Robert Lowry (writer)

Robert Lowry (born March 29, 1919 in Cincinnati , Ohio , † December 5, 1994 ) was an American writer . With the Little Man magazine he founded and his works, he was an important inspiration and source of American post-war literature and the Beat Generation .

Life

youth

As a child, Lowry wrote short stories, inspired by pulp magazines of the Depression, which were published in the local press. As a student at the University of Cincinnati, Lowry founded the literary magazine Little Man in 1938 . Before the first issue appeared in print, Lowry went on the road across the United States with a married fellow student . Via Arkansas and Texas he hitchhiked on to New York , where he wanted to establish himself as a writer.

Little Man I.

Almost starved, he returned to Cincinnati a few months later, broke off his studies and founded Little Man Verlag with a used hand press, which from then on published the magazine of the same name. He won James Flora - later a famous designer of jazz record covers and children's book author - as a designer and illustrator. In addition to established and famous writers such as William Saroyan , Jesse Stuart and Weldon Kees , Lowry also published unknown authors and his own works in Little Man. The 19-year-old Lowry rejected an original manuscript sent to him by Henry Miller because it did not meet his quality standards.

Military service

In 1942 Lowry was drafted into the army and had to hire the Little Man. In addition to a large number of short stories that he had printed in San Severo and Bari in Italy , the first version of the autobiographical novel The Big Cage was created. Opposite Jack Kerouac complained Lowry later that this The Big Cage never as a model for On the Road (German: On the way ) has appreciated.

new York

After the war Lowry moved to New York and initially worked as a book designer for New Directions , where his first novel , Casualty (German: The false gentleness of snow , Hamburg , 1996) was published. After initial successes, Lowry became a feared critic for Time Magazine, among others .

Lowry's publications, which repeatedly touched on taboos and taken up topics such as racism , homosexuality , rape and abortion , are praised by colleagues, controversially discussed by critics and violently attacked by conservative organizations.

collapse

For reasons that have not yet been fully understood, Lowry was admitted to psychiatry by his then wife in 1952 and treated with 22 electric shocks. From that point on, Lowry developed into a revolving door patient . Despite the negative consequences of his therapy, which mainly consisted of psychotropic drugs and insulin shocks, Lowry completed two novels and several volumes of short stories . His last novel Prince of Pride Starring (German: Lebendig buried , Hamburg, 1997), the humorless predecessor of Ken Kesey 's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest , was rejected by his publisher on charges of anti-Semitism .

Little Man II

Lowry tried in 1958 to revive his famous Little Man project. His hectographed pamphlets , which he published almost daily under a variety of names, did not come close to the early Little Man in terms of form or content . Only the advance publication from Jack Kerouac's Some of the Dharma left its mark on the specialist literature.

Below

After divorcing his third wife with no source of income, Lowry moved back to live with his mother in Cincinnati in 1962 . A fourth marriage lasted only a few months, and after his mother's death and the sale of the parents' house, Lowry lived on a small social pension in cheap shelters.

The End

Until the end of his life, Lowry tried to find a new publisher. Michael Montfort became aware of Lowry through the antiquarian Nicky Drumbolis in Toronto , who published a few small booklets by Lowry at the end of the 80s . Michael Montfort visited Lowry in 1994 together with Matthias Matussek , who reported on Lowry, who was unknown in Germany , for Der Spiegel . As a result of Montfort's efforts, three novels and two volumes of short stories have been translated into German and published for the first time since 1996. Before Lowry could cash the first check from Germany, however, he died on December 5, 1994, completely impoverished of pneumonia.

Works

(Selection)

• Defense in University City, Narrative, Cincinnati, Little Man, 1939 (published under the pen name James Caldwell)
• Hutton Street, Short Stories, Cincinnati, Little Man, 1940
• Casualty, Roman, New York, New Directions, 1946
• Find Me in Fire, Roman, New York, Doubleday, 1948
• The Big Cage, Roman, New York, Doubleday, 1949
• The Wolf That Fed Us, Stories, New York, Doubleday, 1949
• Don Quixotes Without Windmills, Essay, in: American Mercury, Concord, NH and New York, 1950
• Law and Order, in: Das Lot , No. VI, Karl H. Henssel Verlag, Berlin, June 1952 (translation of "Law and Order" or "Happy New Year, Kamerades!" By Alexander Koval)
• The Violent Wedding, New York, Doubleday, 1953
• Happy New Year, Comrade !, New York, Doubleday, 1954
• What's Left of April, New York, Doubleday, 1956
• The Last Party, New York, Popular Library, 1956
• Blood Wedding in Chicago, in: Perspectives No. 15, Frankfurt, S. Fischer Verlag, 1956 (translation of the report "Blood Wedding in Chicago" by Walter Hasenclever)
• New York Call Girl, New York, Doubleday, 1958
• Robert Lowry's Book USA # 1, New York, Robert Lowry, 1959 (including excerpt from Jack Kerouac's "Some of the Dharma")
• New World No. 1, New York, Robert Lowry, 1958 (therein unpublished letter from Jack Kerouac)
• Zeitgeist International No. 3, New York, Robert Lowry, 1958 (therein Jack Kerouac: Two Dreams from my Book of Dreams, Gregory Corso : Lines from a Letter, Harold Chumbly : A Poem)
• Ernest Hemingway and the Beat Generation, in: New Little Man No. 9, New York, Robert Lowry, 1958
• The Prince of Pride Starring, Cincinnati, National Genius Books (i.e. Robert Lowry), 1959
• Party of Dreamers, New York, Fleet, 1962
• The false gentleness of snow (casualty), Roman, Hamburg, Rogner & Bernhard, 1996
• Tag, Fremder (The Violent Wedding), Roman, Hamburg, Rogner & Bernhard, 1996
• Buried Alive (The Prince of Pride Starring), Roman, Hamburg, Rogner & Bernhard, 1997
• Stay in El Paso, Erzählungen, Hamburg, Rogner & Bernhard, 1997
• The Little Man Stories, short stories, Augsburg, Maro, 2003
• It'll Make a Man Out of You - The Mary Beth Stories of Robert Lowry, Roth, Heinz Wohlers, 2004
• That makes you a man - The Mary Beth Stories by Robert Lowry, Augsburg, Maro, 2005

literature

• John W. Aldridge: After the Lost Generation. A critical study of the writers of two wars, McGraw-Hill, undated
• Stanley Weintraub: The Last Great Cause, New York, 1968
• David Galloway: Robert Lowry, in: Contemporary Novelists, St. Martin's Press
• Matthias Matussek: Long flight into madness, in: Der Spiegel No. 29, July 18, 1994, pp. 136-141
• Heinz Wohlers, Die Typewriter, in: The Little Man Stories, Augsburg, Maro, 2003
• Robert Lowry Journal, Roth, Heinz Wohlers Verlag

Web links

• Literature by and about Robert Lowry in the catalog of the German National Library