ABSTRACT

Randolph Bourne’s painfully crippled body affected every facet of his brief career as a writer and radical. Of an old American family living in Bloomfield, New Jersey, he was born in 1886 with a slight curvature of the spine and a twisted face that caused him to grow up a hunchback with a large head and asymmetrical features. Reflecting upon the rigid conventionality of his own social environment, Bourne argued that children were usually crippled morally and spiritually and that only those recovered who had exceptional resiliency. Bourne’s enthusiasm for our cultural progress led him to examine the then vexing problem of Americanization. From a pragmatic standpoint Randolph Bourne was a tragic failure. In possession of all the intellectual qualifications for leadership, well on his way towards a position of power and influence, he deliberately rejected the world at a time of crisis and assumed the role of an outcast crying in the wilderness.