Robert Lowry (writer)
Encyclopedia
Novel
A novel is a book of long narrative in literary prose. The genre has historical roots both in the fields of the medieval and early modern romance and in the tradition of the novella. The latter supplied the present generic term in the late 18th century....
ist, short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
writer, illustrator
Illustrator
An Illustrator is a narrative artist who specializes in enhancing writing by providing a visual representation that corresponds to the content of the associated text...
, and independent press publisher.
Lowry was born in Cincinnati, Ohio
Ohio
Ohio is a Midwestern state in the United States. The 34th largest state by area in the U.S.,it is the 7th‑most populous with over 11.5 million residents, containing several major American cities and seven metropolitan areas with populations of 500,000 or more.The state's capital is Columbus...
. He was a literary wunderkind who began writing at the age of eight; within a year, he had stories published in the Cincinnati Times Star newspaper. He graduated from Withrow High School in 1937, after which he entered the University of Cincinnati
University of Cincinnati
The University of Cincinnati is a comprehensive public research university in Cincinnati, Ohio, and a part of the University System of Ohio....
. He was, according to biographer James Reidel, a voracious reader of the literary works of Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
, William Faulkner
William Faulkner
William Cuthbert Faulkner was an American writer from Oxford, Mississippi. Faulkner worked in a variety of media; he wrote novels, short stories, a play, poetry, essays and screenplays during his career...
, F. Scott Fitzgerald
F. Scott Fitzgerald
Francis Scott Key Fitzgerald was an American author of novels and short stories, whose works are the paradigm writings of the Jazz Age, a term he coined himself. He is widely regarded as one of the greatest American writers of the 20th century. Fitzgerald is considered a member of the "Lost...
, and Guy de Maupassant
Guy de Maupassant
Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents....
.
The Little Man Press
In 1938, while enrolled at the University of Cincinnati, Lowry served as editor for a university-sponsored chapbook entitled The Little Man (whose credits claim it "was established in the Fall of 1937 by some students," although the contents were copyrighted under Lowry's name). William SaroyanWilliam Saroyan
William Saroyan was an Armenian American dramatist and author. The setting of many of his stories and plays is the center of Armenian-American life in California in his native Fresno.-Early years:...
contributed the lead essay, "A Word on Reading and Writing."
That same year, with illustrator James Flora
Jim Flora
James "Jim" Flora , best known for his distinctive and idiosyncratic album cover art for RCA Victor and Columbia Records during the 1940s and 1950s, was also a prolific commercial illustrator from the 1940s to the 1970s and the author/illustrator of 17 popular children's books...
, a student at the Art Academy of Cincinnati
Art Academy of Cincinnati
The Art Academy of Cincinnati is a private college of art and design, accredited by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design, in Cincinnati, Ohio...
, Lowry founded The Little Man Press. The partners published dozens of chapbook
Chapbook
A chapbook is a pocket-sized booklet. The term chap-book was formalized by bibliophiles of the 19th century, as a variety of ephemera , popular or folk literature. It includes many kinds of printed material such as pamphlets, political and religious tracts, nursery rhymes, poetry, folk tales,...
s under the Little Man imprint from 1939 to 1942. Lowry authored many titles (some under such pseudonyms as James Caldwell), but the Little Man imprint also published essays and fiction by Saroyan, Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann
Thomas Mann was a German novelist, short story writer, social critic, philanthropist, essayist, and 1929 Nobel Prize laureate, known for his series of highly symbolic and ironic epic novels and novellas, noted for their insight into the psychology of the artist and the intellectual...
, Jesse Stuart
Jesse Stuart
Jesse Hilton Stuart was an American writer who is known for writing short stories, poetry, and novels about Southern Appalachia. Born and raised in Greenup County, Kentucky, Stuart relied heavily on the rural locale of Northeastern Kentucky for his writings. Stuart was named the Poet Laureate of...
, Charles Henri Ford
Charles Henri Ford
Charles Henri Ford was an American poet, novelist, filmmaker, photographer, and collage artist best known for his editorship of the Surrealist magazine View in New York City, and as the partner of the artist Pavel Tchelitchew...
, William Edward March Campbell
William March
William March was an American author and a highly decorated US Marine. The author of six novels and four short-story collections, March was praised by critics and heralded as "the unrecognized genius of our time", without attaining popular appeal until after his death.March grew up in rural...
, and others.
After Flora accepted a job offer from Columbia Records
Columbia Records
Columbia Records is an American record label, owned by Japan's Sony Music Entertainment, operating under the Columbia Music Group with Aware Records. It was founded in 1888, evolving from an earlier enterprise, the American Graphophone Company — successor to the Volta Graphophone Company...
in 1942 and moved to Connecticut, Lowry continued to sporadically publish titles under a succession of revived Little Man imprints.
Career as Novelist
In 1942 Lowry was drafted, and served three years in the US military during World War IIWorld War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, during which he saw combat in North Africa and Italy. After his discharge, he divorced his first wife, wrote critically acclaimed fiction (his fans included Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Hemingway
Ernest Miller Hemingway was an American author and journalist. His economic and understated style had a strong influence on 20th-century fiction, while his life of adventure and his public image influenced later generations. Hemingway produced most of his work between the mid-1920s and the...
), and penned an autobiographical novel (The Big Cage). Lowry was hired by James Laughlin
James Laughlin
James Laughlin was an American poet and literary book publisher who founded New Directions Publishers.- Biography :He was born in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, the son of Henry Hughart and Marjory Rea Laughlin...
as office manager at New Directions Publishing in September 1945, leaving in Fall 1946 to concentrate on writing full-time. His books and short stories in the late 1940s and 1950s recounted his wartime experiences. He also wrote colorfully about life in New York's Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village
Greenwich Village, , , , .in New York often simply called "the Village", is a largely residential neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City. A large majority of the district is home to upper middle class families...
during the emergence of the beatnik
Beatnik
Beatnik was a media stereotype of the 1950s and early 1960s that displayed the more superficial aspects of the Beat Generation literary movement of the 1950s and violent film images, along with a cartoonish depiction of the real-life people and the spiritual quest in Jack Kerouac's autobiographical...
scene.
His published works included Casualty (1946), Find Me in Fire (1948; cover teaser: "She Was Young But Ripe For Love"), and The Violent Wedding (1953). His short stories appeared in Mademoiselle
Mademoiselle (magazine)
Mademoiselle was an influential women's magazine first published in 1935 by Street and Smith and later acquired by Condé Nast Publications....
, New Directions
New Directions Publishers
New Directions Publishing Corp. is an independent book publishing company that was founded in 1936 by James Laughlin. The company was incorporated in 1964 as the New Directions Publishing Corporation and operates from New York City, and its books today are distributed by WW Norton & Company. Its...
, Collier's
Collier's Weekly
Collier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....
, Horizon, The American Mercury
The American Mercury
The American Mercury was an American magazine published from 1924 to 1981. It was founded as the brainchild of H. L. Mencken and drama critic George Jean Nathan. The magazine featured writing by some of the most important writers in the United States through the 1920s and 1930s...
, and other periodicals. His short fiction was collected in three volumes, The Wolf That Fed Us (Doubleday, 1949), Happy New Year, Kamerades! (Doubleday, 1954), and Party of Dreamers (Fleet Publishing Corp., 1962).
During the 1950s Lowry penned book reviews for Time
Time (magazine)
Time is an American news magazine. A European edition is published from London. Time Europe covers the Middle East, Africa and, since 2003, Latin America. An Asian edition is based in Hong Kong...
magazine and the Saturday Review of Literature. In 1950, he won the O. Henry Award
O. Henry Award
The O. Henry Award is the only yearly award given to short stories of exceptional merit. The award is named after the American master of the form, O. Henry....
for his short story "Be Nice to Mr. Campbell." Another Lowry story, That Kind of Woman, was adapted for a 1959 feature film directed by Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet
Sidney Lumet was an American director, producer and screenwriter with over 50 films to his credit. He was nominated for the Academy Award as Best Director for 12 Angry Men , Dog Day Afternoon , Network and The Verdict...
and starring Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren
Sophia Loren, OMRI is an Italian actress.In 1962, Loren won the Academy Award for Best Actress for her role in Two Women, along with 21 awards, becoming the first actress to win an Academy Award for a non-English-speaking performance...
.
Lowry had two short stories published in Mademoiselle magazine
Mademoiselle (magazine)
Mademoiselle was an influential women's magazine first published in 1935 by Street and Smith and later acquired by Condé Nast Publications....
that were illustrated by his former Little Man Press partner, James Flora: "Little Baseball World" (September 1946) and "The Mammoth Molar" (September 1951).
Visuals Arts/Design
Lowry was also a visual artist. He illustrated the covers of some of his independently published works, and the title page of each story in Happy New Year, Kamerades, was adorned with a minimalist brush-and-ink illustration by the author.While employed at New Directions, Lowry designed book jackets for titles by Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
Thomas Lanier "Tennessee" Williams III was an American writer who worked principally as a playwright in the American theater. He also wrote short stories, novels, poetry, essays, screenplays and a volume of memoirs...
, James T. Farrell
James T. Farrell
James Thomas Farrell was an American novelist. One of his most famous works was the Studs Lonigan trilogy, which was made into a film in 1960 and into a television miniseries in 1979...
, Christopher Isherwood
Christopher Isherwood
Christopher William Bradshaw Isherwood was an English-American novelist.-Early life and work:Born at Wyberslegh Hall, High Lane, Cheshire in North West England, Isherwood spent his childhood in various towns where his father, a Lieutenant-Colonel in the British Army, was stationed...
, Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton
Thomas Merton, O.C.S.O. was a 20th century Anglo-American Catholic writer and mystic. A Trappist monk of the Abbey of Gethsemani, Kentucky, he was a poet, social activist, and student of comparative religion...
, Dylan Thomas
Dylan Thomas
Dylan Marlais Thomas was a Welsh poet and writer, Encyclopædia Britannica. Retrieved 11 January 2008. who wrote exclusively in English. In addition to poetry, he wrote short stories and scripts for film and radio, which he often performed himself...
, Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda
Pablo Neruda was the pen name and, later, legal name of the Chilean poet, diplomat and politician Neftalí Ricardo Reyes Basoalto. He chose his pen name after Czech poet Jan Neruda....
, Henry Miller
Henry Miller
Henry Valentine Miller was an American novelist and painter. He was known for breaking with existing literary forms and developing a new sort of 'novel' that is a mixture of novel, autobiography, social criticism, philosophical reflection, surrealist free association, and mysticism, one that is...
, and others. According to Lowry researcher Robert Nedelkoff, "James Laughlin said he'd always loved the Little Man books and said he thought that Lowry may have had greater promise as a book designer than as a writer. He thought Lowry had peaked with Casualty and the other books were downhill."
Psychological Profile
Lowry had dark impulses, which were exacerbated by liquor. "In Cincinnati," recalled Flora, "he would take one drink and go berserk, throwing himself on the floor, saying, 'I'm a rug! I'm a rug! Step on me!'"In 1952, following a second marriage and the birth of a son, Beirne, Lowry was diagnosed a schizophrenic
Schizophrenia
Schizophrenia is a mental disorder characterized by a disintegration of thought processes and of emotional responsiveness. It most commonly manifests itself as auditory hallucinations, paranoid or bizarre delusions, or disorganized speech and thinking, and it is accompanied by significant social...
and forced to undergo electric shock therapy. He spent the rest of his life passing in and out of "insane asylums" (his preferred term), squalid hotels, and turbulent relationships with women (including two more marriages). In 1967, the increasingly unstable Lowry attempted to revive the American Nazi Party
American Nazi Party
The American Nazi Party was an American political party founded by discharged U.S. Navy Commander George Lincoln Rockwell. Headquartered in Arlington, Virginia, Rockwell initially called it the World Union of Free Enterprise National Socialists , but later renamed it the American Nazi Party in...
. He continued writing, but because of his volatile and unpredictable personality, reputable publishers declined to publish his manuscripts. During the final decades of his life, Lowry, often destitute, self-published many additional works.
He died in Cincinnati, age 75, at the Veterans Administration Medical Center in Cincinnati. At the time of his death, all his commercially published books were out of print.
External links and references
- Maddening Genius, article, Cincinnati CityBeat, December 3, 2003
- Lowry television and film writing credits at Internet Movie Database
- Obituary, New York Times, 23 December 1994
- Biographical article in Review of Contemporary Fiction by James Reidel
- Time Magazine review of Lowry's autobiographical novel, The Big Cage
- Little Man Press chronicle and artwork at JimFlora.com
- Lowry literary works at Open Library
Original Works by Lowry online
- Text of The Knife, Lowry's self-published 1959 novella, with intro by Jim Reidel.
Academic Collections
- Robert Lowry Collection at University of Southern California Library
- Robert Lowry Collection, at Kent State University