In an article in Esquire, Isaac Singer wrote that Bart Midwood was “the first writer in English to give the word humoristic freedom.”

Born in Brooklyn New York, March 10, 1938, 9:01 pm. Three grandparents born in Russia, one in Vienna. Mother, Lily, born in Albany, New York. Father, Charles, born on a cattle ranch in either Brazil or Argentina — in any case, near the border.

B.A. University of Miami, full music scholarship, double major: English/biology

Graduate school, National Defense fellowship in humanities.

U.S. Army: 1961-7

Sole and primary book reviewer for Esquire, late sixties and early seventies.

Certified Master Piano Tuner by London College of Furniture and Design.

Resided and worked: New York, Florida, South Carolina, Iowa, California, Yucatan, England, China

Five children: Ramsay, Rebecca, Jacob, Sam, Flora. Married since 1988 to Dr. Laura Melim Midwood, Esq., PhD, JD.

BOOKS OF FICTION: “Bodkin” (Random House) “Phantoms” (E.P. Dutton) “Bennett’s Angel” (British/American, Paris Review Editions) “The Nativity” (Bel Esprit) “The World In Pieces” (Permanent)

FICTION IN PERIODICALS: Esquire, Atlantic Monthly, Paris Review, TransAtlantic Review, Dutton Review, Agni, Queen, Nagy Vilag

FILM: Narrative script and musical score, “End of the Dialog”, award-winning documentary about apartheid in South Africa.

STAGEPLAY PRODUCTIONS: St. Clemens, Judith Anderson. Storefront. Sole and primary book reviewer for Esquire, late sixties and early seventies.

FELLOWSHIPS: Guggenheim, NEA, Iowa Writers’ Workshop

LITERARY PRIZES: Aga Khan, Robert Frost.

MUSIC PRIZES: National Sinfonian ( composition, string quartet)

WHAT I’M READING NOW: Collected Stories by Somerset Maugham

FAVORITE BOOKS: Apology, Crito, Symposium, Gorgias, Rhetoric, Genesis, Jonah, Gospel acccording to Matthew, Lotus Sutra, Letters of Nichiren, Odyssey, Canterbury Tales, Hamlet, King Lear, Julius Caesar, Journal of A Disappointed Man, Country Doctor, Sense and Sensibility, Brothers Karamazov, The Idiot, Notes From Underground, House of the Dead, Diary of a Madman, The Overcoat, The Nose, Magic Mountain, Felix Krull, Bartleby The Scrivener, Moby Dick, Great Expectations, Oliver Twist, Magician of Lublin, Secret Agent, Secret Sharer, Orwell’s Essays, Lamb’s Essays, Personae, Memoirs of an Amnesiac (by Satie, not Levant), Le Morte D’Arthur, Journey to the End of the Night … and on and on … so many favorites … so many lovely books … it could break your heart …

FAVORITE AUTHORS: plato, aristotle, homer, god, moses, shakespeare, dostoyevski, gogol, melville, chaucer, kafka, barbellion, nichiren, mallory, gogol, cervantes, tolstoi, isaac bashevis singer, celine, runyan, kipling, dickenson, stevens, frost, pound, wilbur, heine, mann … enough! … can’t fit anymore in here … but I have them all … and a thousand others … nearby — upstairs … in my attic … and a great grand well-appointed room it is, believe me …