The Long Voyage

Selected Letters of Malcolm Cowley, 1915-1987

Malcolm Cowley, Hans Bak

• Publisher: Harvard University Press
• Year: 2014
• Print ISBN: 9780674051065
• eBook ISBN: 9780674728240
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: North American History
• Index: Literature

Critic, poet, editor, chronicler of the "lost generation," and elder statesman of the Republic of Letters, Malcolm Cowley (1898–1989) was an eloquent witness to much of twentieth-century American literary and political life. These letters, the vast majority previously unpublished, provide an indelible self-portrait of Cowley and his time, and make possible a full appreciation of his long and varied career.

Perhaps no other writer aided the careers of so many poets and novelists. Faulkner, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Kerouac, Tillie Olsen, and John Cheever are among the many authors Cowley knew and whose work he supported. A poet himself, Cowley enjoyed the company of writers and knew how to encourage, entertain, and when necessary scold them. At the center of his epistolary life were his friendships with Kenneth Burke, Allen Tate, Conrad Aiken, and Edmund Wilson. By turns serious and thoughtful, humorous and gossipy, Cowley's letters to these and other correspondents display his keen literary judgment and ability to navigate the world of publishing.

The letters also illuminate Cowley's reluctance to speak out against Stalin and the Moscow Trials when he was on staff at The New Republic—and the consequences of his agonized evasions. His radical past would continue to haunt him into the Cold War era, as he became caught up in the notorious "Lowell Affair" and was summoned to testify in the Alger Hiss trials.

Hans Bak supplies helpful notes and a preface that assesses Cowley's career, and Robert Cowley contributes a moving foreword about his father.

Index

Note: numerals in boldface and italics indicate the page on which a letter to the person cited begins. References to books, essays, poems or other works by a person cited appear under the heading of the person’s name.

Aaron, Daniel, 466, 583, 681; Writers on the Left, 542, 556

Abbott, Berenice, 669

Abernathy, M.A., 189, 190

Adams, Henry, 584

Adams, Léonie, 171, 469–470, 499, 640

Aesthete 1925, 126, 127, 128, 229

Agee, James, 661

Agrarianism, xxxi, 165, 331, 619; I’ll Take My Stand, 169. See also Tate, Allen

Aiken, Conrad, xxx, xxxi–xxxii, xxxiv, 27, 31, 33–34, 93, 127, 194, 222, 275, 289–290, 346, 393–394, 456, 471, 479, 512, 543, 552, 559, 572, 584, 586, 588, 605, 607, 619, 622, 625, 626, 688; death of, 617, 642; and Eliot, 642–643; and Faulkner, 589, 679; Gold Medal for, 512; influence of, 607; support of, 360, 469, 470; tribute to, 642; views on, 605, 642–643; Collected Poems, 469, 643; The Coming Forth by Day of Osiris Jones, 360, 643; Earth Triumphant, 360; Great Circle, 643; Jig of Forslin, 31, 360; Turns and Movies, 360; Ushant, xxxi, 643

Aiken, Mary, xxxi, 512, 513, 584, 608, 622, 642

Aldridge, John W., 428, 502, 521; After the Lost Generation, 428

Alger, Horatio, 358, 516–517, 536, 622

Algren, Nelson, 245, 396, 410, 468, 471, 473, 661; Fulbright recommendation for, 452–453; The Man with the Golden Arm, 418, 453

Allen, Gay Wilson, 601, 662, 695; and biography of Emerson, 601, 662

Allen, Hervey, 146; Israfel, 146

Allen, Raymond B., 415–416

American Academy in Rome, 565, 570; Cowley at, 466, 511, 512–515

American Academy of Arts and Letters, xxix, xxxvi, 570, 585, 663; amalgamation with National Institute, 593, 617; and anniversary of World War I, 594; awarded Gold Medal for Belles Lettres of, 621; Blashfield Address of, 608; ceremonial of, 563–565; chancellor of, 585, 647; elected to, 543, 647; on elections to, 593. See also Burke, Kenneth

American Academy of Arts and Sciences: fellow of, 543; resigns from, 634–635

American Caravan, The, 176

American Civil Liberties Union, 276, 420

American Committee for the Defense of Leon Trotsky, 232

American Field Service, xxv, xxvi, xxxi, 11–27, 336, 676

American Field Service Bulletin, 11, 22

American Field Service Fellowship, 49, 50, 72, 73, 84, 336

American Heritage, 534, 543

Americanism: Cowley’s, 255, 301, 312, 619; and Cold War, 494

American Legion, xxii, 242, 415–417, 444, 458

American Mercury, The, 229, 241

American Scholar, The, 542, 583, 687

American Writers’ Congress. See First American Writers’ Congress

Ames, Elizabeth, 166, 175, 176, 177, 206, 371, 417, 540, 543, 572, 575; and Yaddo Affair, 399–401, 403–404, 405

Anderson, Margaret, 37

Anderson, Sherwood, 93, 102, 149, 191–192, 326, 340, 437, 447, 471, 562, 645; Beyond Desire, 191, 192; Winesburg, Ohio, 192, 466

Andrew, A. Piatt, 22

Anticommunism, xxi–xxii, 205, 241, 258, 276–277, 285, 313–314, 316, 320; in Cold War years, 388, 397, 402, 406, 412, 420–422, 451, 456–457, 472–473, 477, 480. See also Loyalty purge; McCarthy, Joseph; McCarthyism; University of Washington (Seattle)

Anti-feminism, 40, 97, 410–411, 640–641, 657

Anti-industrialism, 165, 169

Anti-Semitism, 1, 6, 33, 34, 61, 176, 255, 477, 510; Pound and, 634–635. See also Harvard University

Anti-Stalinists, 403. See also Trotskyites

Apollinaire, Guillaume, 70, 71, 74–75, 120; influence of, 153–154; Calligrammes, 145; “Marizibill,” 154; The Poet Assassinated, 110

Aquinas, Thomas, 12...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Foreword: Beyond the Dry Season
• Editor’s Preface
• Abbreviations
• I. Harvard, World War I, Greenwich Village, 1915–1921
• II. Pilgrimage to Holy Land—France, 1921–1923
• III. The City of Anger—New York, 1923–1929
• IV. The Depression Years—Literature and Politics, 1930–1940
• V. The War Years, 1940–1944
• VI. The Mellon Years, 1944–1949
• VII. Literature and Politics in Cold War America, 1949–1954
• VIII. Worker at the Writer’s Trade, 1954–1960
• IX. The Sixties
• X. Man of Letters, 1970–1987
• Notes
• Acknowledgments
• Index