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Malcolm Cowley

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Critic

The Resume

    (August 28, 1898-March 27, 1989)
    Born in Belsano, Pennsylvania
    Literary critic, poet and novelist
    Editor and literary critic for The New Republic (1929-44)
    Literary advisor for Viking Press
    Edited Viking Portable Editions of Ernest Hemingway (1944), William Faulkner (1946) and Nathaniel Hawthorne (1948)
    Wrote the poetry collection 'Blue Juniata' (1929) and the novel 'Exile's Return' (1934)
    Wrote the non-fiction works 'The Literary Tradition' (1954), 'Fitzgerald and the Jazz Age' (1966), 'A Second Flowering: Works & Days of the Lost Generation' (1973), 'And I Worked at the Writer's Trade' (1978) and 'The Dream of the Golden Mountains: Remembering the 1930s' (1980)

Why he might be annoying:

    He said about the city where he grew up, 'It's hard to be loyal to Pittsburgh.'
    Fellow critic Edmund Wilson called him a 'Stalinist character assassin' over his support of the Soviet purge trials.
    Ernest Hemingway dissed him in 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro.'
    Late in life, he complained that interviewers all wanted to ask him about the other Lost Generation writers.
    He said, 'They tell me success is a terrible test of people. Thank God I've never had to undergo it.'

Why he might not be annoying:

    He drove an ambulance and an ammunition truck in France during World War I.
    During World War II, he was an information analyst for the Office of Strategic Services.
    He was credited with reviving critical interest in William Faulkner, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Sherwood Anderson.
    Faulkner wrote, 'I owe Malcolm Cowley the kind of debt no man can ever repay.'
    He arranged for the publication of Jack Kerouac's 'On The Road' and John Cheever's first short stories.
    He wrote, 'Be kind and considerate with your criticism. It's just as hard to write a bad book as it is to write a good book.'

Credit: C. Fishel


Featured in the following Annoying Collections:

Year In Review:

    In 2023, Out of 4 Votes: 75.00% Annoying
    In 2022, Out of 1 Votes: 0% Annoying
    In 2021, Out of 7 Votes: 85.71% Annoying
    In 2020, Out of 2 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2019, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2018, Out of 4 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2017, Out of 3 Votes: 66.67% Annoying
    In 2016, Out of 2 Votes: 50.0% Annoying
    In 2015, Out of 1 Votes: 100% Annoying
    In 2014, Out of 13 Votes: 61.54% Annoying
    In 2013, Out of 10 Votes: 60.0% Annoying
    In 2012, Out of 6 Votes: 66.67% Annoying