Allan Dowling

From Philosopedia

Allan Dowling (4 July 1903 - 13 April 1983)

Although born in New York, Dowling lived in France from 1927 to 1933. His youthful wanderjähre in Europe from 1925 to 1935 recall the heyday of the international literary set between two world wars. In Nice in 1926 Dowling became friendly with Frank Harris, a connection that was to lead him, a year later, daringly to "bring" into the United States the plates of the first volume of Harris' controversial autobiography My Life and Loves. During this period Dowling lived for a time in London, where his circle of friends included George Bernard Shaw, H G Wells, and John Middleton Murry.

After his marriage in London in 1927, Dowling settled in Nice for several years and numbered among his friends Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Henri Matisse, Ralph Korngold, Kay Boyle and Laurence Vail. His only child, a daughter, was born in 1928.

In 1935 he was in the real estate business in New York, working with the builders of the Empire State Building and with the management of a Wall Street skyscraper.

In 1948 for four years, he became owner and publisher of Partisan Review, a political and literary quarterly that was published from 1934 until 2003. He then turned to producing movies in Hollywood.

Partisan Review published stories and articles such as the following:

Saul Bellow's "Two Morning Monologues"

two of T.S. Eliot's "Four Quartets"

Leslie Fiedler's "Come Back to the Raft Ag’in, Huck Honey"

Clement Greenberg's "Avant-Garde and Kitsch"

George Orwell's "Such, Such Were the Joys"

Delmore Schwartz's "In Dreams Begin Responsibilities"

Isaac Bashevis Singer's "Gimpel the Fool"

Susan Sontag's "Notes on "Camp"

In 1949 the quarterly awarded George Orwell £357 for his 1984, calling it the year's most significant contribution to literature.

Dowling produced three feature films in Hollywood, collaborated with George Antheil in a cantata entitled Cabeza da Vaca, and in addition to articles in Partisan Review wrote three books of verse, two fantasies, and a work of fiction, The Swimmer.

In 1968, his In the Beginning Was the Myth was published by Vantage Press.

Asked in 1951 his views about humanism, Dowling wrote Warren Allen Smith of his belief in supernaturalism: