Literary Birthday – 24 August – Malcolm Cowley

Malcolm Cowley was born on 24 August 1898 and died on 27 March 1989.

Malcolm Cowley Quotes

1. They tell you that you’ll lose your mind when you grow older. What they don’t tell you is that you won’t miss it very much.
2. The germ of a story is a new and simple element introduced into an existing situation or mood.
3. Talent is what you possess; genius is what possesses you
4. 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.
5. In matters like writing and painting, a man does what he has to do – if he has to write, why then, he writes; and if he doesn’t feel the urgent need of writing, there are dozens of professions in which it is easier to earn a comfortable living.
6. Authors are sometimes like tomcats: They distrust all the other toms but they are kind to kittens.
7. Any fiction should be a story. In any story there are three elements: persons, a situation, and the fact that in the end something has changed. If nothing has changed, it isn’t a story.

Malcolm Cowley was an American literary critic and social historian who chronicled the writers of the ‘Lost Generation’ of the 1920s and their successors. Cowley revived the literary reputation of William Faulkner with his editing of the anthology The Portable Faulkner (1946). Among Cowley’s other works are The Literary Situation (1954), a study of the role of the American writer in his society, and the collections of criticism and comment Think Back on Us (1967) and A Many-Windowed House (1970).

Source for image: Bookforum

by Amanda Patterson
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