John Muir, Georgia O'Keeffe and Orson Welles are all praised as Wisconsin natives with international reputations. We love to claim them as heroes, even though they left the Badger State as soon as they could. But what about our Wisconsin-born scoundrels?
Griffin Barry (1884-1957) might be considered one. After a typical small-town childhood in Eau Claire, he departed for the Bohemian world of Greenwich Village and became a journalist. He traveled to Berlin to cover the end of World War I then went to the newborn Soviet Union.
Barry became a left-wing sympathizer, a women's rights advocate, a proponent of free love and a welcome member of American migr circles. Novelist John Dos Passos, who met him in the 1920s, said the charming Barry "knew everything and everybody. He was the insider incarnate. There was hardly anybody he hadn't been to bed with."
In 1928, Barry met British philosopher Bertrand Russell and his wife, Dora, both of whom were proponents of open marriage. Barry's affair with Dora tested their ideals, and by 1935 it had produced jealousy, heartache, two illegitimate children and the Russells' divorce.
The Eau Claire native never recovered. After working briefly at a New Deal job in Washington, Barry ended up a lonely expatriate in Ireland, slaving over a book he never finished.
-- Wisconsin Historical Society
"Odd Wisconsin" by Erika Janik is available as a book from the Wisconsin Historical Society. Visit www.wisconsinhistory.org for details.
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