Overview

The fourteen essays selected and edited by Henry Dan Piper present for the first time together Malcolm Cowley's critical assessments of major nineteenth and early twentieth-century American writers. Larger in scope than Think Back on Us, in which were published Mr. Cowley's pieces about the 1930s, principally from the New Republic, the present volume draws from his amazingly wide and varied literary understanding. These essays recapture parts of America's past and anticipate its uncertain future. The book's final essay, from which the metaphoric title is derived, provides a key to Mr. Cowley's critical attitude: it is an attitude of positive eclecticism, essentially humanistic, and anti-scientific. To write about the man behind the pen, Mr. Cowley looks through many windows, and is able to see more than many of his fellow practitioners of literary criticism.

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9780809306268

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Reviews

“ The attractiveness of this excellent book is height­ened by the style in which Cowley expresses his perceptions.” — Library Journal “ Lucid, straightforward, learned, judg­mentally courageous, humanistic— these are the traits that could describe Cowley’ s work ever since his Exile’ s Return… They are the same traits that make this volume particularly useful for general and undergraduate readers, but which will offer nuggets at mo­ments to even the most professional literateur.” — Choice “ These essays represent critical jour­nalism at its highest level… Cowley illustrates his worthiness to stand alongside Edmund Wilson as a master of that dignified, although dying, profession of man of letters.” — Robert D. Spector, Books Abroad

Author Information

Henry Dan Piper is Professor of English at Southern Illinois University and author of F. Scott Fitzgerald: A Critical Portrait. He also edited Think Back on Us.

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