3. Quiz Kid (1940–1941)
1. From interviews with several Sodus families who were friends with the Ashberys and had memories of Richard’s death and its aftermath, including the Parsons, Malchoff, Boller, Micha, and Meulendyke families.
2. JA Diary I, January 1, 1941, JAPC.
3. JA Diary I, January 2, 1941, JAPC.
4. Throop sailing log, Pultneyville Historical Society, Pultneyville, NY.
5. Sarah Throop Miller, 1916 Diary, JAPC.
6. JA Diary I, January 8, 1941, JAPC.
7. JA Diary I, January 10, 1941, JAPC.
8. JA Diary I, January 20, 1941, JAPC.
9. JA Diary I, January 28, 1941, JAPC.
10. JA Diary I, January 26, 1941, JAPC.
11. JA Diary I, January 12, 1941, JAPC.
12. JA Diary I, January 10, 1941, JAPC.
13. Author interview with JA, July 15, 2015, Hudson, NY.
14. JA Diary I, January 11, 1941, JAPC.
15. Author interview with JA, July 15, 2015, Hudson, NY.
16. “The New Spirit” in Three Poems (1972, reprint New York: Library of America, 2008), 251. The reference to the “fountain” is also a reference to the Memorial Art Gallery’s most beautiful room, called the Fountain Court, part of the gallery’s recent expansion in 1926.
17. JA Diary I, January 18, 1941, JAPC.
18. JA Diary I, January 28, 1941, JAPC.
19. JA Diary I, February 6, 1941, JAPC.
20. JA Diary I, March 7, 1941, JAPC.
21. “The New Spirit,” in Three Poems, 256.
22. A sheaf of these earliest pieces survived for years unknown in Typewriter-paper Box, JAPC.
23. JA Diary I, March 3, 1941, JAPC.
24. JA Diary I, January 31, 1941, JAPC.
25. JA Diary I, March 4, 1941, JAPC.
26. “Sertus,” in Typewriter-paper Box, JAPC.
27. JA Diary I, March 12, 1941, JAPC.
28. JA Diary I, February 23, 1941, JAPC.
29. JA Diary I, June 5, 1941, JAPC.
30. JA Diary I, March 18, 1941, JAPC.
31. JA Diary I, April 5 and 20, 1941, JAPC.
32. JA Diary I, April 13, 1941, JAPC.
33. JA Diary I, April 21, 1941, JAPC.
34. JA Diary I, May 4, 1941, JAPC.
35. JA kept the iron parrot always, eventually affixing it to the door of his upstairs library in his Hudson, NY, home.
36. JA Diary I, May 2–16, 1941, JAPC.
37. JA Diary I, May 23, 1941, last art class with Miss Cook. Also the comment about Miss Cook’s reaction to Richard’s death from author interview with JA, July 8, 2012, Hudson, NY.
38. JA Diary I, June 24, 1941, JAPC.
39. Author interview with JA, December 31, 2011, Hudson, NY.
40. JA Diary I, June 26, 1941, JAPC.
41. JA Diary I, July 5–13, 1941, JAPC.
42. JA Diary I, October 14, 1941, JAPC.
43. “Nothing to do at noon,” JA Diary I, Tuesday, January 14, 1941, JAPC.
44. JA Diary I, September 2, 1941, JAPC.
45. Author interview with JA, November 24, 2014, Hudson, NY.
46. JA Diary I, entries during period September 23–October 18, 1941, JAPC.
47. JA Diary I, entries during September 17–October 21, 1941, JAPC. Author interview with JA on early study of Latin, November 27, 2013, Hudson, NY. During this interview, Ashbery suggested that his penchant for playing with pronouns in his mature poems developed out of this early Latin translation practice, for he discovered that English pronouns had much less tying them down than did Latin pronouns (which were declined).
48. JA Diary I, entries September 5–19, 1941, JAPC.
49. JA Diary I, October 10, 1941, JAPC.
50. JA Diary I, October 31, 1941, JAPC.
51. According to one of the show’s producers, who later wrote a book on her experience putting the show together, children rarely applied on their own—a parent or a teacher wrote to the show first. Eliza Merrill Hickok, The Quiz Kids (Cambridge, MA: The Riverside Press, 1947).
52. JA Diary I, October 26, 1941, JAPC.
53. Life magazine, September 29, 1941.
54. The Century Book of Facts, Standard Edition (Springfield, MA: King-Richardson Company, 1906), 50–51.
55. Including Mr. Dobbins from Tom Sawyer, Creakle from David Copperfield, and Mr. Crane from The Legend of Sleepy Hollow. JA Diary I, April 23, 1941, JAPC.
56. Hickok, The Quiz Kids. Ruth Duskin, Whatever Happened to the Quiz Kids?: Perils and Profits of Growing Up Gifted (Chicago: Chicago Review Press, 1982), 16.
57. JA Diary I, October 26, 1941, JAPC.
58. JA Diary I, October 29, 1941, JAPC.
59. JA Diary I, November 1, 1941, JAPC.
60. JA Diary I, week of November 3–8, 1941, JAPC.
61. Author interview with MW, October 17, 2010, Vero Beach, FL.
62. JA Diary I, November 8, 1941, JAPC.
63. JA Diary I, November 8–December 9, 1941, JAPC.
64. JA Diary I, November 9, 1941, JAPC.
65. JA Diary 1, December 8, 1941, JAPC.
66. The Claude Bragdon–designed depot has since been torn down.
67. JA Diary I, December 10, 1941, JAPC.
68. Life magazine, November 29, 1937.
69. JA Diary I. Although he did not win in Chicago, he was asked to write a three-hundred-word article on the subject of “defense” for Quiz Kids magazine in January and discovered in May that his article had won a prize of seven dollars. Diary entry on assignment: January 25, 1941. Diary entry on prize: May 7, 1941, JAPC.
70. JA Diary I, December 10, 1941, JAPC.
71. JA Diary I, December 14, 1941, JAPC.
72. JA Diary I, December 24, 1941, JAPC.
73. Nancy Meulendyke mentioned that “Chet would often shout up to John’s bedroom, ‘John we have company,’ and then he would not come down.” Author interview with Nancy Meulendyke Schopf, January 10, 2012, Sodus, NY.
74. The term genius was a refrain in most of my interviews with local families. The first person to explain what he meant about John Ashbery as a genius—and to explain that he was proved to be a “genius” when he became the Rochester Quiz Kid—was Chester Peters, author interview, June 16, 2009, Pultneyville, NY.
75. Author interview with JA, May 30, 2013, Hudson, NY.
76. JA Diary I, December 16, 1941, JAPC.
77. “The History of My Life,” Your Name Here (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2000).
78. JA Diary I, entries for December 1941, JAPC.