Malcolm Cowley's Path to William Faulkner

Abstract

In October 1938, Edmund Wilson advised Malcolm Cowley to get out of politics, both “revolutionary and literary alike… because what you're really practicing is not politics but literature…. ” Within two years, in the wake of the Hitler—Stalin pact and war, Cowley had withdrawn from radical politics. In early 1940, politically confused and dispirited, he wrote to Wilson:I am left standing pretty much alone, in the air, unsupported, a situation that is much more uncomfortable for me than it would be for you. Since my normal instinct is toward cooperation. For the moment I want to get out of every God damned thing.Cowley publicly announced his resignation from the League of American Writers in August 1940. He had helped to create the League in 1935 and had once been one of its officers. Deciding to avoid all further public political debates, he retreated to his Connecticut farmhouse. “Anyone who was as close to the radical movement as I was is going to be deeply shaken by breaking connection with it,” he explained to his close friend Kenneth Burke. “At that point the religious metaphor is absolutely accurate. You leave a church, and like a defrocked priest you can't think about anything else for a while.”