SOURCE: “Engendering F. O. M.: The Private Life of American Renaissance,” in Engendering Men: The Question of Male Feminist Criticism, edited by Joseph A. Boone and Michael Cadden, Routledge, 1990, pp. 26-35.

In the following essay, Cadden determines how Matthiessen's sexuality influenced his views on Walt Whitman and discusses the incongruity of his public and private writings on the poet.

“To work out:—The sexual bias in literary criticism. … What sort of person would the critic prefer to sleep with, in fact.”¹

—E. M. Forster

“‘Dosce, doce, dilige.’ ‘Learn, teach, love.’ For me I know no better.”²

—F. O. Matthiessen

When I was an undergraduate at Yale, I was very aware of the ethnic and religious backgrounds of the men and (few) women who taught me literature. Complaining about the gods of the English Department who had shot down our most recent arguments, my friends and I spoke of...