{'fraction_non_alphanumeric': 0.036890122967076555, 'fraction_numerical': 0.0015866719555731853, 'mean_word_length': 5.27363184079602, 'pattern_counts': {'":': 0, '<': 0, '<?xml version=': 0, '>': 0, 'https://': 0, 'lorem ipsum': 0, 'www.': 0, 'xml': 0}, 'pii_count': 0, 'substrings_counts': 0, 'word_list_counts': {'cursed_substrings.json': 0, 'profanity_word_list.json': 0, 'sexual_word_list.json': 0, 'zh_pornsignals.json': 0}}
Weights and Measures

Author of the prize-winning novel The Marriage of Anna Maye Potts (2001), editor of several literary anthologies and numerous essays and stories published widely in literary magazines, DeWitt Henry is perhaps best known as the founding editor of Ploughshares. This memoir, packed with Henry’s personal life and growth as an artist, also traces the launching and the daily struggles of one of America’s top literary magazines. But this is more than memoir—it’s also a philosophical work, a speculative work. It’s above all a masterpiece of form and style. Henry is the consummate craftsman, his eye out for the right word, his pulse tuned to the right mood. I think of this memoir as a fine piece of orchestral music, enriched by its different movements and moods—everything building, everything contributing to a pleasing harmonic whole. The memoir begins with Henry’s childhood years, his growing up in an affluent neighborhood in suburban Philadelphia with his three older siblings; his work-driven, morose, brooding father, a former alcoholic, diabetic, extremely overweight, lethargic, often napping; his self-sacrificing mother. Childhood was a time of mystery, of sexual awakening. Adulthood was the time of growth, pursuit of ideals, indefatigable striving: earning a Ph.D. at Harvard; attending the Iowa Writers’ Workshop; co-founding, editing, and developing funding for Ploughshares; writing and marketing his novel; teaching adjunct. Meanwhile, various professional hurdles to overcome—the job market drying up in the humanities, frustrations over publication, administrative conflicts with the co-founder of Ploughshares, struggles at Emerson College with cut-throat departmental politics, once he was finally full-time. Add to this, the stresses, pain, confusion of ordinary human existence: ambivalence in his marriage over the prospect of children, deaths of parents, death of his son’s best friend due to cancer, a college-age daughter whose rebellious habits disturb and frighten him, a beloved pet beagle that adamantly resists pottytraining, Henry’s mentor and good friend Richard Yates suffering serious emotional breakdowns. What happens, what is felt, what is deliberated on, is told with unflinching candor, the text laid bare for anyone, everyone, including all those who people this book to pick at it, to argue with it, to remonstrate—which is always, of course, the risk, the sensitive point, with a memoir, at least with a completely frank and honest ones—as is this one.