Portland Public Library

New England writers and writing, Malcolm Cowley ; edited, and with an introduction by Donald W. Faulkner

eng

Includes bibliographical references (pages 307-309) and index

index present

non fiction

New England writers and writing

bibliography

32589230

Malcolm Cowley ; edited, and with an introduction by Donald W. Faulkner

Library of New England

For more than half a century, Malcolm Cowley (1898-1989) cast a long shadow across the landscape of American literary criticism, forming our views of luminaries like Fitzgerald, Faulkner, and Hemingway and enhancing our understanding of dozens of others. A transplanted but long-time New Englander, Cowley focused much of his critical attention on the region's plethora of eminent authors, and this collection combines those essays with his writings about the New England he knew and loved. Cowley is equally at home with Hawthorne, James, Emerson, Melville, Frost, Aiken, Cheever, Cummings - and the characters and customs of his adoptive region. In a poem included here, Cowley writes of his wish to love the earth and "to speak some words in patterns that will be remembered." This book is testimony to his gift for - and fulfillment of - both

The Nineteenth century : Hawthorne : Hawthorne in solitude ; The Hawthornes in paradise ; The five acts of the Scarlet letter ; A case for Blithedale ; Mystery at the Old Manse -- The external Emerson -- Melville among his champions -- Whitman : The poet and the mask (excerpts) ; The buried masterpiece (excerpts) -- The real Horatio Alger story -- The two Henry Jameses -- The Twentieth century : Robert Frost: a dissenting opinion -- Edwin Arlington Robinson : defeat and triumph -- Eugene O'Neill in Connecticut -- Hart Crane in search of a home : a memoir -- Van Wyck Brooks's "Usable past" --Two views of George Santayana : At Harvard ; In society -- E.E. Cummings : One man alone ; A farewell to the last Harvard "Dandy" -- S. Foster Damon : the New England voice -- Conrad Aiken : From Savannah to Emerson -- J.P. Marquand : anthropologist of the Boston story -- Thornton Wilder : time abolished -- John Cheever : the novelist's life as a drama -- New England Life : Essays and Reflections : Connecticut Valley -- Town report -- Along the Housatonic -- Election night in Sherman -- Is there still hope for farming in New England? -- A letter on growing melons -- A handful of poems : Boy in sunlight ; The living water ; Natural history ; From where the forest stood ; The urn ; The long voyage -- A conversation between father and son on New England life (with Robert Cowley)