A Visit with Robert Cowley

    One of Rob's collections of alternative history. 

     I haven't lived in Sherman, CT in about 30 years, and yet old friends and new were generous with their time and hospitality. An example is the writer, editor and historian Rob Cowley. I had telephoned Rob to see if he recalled my father the old days in New York and Sherman, and he did. He invited me to visit him in Sherman after his morning's writing was complete.       

     Bearing the traditional Connecticut social calling treat of a strawberry-rhubarb pie from Sherman's own wonderful American Pie Restaurant, I visited with him for several hours. Rob told me a story about my father that was news to me: After his return from North Africa, Croswell Bowen spoke about the war at Sherman's old town hall. Afterwards, Rob's father, the writer and critic, Malcolm Cowley introduced him to dad. He also worked with Dad on a profile of Charles Revson, the founder of Revlon Cosmetics. There is a threatening letter from Revson's lawyer in Dad's papers at the Beinecke Library at Yale, and I remember, as a make-up aspiring teenager, being fascinated by this particular profile. 

     Rob is currently at work on a new book of military history. He loaned me a copy of fellow Sherman author James Lincoln Collier's  history of the 1920s Bohemians of Robber Rocks (Hart Crane, the Slater Browns, Malcolm and Peggy Cowley, the Josephsons), and when I returned it, gave me another about incorporating suspense into narrative. I felt privileged to be talking about writing with a real writer.