen, Sufi, and Tibetan Yoga. He advertised his talks in the Village Voice as being on "Tantra, the Yoga of Sex," which drew in a standing room only crowd most nights. He invited people to Vermont and gave out a brochure that offered "Free Vermont Mountain Vacations" (a $10 per week contribution was requested). Other family members also invited the newly hip and others to Vermont.
Irving advised young men not to go to Vietnam and wrote letters to help them get conscientious objector status. When some young people began to ask his advice about other matters, such as what "path" to follow, he said that he was not a guru, but an anti-guru, if anything. He agreed with J. Krishnamurti that "truth is a pathless land " and that each person must seek out enlightenment for himself or herself.
In the 1960s as the hip East Village and the Hippie era were coming into flower, they went to New York City and opened a storefront gallery, The Gallery Gwen, where Barbara showed her artwork and that of friends, and Irving gave talks. He spoke on philosophy, religion, Eastern thought (then fairly new to the USA), and psychology, among other things. His talks were somewhat like those of Alan Watts, who was then also popularizing Eastern philosophy...but almost everyone who heard Irving speak felt that they had not heard anyone like him. His sense of humor, his radical notion that people should live for the fun they could have, and the creativity they could express, plus his joy at meeting with the Sixties Generation ("I love and honor this generation," he later said), made many people feel welcome. He wrote letters for men wishing to escape the draft and Vietnam. Many young people moved to Vermont with the family and built cabins of their own, had children, and shared food, clothing, laughter, disagreements, and many other such things. The North Hollow School, QH's Independent Reporting School, has been said to have been a "Template" for other independent schools in VT. Unlike many agrarian or political communes in VT-- it was said that there were 200 communes in the state during the 1970s-- QH was focused on art, literature, philosophy, sensual enjoyment, and the rights of children. Even today (
quarry Hill is still extant), all are asked not to spank, scold, punish, or neglect kids on the land. Also, no hunting or fishing is allowed (though no one is forced to be a vegetarian).
Irving and Barbara divorced in 1976 but went on as friends, especially after she married a Quaker Professor of Sociology, Dr. Donald W. Calhoun. The three became friends and remained so till Irv's death in Ocala, Fl. He had a stroke on the 24th, which destroyed his brain. However, he was conscious long enough to say, "I have created this myself." Irving did not believe in fate or destiny, but in the power of the individual to create her or his own life. Irving had been swimming every day for most of his life, and his heart was so strong that he did not pass on till the next day in a hospital in Ocala, Fla. His son William was with him (Isabella could not get to FL in time with her baby and the lack of time). Irv's ashes were scattered in the mountains behind Quarry Hill in the summer of 1990. His friends felt his presence and his exuberance.∼Irving Fiske, writer, playwright, pop psychologist, co-founder, with his wife, Isabelle (Barbara) Hall Fiske, of Quarry Hill Creative Center in Rochester, VT., had a reputation as an entertaining, transcendent speaker whose discussions of religion, philosophy, psychology, art, literature, and the rights of children drew people to him and created a mood in which each person felt special and illuminated. He said he was an "Anti-Guru" and that each person must seek out enlightenment for themselves. Still, many people found him captivating and lived with him in his two homes, 140 acres on an old hill farm in VT and a little cabin in the Ocala National Forest, Florida. By the 1970s or 80s, about 90 people lived at QH and many more visited from all over the world each summer. He "translated" Hamlet into "modern American Colloquial English" (of the late 1940s of New York City); wrote an essay now counted classic on Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake, which Shaw loved so much he had it published as a little booklet in 1951 (. It has since been republished. He published many other works and his Hamlet was performed in colleges in America. He worked as a WPA writer and editor in the 1930s on a book now back in print, The WPA Guide to New York City, with Richard Wright and other well-known American writers.
He married Barbara Hall -- then a cartoonist for Harvey Comics-- in 1946 and they bought the land in Vermont, which they made a kind of retreat for unusual and talented people, and which, in the 1960s, became Vermont's largest, oldest, and one of America's most unusual communal living situations. For more on Irving, see his page at Wikipedia.∼Lifelong iconoclast, known as "The Forest Wizard" and co-founder
of New England's oldest and largest alternative community,
Quarry Hill in Rochester, VT, Irving worked for the WPA during the
Depression. He translated HAMLET into modern English, garnering praise
from many including George Bernard Shaw and Orson Welles.
He also wrote many plays of his own-- and the classic pamphlet
on William Blake and George Bernard Shaw, "Bernard Shaw's Debt to
William Blake," which Shaw loved and had republished at his own expense.
Irving hit his stride when he began to speak on comparative religion,
philosophy, and "Tantra, the Yoga of Sex," in the East Village in NYC
during the Sixties, in the Gallery Gwen, his and his wife Barbara's
performance space and gathering-place for freethinkers.
Many visited and some chose to live at Quarry Hill, the land Irving
And Barbara had bought with wedding-gift money. Barbara is an artist
and is still living. They had married on Jan. 8, 1946, and had 2 children
myself, Isabella Fiske McFarlin (8-12-50)a writer, and William Fiske
(2-4-54), a software developer and computer whiz. Irving did not think kids
should have to go to school so we traveled to stay one jump ahead of the law
while Irving, who'd graduated from Cornell at 19, discussed every subject on earth and in heaven with us.
So we received our education.
In the Seventies, many people began to build at Quarry Hill. At its height, it had more than a hundred residents and people visiting from all over the world each summer.
Irving became known as "The Forest Wizard," but always handed a mirror to anyone who tried to give him the appellation of "Guru" and said, "You want a guru? Look here-- every day!"
Irving loved Florida and went there each winter to a little cabin on a lake in the Ocala National Forest. He kept in good shape by swimming, but at the age of 82 suffered a stroke
and died a day later, April 25, 1990, saying "I have created this death myself," several times.
He and Barbara had been divorced in the mid-Seventies. Barbara was happily remarried in 1989, to Dr. Donald W. Calhoun, a Quaker sociologist. The three became and remained friends, often sitting together near the pond at Quarry Hill to watch the kids go by.
He was cremated and his ashes are scattered in the mountains above QH, along with the ashes of his brother, classical composer MILTON FISKE
and Milton's son David. ∼Writer, playwright, Federal Writer's Project writer, and editor, speaker, philosopher, and co-creator of Quarry Hill Creative Center, Vermont's oldest alternative community and family property management business. He translated Shakespeare's Hamlet into modern American colloquial English in the late 1940s, at the time considered by many to be a controversial act. His Hamlet was praised by Orson Welles and many other well-known theatrical figures, particularly George Bernard Shaw, with whom Fiske had a correspondence. He wrote an article for The Shavian (a magazine about George Bernard Shaw and his work) entitled Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake, which Shaw appreciated and had reprinted in pamphlet form. This brief essay is now considered by many scholars of both Blake and Shaw to be a classic in its comparison of the work of both iconoclastic writers. In 1946, Irving Fiske married Barbara Hall (Isabelle Daniel Hall), a visionary painter and cartoonist who drew for Harvey Comics, one of the few female cartoonists of the World War II era. On April 10th of that year, they bought 140 acres of mountain and meadowland in central Vermont, which they made available to their Greenwich Village friends and artists, writers, and other creative and unusual people. Because of its proximity to a marble quarry (which produces a rare marble known as Vermont Verde Antique) they called the land Quarry Hill Creative Center. They had two children, Isabella in 1950, and William in 1954. After corresponding with A. S. Neill, creator of the liberal and children's rights-based Summerhill School in England, Irving and Barbara decided not to send their children to public school in America. At this time homeschooling was rare, and truancy considered a very serious crime. The Fiske family began to travel 1500 miles twice a year to keep the children out of school, while Irving taught them employing the Socratic method. They discussed and questioned all topics that arose on these journeys, and conducted scientific experiments when in either Vermont or Florida. Irving also taught his children to write, and Barbara taught them to draw. They traveled with artistic young women who helped care for the children in exchange for room, board, and art lessons. In the mid-1960s, Barbara decided to open an art gallery in New York City, and so the family rented a storefront in the nascent East Village, under the name The Gallery Gwen. There they met Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, R. Crumb, Trina Robbins, and many other well-known people. Isabella, their daughter (Ladybelle), formed a relationship with many of the Underground Cartoonists and became the girlfriend of Art Spiegelman, author of MAUS. Irving gave talks in the Gallery on religion, philosophy, psychology, art, and personal liberation, often attracting standing room only groups. Some of these persons would then come up to Quarry Hill and as the Sixties and Seventies continued, asked to be allowed to build houses and to live at Quarry Hill. In time, as many as 90 people lived on the property, raising children according to the Fiske's point of view-- no hitting children, no calling them names or making them feel inferior. Children were considered to be "ambassadors from another dimension" and the rule was that they were to be treated as though they were important, rare, and unusual beings with the awareness that transcended any knowledge the adults might have managed to garner due to their years. Quarry Hill became one of the Meccas of the Sixties, a place still extant today. Many persons return each year, and new people continue to arrive. Irving Fiske's death in 1990 created the usual schism between the family and those who considered themselves his "followers," even though he had spoken of himself as an "anti-guru" and insisted that each person must be his or her guru. The division was resolved through mediation, and Quarry Hill continues today as a place in constant change, based on artistic freedom and children's rights, but considered indescribable by many. See Irving Fiske's entry at Wikipedia and Wikiquotes.com, as well as that for Quarry Hill Creative Center at Wikipedia.com.
He published in H. L. Mencken's The American Mercury, the most prestigious literary magazine of the day, among others His piece on Pecos Bill for Mencken later appeared in an anthology of classic American writing.
Another essay," Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake," caught the eye of its subject, playwright George Bernard Shaw, who called it "the best essay ever written about me," and had it reprinted as a pamphlet.
Irving translated Shakespeare's Hamlet into "Modern American Colloquial English " in the 1940s. Shaw and many others praised this work, which seems to be the first modern-English version of Hamlet. Some, however, were offended at anyone's tampering with the work of "The Bard." John Ciardi, the acerbic poetry editor of The Saturday Review, printed some excerpts there in the 1950s, asking readers to choose between the original and the modern version. To Ciardi's surprise and apparent irritation, most said they preferred Fiske's "Hamlet in Modern English," some saying they had never understood Shakespeare before.
On January 8, 1946, Irving Fiske married Barbara (Isabelle Daniel) Hall, an intellectual artist from Tucson, Arizona. She had worked for Harvey Comics as a cartoonist during World War II, drawing "Pat Parker and her Girl Commandoes" and "Honey Blake, the Blonde Bomber." She was a figurative artist in the day of the Abstract Expressionists like Jackson Pollock. Her airy visionary pastels and tempera paintings were distant from that sort of work. The Fiskes, though, had no doubt that Barbara's work would endure long after that of Pollock and de Kooning (who sometimes came to hear Irving hold forth on philosophy and psychology at the Waldorf Cafeteria on Sixth Avenue). At the present moment, she is remembered as one of a very few women who worked as comic artists during WWII, and has figured in several books on these artists.
Irving and Barbara, with Irving's classical composer brother MIlton Fiske and several others, bought 140 acres of land in central Vermont, and named it Quarry Hill. They opened it to "souls," a Greenwich Village name for unconventional people. In the mid- 1960s young people began to stream in -- people Irving Fiske called "an enlightened generation"-- and Quarry Hill became Vermont's oldest. and sometimes its largest, alternative lifestyle group.
The Fiske family never thought of it as a "commune," as some did, because they continued to own the land, and intended it to be an artist's colony. However, there has always had a cooperative quality, not to mention an air something like a Marx Brothers film.) Someone once gave Irving a card that said: "The Forest Wizard: Enchantments/Thaumaturgy" (magic).
In the 1960s, Barbara Hall Fiske opened a storefront as a gallery in the East Village, as it part of the Lower East Side began to be called. She showed her artwork there (till some was stolen), and Irving began to give talks there on Vedanta, Zen, Sufi, and Tibetan Yoga. He advertised his talks in the Village Voice as being on "Tantra, the Yoga of Sex," which drew in a standing room only crowd most nights. He invited people to Vermont and gave out a brochure that offered "Free Vermont Mountain Vacations" (a $10 per week contribution was requested). Other family members also invited the newly hip and others to Vermont.
Irving advised young men not to go to Vietnam and wrote letters to help them get conscientious objector status. When some young people began to ask his advice about other matters, such as what "path" to follow, he said that he was not a guru, but an anti-guru, if anything. He agreed with J. Krishnamurti that "truth is a pathless land " and that each person must seek out enlightenment for himself or herself.
In the 1960s as the hip East Village and the Hippie era were coming into flower, they went to New York City and opened a storefront gallery, The Gallery Gwen, where Barbara showed her artwork and that of friends, and Irving gave talks. He spoke on philosophy, religion, Eastern thought (then fairly new to the USA), and psychology, among other things. His talks were somewhat like those of Alan Watts, who was then also popularizing Eastern philosophy...but almost everyone who heard Irving speak felt that they had not heard anyone like him. His sense of humor, his radical notion that people should live for the fun they could have, and the creativity they could express, plus his joy at meeting with the Sixties Generation ("I love and honor this generation," he later said), made many people feel welcome. He wrote letters for men wishing to escape the draft and Vietnam. Many young people moved to Vermont with the family and built cabins of their own, had children, and shared food, clothing, laughter, disagreements, and many other such things. The North Hollow School, QH's Independent Reporting School, has been said to have been a "Template" for other independent schools in VT. Unlike many agrarian or political communes in VT-- it was said that there were 200 communes in the state during the 1970s-- QH was focused on art, literature, philosophy, sensual enjoyment, and the rights of children. Even today (
quarry Hill is still extant), all are asked not to spank, scold, punish, or neglect kids on the land. Also, no hunting or fishing is allowed (though no one is forced to be a vegetarian).
Irving and Barbara divorced in 1976 but went on as friends, especially after she married a Quaker Professor of Sociology, Dr. Donald W. Calhoun. The three became friends and remained so till Irv's death in Ocala, Fl. He had a stroke on the 24th, which destroyed his brain. However, he was conscious long enough to say, "I have created this myself." Irving did not believe in fate or destiny, but in the power of the individual to create her or his own life. Irving had been swimming every day for most of his life, and his heart was so strong that he did not pass on till the next day in a hospital in Ocala, Fla. His son William was with him (Isabella could not get to FL in time with her baby and the lack of time). Irv's ashes were scattered in the mountains behind Quarry Hill in the summer of 1990. His friends felt his presence and his exuberance.∼Irving Fiske, writer, playwright, pop psychologist, co-founder, with his wife, Isabelle (Barbara) Hall Fiske, of Quarry Hill Creative Center in Rochester, VT., had a reputation as an entertaining, transcendent speaker whose discussions of religion, philosophy, psychology, art, literature, and the rights of children drew people to him and created a mood in which each person felt special and illuminated. He said he was an "Anti-Guru" and that each person must seek out enlightenment for themselves. Still, many people found him captivating and lived with him in his two homes, 140 acres on an old hill farm in VT and a little cabin in the Ocala National Forest, Florida. By the 1970s or 80s, about 90 people lived at QH and many more visited from all over the world each summer. He "translated" Hamlet into "modern American Colloquial English" (of the late 1940s of New York City); wrote an essay now counted classic on Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake, which Shaw loved so much he had it published as a little booklet in 1951 (. It has since been republished. He published many other works and his Hamlet was performed in colleges in America. He worked as a WPA writer and editor in the 1930s on a book now back in print, The WPA Guide to New York City, with Richard Wright and other well-known American writers.
He married Barbara Hall -- then a cartoonist for Harvey Comics-- in 1946 and they bought the land in Vermont, which they made a kind of retreat for unusual and talented people, and which, in the 1960s, became Vermont's largest, oldest, and one of America's most unusual communal living situations. For more on Irving, see his page at Wikipedia.∼Lifelong iconoclast, known as "The Forest Wizard" and co-founder
of New England's oldest and largest alternative community,
Quarry Hill in Rochester, VT, Irving worked for the WPA during the
Depression. He translated HAMLET into modern English, garnering praise
from many including George Bernard Shaw and Orson Welles.
He also wrote many plays of his own-- and the classic pamphlet
on William Blake and George Bernard Shaw, "Bernard Shaw's Debt to
William Blake," which Shaw loved and had republished at his own expense.
Irving hit his stride when he began to speak on comparative religion,
philosophy, and "Tantra, the Yoga of Sex," in the East Village in NYC
during the Sixties, in the Gallery Gwen, his and his wife Barbara's
performance space and gathering-place for freethinkers.
Many visited and some chose to live at Quarry Hill, the land Irving
And Barbara had bought with wedding-gift money. Barbara is an artist
and is still living. They had married on Jan. 8, 1946, and had 2 children
myself, Isabella Fiske McFarlin (8-12-50)a writer, and William Fiske
(2-4-54), a software developer and computer whiz. Irving did not think kids
should have to go to school so we traveled to stay one jump ahead of the law
while Irving, who'd graduated from Cornell at 19, discussed every subject on earth and in heaven with us.
So we received our education.
In the Seventies, many people began to build at Quarry Hill. At its height, it had more than a hundred residents and people visiting from all over the world each summer.
Irving became known as "The Forest Wizard," but always handed a mirror to anyone who tried to give him the appellation of "Guru" and said, "You want a guru? Look here-- every day!"
Irving loved Florida and went there each winter to a little cabin on a lake in the Ocala National Forest. He kept in good shape by swimming, but at the age of 82 suffered a stroke
and died a day later, April 25, 1990, saying "I have created this death myself," several times.
He and Barbara had been divorced in the mid-Seventies. Barbara was happily remarried in 1989, to Dr. Donald W. Calhoun, a Quaker sociologist. The three became and remained friends, often sitting together near the pond at Quarry Hill to watch the kids go by.
He was cremated and his ashes are scattered in the mountains above QH, along with the ashes of his brother, classical composer MILTON FISKE
and Milton's son David. ∼Writer, playwright, Federal Writer's Project writer, and editor, speaker, philosopher, and co-creator of Quarry Hill Creative Center, Vermont's oldest alternative community and family property management business. He translated Shakespeare's Hamlet into modern American colloquial English in the late 1940s, at the time considered by many to be a controversial act. His Hamlet was praised by Orson Welles and many other well-known theatrical figures, particularly George Bernard Shaw, with whom Fiske had a correspondence. He wrote an article for The Shavian (a magazine about George Bernard Shaw and his work) entitled Bernard Shaw's Debt to William Blake, which Shaw appreciated and had reprinted in pamphlet form. This brief essay is now considered by many scholars of both Blake and Shaw to be a classic in its comparison of the work of both iconoclastic writers. In 1946, Irving Fiske married Barbara Hall (Isabelle Daniel Hall), a visionary painter and cartoonist who drew for Harvey Comics, one of the few female cartoonists of the World War II era. On April 10th of that year, they bought 140 acres of mountain and meadowland in central Vermont, which they made available to their Greenwich Village friends and artists, writers, and other creative and unusual people. Because of its proximity to a marble quarry (which produces a rare marble known as Vermont Verde Antique) they called the land Quarry Hill Creative Center. They had two children, Isabella in 1950, and William in 1954. After corresponding with A. S. Neill, creator of the liberal and children's rights-based Summerhill School in England, Irving and Barbara decided not to send their children to public school in America. At this time homeschooling was rare, and truancy considered a very serious crime. The Fiske family began to travel 1500 miles twice a year to keep the children out of school, while Irving taught them employing the Socratic method. They discussed and questioned all topics that arose on these journeys, and conducted scientific experiments when in either Vermont or Florida. Irving also taught his children to write, and Barbara taught them to draw. They traveled with artistic young women who helped care for the children in exchange for room, board, and art lessons. In the mid-1960s, Barbara decided to open an art gallery in New York City, and so the family rented a storefront in the nascent East Village, under the name The Gallery Gwen. There they met Allen Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, R. Crumb, Trina Robbins, and many other well-known people. Isabella, their daughter (Ladybelle), formed a relationship with many of the Underground Cartoonists and became the girlfriend of Art Spiegelman, author of MAUS. Irving gave talks in the Gallery on religion, philosophy, psychology, art, and personal liberation, often attracting standing room only groups. Some of these persons would then come up to Quarry Hill and as the Sixties and Seventies continued, asked to be allowed to build houses and to live at Quarry Hill. In time, as many as 90 people lived on the property, raising children according to the Fiske's point of view-- no hitting children, no calling them names or making them feel inferior. Children were considered to be "ambassadors from another dimension" and the rule was that they were to be treated as though they were important, rare, and unusual beings with the awareness that transcended any knowledge the adults might have managed to garner due to their years. Quarry Hill became one of the Meccas of the Sixties, a place still extant today. Many persons return each year, and new people continue to arrive. Irving Fiske's death in 1990 created the usual schism between the family and those who considered themselves his "followers," even though he had spoken of himself as an "anti-guru" and insisted that each person must be his or her guru. The division was resolved through mediation, and Quarry Hill continues today as a place in constant change, based on artistic freedom and children's rights, but considered indescribable by many. See Irving Fiske's entry at Wikipedia and Wikiquotes.com, as well as that for Quarry Hill Creative Center at Wikipedia.com.
Gravesite Details
Irving's ashes are scattered in a grove in the mountain behind Quarry Hill, with those of his nephew David, some of his former wife Barbara Hall, their son William, and friend Carl Zemsky. And if I recollect correctly, his brother, Milton Fiske.
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