Robie Mayhew Macauley (May 31, 1919 – November 20, 1995) was an American editor, novelist and critic whose literary career spanned more than 50 years.

Biography

Early life

Robie Macauley was born on May 31, 1919, in

Grand Rapids Grand Rapids is a city and county seat of Kent County in the U.S. state of Michigan. At the 2020 census, the city had a population of 198,917 which ranks it as the second most-populated city in the state after Detroit. Grand Rapids is the ...

Michigan Michigan () is a U.S. state, state in the Great Lakes region, Great Lakes region of the Upper Midwest, upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the List of U.S. states and ...

. He was the older brother of the noted photographer and movie producer C. Cameron Macauley. His uncle owned and published the Hudsonville newspaper, ''The Ottawa Times'' (named for Ottawa County), and Macauley used the printing press to publish his first books of fiction and poetry. At age 18 he printed and bound a limited edition of ''Solomon's Cat'', a previously unpublished poem by Walter Duranty, setting the type and engraving the illustrations.

Education

As an undergraduate at Olivet College, he was a student of

Ford Madox Ford Ford Madox Ford (né Joseph Leopold Ford Hermann Madox Hueffer ( ); 17 December 1873 – 26 June 1939) was an English novelist, poet, critic and editor whose journals '' The English Review'' and '' The Transatlantic Review'' were instrumental i ...

(describing him as "my first teacher and editorial mentor.") and then won a three-year literary prize scholarship and transferred to

Kenyon College Kenyon College is a private liberal arts college in Gambier, Ohio. It was founded in 1824 by Philander Chase. Kenyon College is accredited by the Higher Learning Commission. Kenyon has 1,708 undergraduates enrolled. Its 1,000-acre campus is ...

to be a student of

John Crowe Ransom John Crowe Ransom (April 30, 1888 – July 3, 1974) was an American educator, scholar, literary critic, poet, essayist and editor. He is considered to be a founder of the New Criticism school of literary criticism. As a faculty member at Kenyon ...

. There he lived in a writer's house with

Robert Lowell Robert Traill Spence Lowell IV (; March 1, 1917 – September 12, 1977) was an American poet. He was born into a Boston Brahmin family that could trace its origins back to the '' Mayflower''. His family, past and present, were important subjects ...

, Peter Taylor, and

Randall Jarrell Randall Jarrell (May 6, 1914 – October 14, 1965) was an American poet, literary critic, children's author, essayist, and novelist. He was the 11th Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress—a position that now bears the title Poe ...

. He was elected to

Phi Beta Kappa The Phi Beta Kappa Society () is the oldest academic honor society in the United States, and the most prestigious, due in part to its long history and academic selectivity. Phi Beta Kappa aims to promote and advocate excellence in the liberal a ...

during February 1941, and the same year was awarded a fellowship to attend the Bread Loaf Writers' Conference. He graduated ''

summa cum laude Latin honors are a system of Latin phrases used in some colleges and universities to indicate the level of distinction with which an academic degree has been earned. The system is primarily used in the United States. It is also used in some So ...

'' from Kenyon in June 1941.

War years

He was drafted in March 1942 and served in World War II as a special agent in the

Counterintelligence Corps The Counter Intelligence Corps (Army CIC) was a World War II and early Cold War intelligence agency within the United States Army consisting of highly trained special agents. Its role was taken over by the U.S. Army Intelligence Corps in 1961 and ...

(CIC) with the

97th Infantry Division The 97th Infantry Division was a unit of the United States Army in World War I and World War II. Nicknamed the "Trident division" because of its shoulder patch, a vertical trident in white on a blue background, it was originally trained in amph ...

, in the " Ruhr Pocket" and then in Japan after the war. On April 23, 1945, Macauley's division helped liberate

Flossenbürg concentration camp Flossenbürg was a Nazi concentration camp built in May 1938 by the SS Main Economic and Administrative Office. Unlike other concentration camps, it was located in a remote area, in the Fichtel Mountains of Bavaria, adjacent to the town of ...

. Macauley later said, "I entered some concentration camps the day we liberated them--the most horrifying days of my life. My job was to interview survivors. Most of the bodies that I saw had been stripped and it was impossible to tell which were those of Jews and which of Christians. Nazi murder was a great leveler, fully ecumenical... Hitler's bell tolled for all..." Macauley wrote four autobiographical short stories based on his experiences doing intelligence work, collected in ''The End of Pity and Other Stories'', (1957). In "A Nest of Gentlefolk", (winner of the 1949 Furioso Prize) he describes the CIC's futile search for Nazi war criminals in the war-ravaged town of

Hohenlohe The House of Hohenlohe () is a German princely dynasty. It ruled an immediate territory within the Holy Roman Empire which was divided between several branches. The Hohenlohes became imperial counts in 1450. The county was divided numerous ti ...

; in ''The Thin Voice'' he describes the unsuccessful attempt by an American officer to prevent some freed Russian POWs from killing a vicious collaborator in Heiligenkreuz, Germany; in "The End of Pity" he tells the story of a woman's suicide after visiting her ruined house in a combat zone in Oberkassel; and in "The Mind is its Own Place" he describes his brief post-war encounter in

Karuizawa is a resort town, resort Towns of Japan, town located in Nagano Prefecture, Japan. , the town had an estimated population of 20,323 in 9897 households, and a population density of 130 persons per km². The total area of the town is . Karuizawa i ...

, Japan with Captain Kermit Beahan, bombardier of the bomber "The

Bockscar ''Bockscar'', sometimes called Bock's Car, is the name of the United States Army Air Forces B-29 bomber that dropped a Fat Man nuclear weapon over the Japanese city of Nagasaki during World War II in the secondand most recent nuclear attack i ...

" who released the

atomic bomb A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

over

Nagasaki is the capital and the largest city of Nagasaki Prefecture on the island of Kyushu in Japan. It became the sole port used for trade with the Portuguese and Dutch during the 16th through 19th centuries. The Hidden Christian Sites in th ...

. Macauley described Beahan as "a young captain with a college-boy face hohad suffered some strange mutation of feeling so deep and so destructive..." According to Macauley's letters archived at the

University of North Carolina The University of North Carolina is the multi-campus public university system for the state of North Carolina. Overseeing the state's 16 public universities and the NC School of Science and Mathematics, it is commonly referred to as the UNC Sys ...

, while in Karuizawa he was friends with former Japanese Ambassador to the US Saburō Kurusu and German Admiral Paul Wenneker, as well as pianist Leo Sirota and artist Paul Jacoulet. He was also acquainted with three-time former Japanese Prime Minister

Prince Fumimaro Konoe Prince was a Japanese politician and prime minister. During his tenure, he presided over the Japanese invasion of China in 1937 and the breakdown in relations with the United States, which ultimately culminated in Japan's entry into World W ...

, to whom he presented a copy of
The American Leviathan: The Republic in the Machine Age
' by

Charles A. Beard Charles Austin Beard (1874–1948) was an American historian and professor, who wrote primarily during the first half of the 20th century. A history professor at Columbia University, Beard's influence is primarily due to his publications in the f ...

. In his capacity as CIC Station Chief, he supervised the arrests, on October 30, 1945, of a number of prominent Nazi leaders who were in hiding in Karuizawa: Dr. Franz Joseph Spahn,

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right politics, far-right Totalitarianism, totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hit ...

Gruppenleiter in Japan; Paul Sperringer, a former SS

Stormtrooper Stormtrooper or storm trooper may refer to: Military *Stormtroopers (Imperial Germany), specialist soldier of the German Army in World War I *'' Sturmabteilung'' (SA) or Storm Detachment, a paramilitary organization of the German Nazi Party *8th I ...

and assistant to

Gestapo The (), abbreviated Gestapo (; ), was the official secret police of Nazi Germany and in German-occupied Europe. The force was created by Hermann Göring in 1933 by combining the various political police agencies of Prussia into one or ...

Chief Colonel Josef Meisinger; Karl Hamel, Meisinger's secretary; Charles Schmidt-Jucheim, a former San Francisco police officer and an ex-US Army sergeant who attended Gestapo training in Germany and renounced his US citizenship; Karlfried Graf Dürckheim, chief of

propaganda in Japan; Heinrich Loy, a Gestapo spy who allegedly participated in the Munich

Beer Hall Putsch The Beer Hall Putsch, also known as the Munich Putsch,Dan Moorhouse, ed schoolshistory.org.uk, accessed 2008-05-31.Known in German as the or was a failed coup d'état by Nazi Party ( or NSDAP) leader Adolf Hitler, Erich Ludendorff and oth ...

; Dr. Karl Kindermann, Meisinger's Jewish interpreter who was an informant for the Gestapo; Alrich Mosaner, chief of the

Hitler Youth The Hitler Youth (german: Hitlerjugend , often abbreviated as HJ, ) was the youth organisation of the Nazi Party in Germany. Its origins date back to 1922 and it received the name ("Hitler Youth, League of German Worker Youth") in July 1926. ...

in Japan; and Otto Burmeister, chief of the Nazi education system in Japan. Most of these individuals were later released by the CIC. Robie Macauley was awarded the

Legion of Merit The Legion of Merit (LOM) is a military award of the United States Armed Forces that is given for exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding services and achievements. The decoration is issued to members of the eight ...

for his work in detaining members of the Gestapo in Japan.

Career

Iowa Writers Workshop

After the war he taught briefly at

Bard College Bard College is a private liberal arts college in Annandale-on-Hudson, New York. The campus overlooks the Hudson River and Catskill Mountains, and is within the Hudson River Historic District—a National Historic Landmark. Founded in 18 ...

then worked at '' Gourmet'' Magazine and for

Henry Holt and Company Henry Holt and Company is an American book-publishing company based in New York City. One of the oldest publishers in the United States, it was founded in 1866 by Henry Holt and Frederick Leypoldt. Currently, the company publishes in the fields ...

. During 1947 he taught at the University of Iowa Writer's Workshop with Paul Engle, and

Anthony Hecht Anthony Evan Hecht (January 16, 1923 – October 20, 2004) was an American poet. His work combined a deep interest in form with a passionate desire to confront the horrors of 20th century history, with the Second World War, in which he fought, an ...

(with whom Macauley had served during World War II), where he befriended

Flannery O'Connor Mary Flannery O'Connor (March 25, 1925August 3, 1964) was an American novelist, short story writer and essayist. She wrote two novels and 31 short stories, as well as a number of reviews and commentaries. She was a Southern writer who often ...

, advising her on drafts of her first novel, '' Wise Blood''. He completed his MFA at the University of Iowa in 1950 and spent the next three years at the Woman's College (now The University of North Carolina at Greensboro) where he taught modern American literature and writing.

The Congress for Cultural Freedom

Macauley received a Rockefeller Fellowship and during 1953 Cord Meyer offered him a position in the International Organizations Division of the

Central Intelligence Agency The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA ), known informally as the Agency and historically as the Company, is a civilian intelligence agency, foreign intelligence service of the federal government of the United States, officially tasked with gat ...

. With John Crowe Ransom's encouragement, Macauley accepted and relocated to Paris where he participated in the Congress for Cultural Freedom. Macauley assisted in the publication of '' Quadrant'' magazine (edited by James McAuley), an Australian literary journal that at the time had "an anticommunist thrust". Pybus, Cassandra, He was also U.S. representative to the

International PEN PEN International (known as International PEN until 2010) is a worldwide association of writers, founded in London in 1921 to promote friendship and intellectual co-operation among writers everywhere. The association has autonomous Internation ...

Congress in Tokyo (1957) and Brazil (1960).Biography of Robie Mayhew Macauley

''The Kenyon Review''

During 1958 he returned to the US to succeed John Crowe Ransom as editor of ''

The Kenyon Review ''The Kenyon Review'' is a literary magazine based in Gambier, Ohio, United States, US, home of Kenyon College. ''The Review'' was founded in 1939 by John Crowe Ransom, critic and professor of English at Kenyon College, who served as its editor ...

''. Ransom described Macauley as "wise and thorough, thoroughly experienced, an excellent critic...; a pretty good fiction writer who has just begun to get a lot better; and a person universally admired and liked." During the next seven years Macauley published works by John Barth,

T. S. Eliot Thomas Stearns Eliot (26 September 18884 January 1965) was a poet, essayist, publisher, playwright, literary critic and editor.Bush, Ronald. "T. S. Eliot's Life and Career", in John A Garraty and Mark C. Carnes (eds), ''American National Biogr ...

, Nadine Gordimer, Robert Graves,

, Richmond Lattimore, Doris Lessing,

, V. S. Naipaul, Joyce Carol Oates,

Frank O'Connor Frank O'Connor (born Michael Francis O'Donovan; 17 September 1903 – 10 March 1966) was an Irish author and translator. He wrote poetry (original and translations from Irish), dramatic works, memoirs, journalistic columns and features on a ...

V. S. Pritchett Sir Victor Sawdon Pritchett (also known as VSP; 16 December 1900 – 20 March 1997) was a British writer and literary critic. Pritchett was known particularly for his short stories, collated in a number of volumes. His non-fiction works incl ...

Thomas Pynchon Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, Literary genre, genres and Theme (narrative), them ...

, J. F. Powers, Karl Shapiro, Jean Stafford,

Christina Stead Christina Stead (17 July 190231 March 1983) was an Australian novelist and short-story writer acclaimed for her satirical wit and penetrating psychological characterisations. Christina Stead was a committed Marxist, although she was never a me ...

, Peter Taylor, and

Robert Penn Warren Robert Penn Warren (April 24, 1905 – September 15, 1989) was an American poet, novelist, and literary critic and was one of the founders of New Criticism. He was also a charter member of the Fellowship of Southern Writers. He founded the lite ...

, as well as articles, essays and book reviews by Eric Bentley, Cleanth Brooks, R. P. Blackmur, Malcolm Cowley,

Richard Ellmann Richard David Ellmann, FBA (March 15, 1918 – May 13, 1987) was an American literary critic and biographer of the Irish writers James Joyce, Oscar Wilde Oscar Fingal O'Flahertie Wills Wilde (16 October 185430 November 1900) was an Iris ...

, Leslie Fiedler, Martin Green, and

Raymond Williams Raymond Henry Williams (31 August 1921 – 26 January 1988) was a Welsh socialist writer, academic, novelist and critic influential within the New Left and in wider culture. His writings on politics, culture, the media and literature contribut ...

. In 1964 he served as a fiction judge for the

National Book Awards The National Book Awards are a set of annual U.S. literary awards. At the final National Book Awards Ceremony every November, the National Book Foundation presents the National Book Awards and two lifetime achievement awards to authors. The N ...

together with

John Cheever John William Cheever (May 27, 1912 – June 18, 1982) was an American short story writer and novelist. He is sometimes called "the Chekhov of the suburbs". His fiction is mostly set in the Upper East Side of Manhattan; the Westchester suburbs; ...

and Philip Rahv. He received a

Guggenheim Fellowship Guggenheim Fellowships are grants that have been awarded annually since by the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation to those "who have demonstrated exceptional capacity for productive scholarship or exceptional creative ability in the ar ...

and took a sabbatical in 1964–65 as a Fulbright Research Fellow at the

University of London The University of London (UoL; abbreviated as Lond or more rarely Londin in post-nominals) is a federal public research university located in London, England, United Kingdom. The university was established by royal charter in 1836 as a degre ...

''Playboy'' Magazine

During 1966 Macauley became the fiction editor at ''

Playboy ''Playboy'' is an American men's lifestyle and entertainment magazine, formerly in print and currently online. It was founded in Chicago in 1953, by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. K ...

'', where he published fiction by

Saul Bellow Saul Bellow (born Solomon Bellows; 10 July 1915 – 5 April 2005) was a Canadian-born American writer. For his literary work, Bellow was awarded the Pulitzer Prize, the Nobel Prize for Literature, and the National Medal of Arts. He is the only w ...

, Michael Crichton,

Roald Dahl Roald Dahl (13 September 1916 – 23 November 1990) was a British novelist, short-story writer, poet, screenwriter, and wartime fighter ace of Norwegian descent. His books have sold more than 250 million copies worldwide. Dahl has b ...

James Dickey James Lafayette Dickey (February 2, 1923 January 19, 1997) was an American poet and novelist. He was appointed the eighteenth United States Poet Laureate in 1966. He also received the Order of the South award. Dickey is best known for his ...

, J. P. Donleavy, Nadine Gordimer,

John Irving John Winslow Irving (born John Wallace Blunt Jr.; March 2, 1942) is an American-Canadian novelist, short story writer, and screenwriter. Irving achieved critical and popular acclaim after the international success of '' The World According t ...

Arthur Koestler Arthur Koestler, (, ; ; hu, Kösztler Artúr; 5 September 1905 – 1 March 1983) was a Hungarian-born author and journalist. Koestler was born in Budapest and, apart from his early school years, was educated in Austria. In 1931, Koestler join ...

John le Carré David John Moore Cornwell (19 October 193112 December 2020), better known by his pen name John le Carré ( ), was a British and Irish author, best known for his espionage novels, many of which were successfully adapted for film or television. ...

, Ursula K. Le Guin, Doris Lessing, Bernard Malamud, Mary McCarthy,

Vladimir Nabokov Vladimir Vladimirovich Nabokov (russian: link=no, Владимир Владимирович Набоков ; 2 July 1977), also known by the pen name Vladimir Sirin (), was a Russian-American novelist, poet, translator, and entomologist. Bor ...

, Joyce Carol Oates, Seán Ó Faoláin,

Anne Sexton Anne Sexton (born Anne Gray Harvey; November 9, 1928 – October 4, 1974) was an American poet known for her highly personal, confessional verse. She won the Pulitzer Prize for poetry in 1967 for her book '' Live or Die''. Her poetry details h ...

, Irwin Shaw,

Isaac B. Singer Isaac Bashevis Singer ( yi, יצחק באַשעװיס זינגער; November 11, 1903 – July 24, 1991) was a Polish-born Jewish-American novelist, short-story writer, memoirist, essayist, and translator. Some of his works were adapted for th ...

John Updike John Hoyer Updike (March 18, 1932 – January 27, 2009) was an American novelist, poet, short-story writer, art critic, and literary critic. One of only four writers to win the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction more than once (the others being Booth ...

, and

Kurt Vonnegut Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (November 11, 1922 – April 11, 2007) was an American writer known for his satirical and darkly humorous novels. In a career spanning over 50 years, he published fourteen novels, three short-story collections, five plays, and ...

as well as poetry by Yevgeny Yevtushenko. David H. Lynn, writing in ''

'', said that "in the years when he was fiction editor, ''

'' was second only to ''

The New Yorker ''The New Yorker'' is an American weekly magazine featuring journalism, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons, and poetry. Founded as a weekly in 1925, the magazine is published 47 times annually, with five of these issue ...

'' in prestige as a place for serious writers to display their talents." During this period he also taught fiction at the MFA program at the

University of Illinois at Chicago The University of Illinois Chicago (UIC) is a public research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its campus is in the Near West Side community area, adjacent to the Chicago Loop. The second campus established under the University of Illinois s ...

, Circle Campus. In 1967 he co-initiated the Council of Literary Magazines and Presses together with Reed Whittemore (''The Carleton Miscellany'', ''

The New Republic ''The New Republic'' is an American magazine of commentary on politics, contemporary culture, and the arts. Founded in 1914 by several leaders of the progressive movement, it attempted to find a balance between "a liberalism centered in hu ...

''); Jules Chametzky (''

The Massachusetts Review ''The Massachusetts Review'' is a literary quarterly founded in 1959 by a group of professors from Amherst College, Mount Holyoke College, Smith College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst. It receives financial support from Five College ...

''); George Plimpton (''

The Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Phi ...

''); and William Phillips ('' The Partisan Review'').

Houghton Mifflin

In 1978 he became a senior editor at

Houghton Mifflin The asterisk ( ), from Late Latin , from Ancient Greek , ''asteriskos'', "little star", is a typographical symbol. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a heraldic star. Computer scientists and mathematicians often vo ...

, where he was responsible for publishing ''

The Mosquito Coast The Mosquito Coast The Mosquito Coast, also known as the Mosquitia or Mosquito Shore, historically included the area along the eastern coast of present-day Nicaragua and Honduras. It formed part of the Western Caribbean Zone. It was named afte ...

'', ''The Marrakesh One-Two'', ''

Shoeless Joe Joseph Jefferson Jackson (July 16, 1887 – December 5, 1951), nicknamed "Shoeless Joe", was an American outfielder who played Major League Baseball (MLB) in the early 1900s. Although his .356 career batting average is the fourth highest ...

'', and several works of nonfiction such as ''Breaking the Ring: The Bizarre Case of the Walker Family Spy Ring'', ''Techno-Bandits'', '' Getting to Yes'', '' The Puzzle Palace'', '' The Bunker'', ''

The Dungeon Master ''The Dungeon Master: The Disappearance of James Dallas Egbert III'' is a 1984 book by private investigator William Dear, in which the author gives his explanation of the 1979 "steam tunnel incident" involving the disappearance of James Dalla ...

'', and ''

The Nine Nations of North America ''The'' () is a grammatical article in English, denoting persons or things already mentioned, under discussion, implied or otherwise presumed familiar to listeners, readers, or speakers. It is the definite article in English. ''The'' is the m ...

''. He later taught at the

Harvard Extension School Harvard Extension School (HES) is the extension school of Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The school is one among 12 schools that grant degrees and falls under the Division of Continuing Education in the Harvard Faculty of Ar ...

and during 1990 co-initiated and co-directed the

Ploughshares ''Ploughshares'' is an American literary journal established in 1971 by DeWitt Henry and Peter O'Malley in The Plough and Stars, an Irish pub in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Since 1989, ''Ploughshares'' has been based at Emerson College in Bost ...

International Writing Seminars, a summer program of the

Emerson College Emerson College is a private college with its main campus in Boston, Massachusetts. It also maintains campuses in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California and Well, Limburg, Netherlands (Kasteel Well). Founded in 1880 by Charles Wesley Emerson as a ...

European Center at

Kasteel Well Well Castle (Dutch: ''Kasteel Well'') is a fully restored 14th century medieval castlenon-Hodgkin's lymphoma in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the capital city, state capital and List of municipalities in Massachusetts, most populous city of the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financ ...

on November 20, 1995.

Publications

Novels

During his life Robie Macauley published two novels, ''The Disguises of Love'' (1951), the story of a university professor's love affair with a student and how it affects his wife and son, and ''A Secret History of Time to Come'' (1979), an adventure thriller set in a devastated post-apocalypse America 200 years in the future. His last two novels, ''Citadel of Ice: Life and Death in a Glacier Fortress during World War I'', (2014), and ''The Escape of Alfred Dreyfus'', (2016) were published posthumously.

Short stories

His short fiction appeared in '' Furioso'', the ''

North American Review The ''North American Review'' (NAR) was the first literary magazine in the United States. It was founded in Boston in 1815 by journalist Nathan Hale and others. It was published continuously until 1940, after which it was inactive until revived a ...

'', ''

'', '' The Sewanee Review'', ''

The Southern Review ''The Southern Review'' is a quarterly literary magazine that was established by Robert Penn Warren in 1935 at the behest of Charles W. Pipkin and funded by Huey Long as a part of his investment in Louisiana State University. It publishes ficti ...

'', '' Shenandoah'', ''

Esquire Esquire (, ; abbreviated Esq.) is usually a courtesy title. In the United Kingdom, ''esquire'' historically was a title of respect accorded to men of higher social rank, particularly members of the landed gentry above the rank of gentleman ...

'', '' Fiction'', ''

Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine ''Ellery Queen's Mystery Magazine'' is a bi-monthly American digest size fiction magazine specializing in crime fiction, particularly detective fiction, and mystery fiction. Launched in fall 1941 by Mercury Press, ''EQMM'' is named after the fict ...

'', '' Cosmopolitan'', the '' Virginia Quarterly Review'' and ''

'', for which he was awarded the Furioso Prize (1949), The O. Henry Award (1951, 1956 and 1967), and the John Train Humor Prize (1990). In spite of his expertise and experience, Macauley's own fiction received only moderate recognition. "Robie Macauley's prose, like the best poetry, has a startling economy of means and precision of language", declared Melvin J. Friedman in ''Contemporary Novelists''. "The author's work", continued Friedman, "is the enviable product of years spent in close and sympathetic relationship with the best novels from Jane Austen through

James Joyce James Augustine Aloysius Joyce (2 February 1882 – 13 January 1941) was an Irish novelist, poet, and literary critic. He contributed to the Modernism, modernist avant-garde movement and is regarded as one of the most influential and important ...

." David H. Lynn, editor of ''

'', described Macauley's fiction as "subtle, stinging, disturbing, witty." Eugene Goodheart, commenting on ''The End of Pity and Other Stories'', said "Macauley has all the gifts of a master short story writer: narrative power, a quick and vivid imagination of character...a capacity for delivering the scene that at once surprises and satisfies the reader's expectation, i.e., a fine sense for the significant scene or action, a felicity of phrase that is not merely decoration, but becomes perception." Since 2001

StoryQuarterly ''StoryQuarterly'' is an American literary journal based at Rutgers University–Camden in Camden, New Jersey. It was founded in 1975 by Tom Bracken, F.R. Katz, Pamela Painter and Thalia Selz. Works originally published in ''StoryQuarterly'' ha ...

has awarded the annual "Robie Macauley Award for Fiction."

Nonfiction

He co-authored (with George Lanning) a textbook on writing, ''Technique in Fiction'' (1964, revised in 1989), and co-authored (with William Betcher) a book on marriage counseling, ''The Seven Basic Quarrels of Marriage'' (1990). He edited ''America and Its Discontents'' together with Larzer Ziff. Between 1942 and 1990 he contributed dozens of book reviews to ''

The New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read ...

'', ''

'', '' Furioso'', '' Vogue'', ''The

New York Herald Tribune The ''New York Herald Tribune'' was a newspaper published between 1924 and 1966. It was created in 1924 when Ogden Mills Reid of the ''New-York Tribune'' acquired the ''New York Herald''. It was regarded as a "writer's newspaper" and competed ...

'', '' The Partisan Review'', ''

The Boston Globe ''The Boston Globe'' is an American daily newspaper founded and based in Boston, Massachusetts. The newspaper has won a total of 27 Pulitzer Prizes, and has a total circulation of close to 300,000 print and digital subscribers. ''The Boston Glob ...

'', ''

The New York Review of Books ''The New York Review of Books'' (or ''NYREV'' or ''NYRB'') is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of i ...

'', '' Encounter'', ''

'', '' The Chicago Sun-Times'', ''

Dialogue Dialogue (sometimes spelled dialog in American English) is a written or spoken conversational exchange between two or more people, and a literary and theatrical form that depicts such an exchange. As a philosophical or didactic device, it is ...

'', the ''

Boston Review ''Boston Review'' is an American quarterly political and literary magazine. It publishes political, social, and historical analysis, literary and cultural criticism, book reviews, fiction, and poetry, both online and in print. Its signature form ...

'', and other publications. He also wrote a series of contemplative essays on writing, writers and literature which were published in '' Shenandoah'', ''The Irish University Review'', '' Transition'', ''The Texas Quarterly'', ''

'', and ''

''.Macauley R. "Silence, Exile and Cunning." ''The Paris Review'', Spring 1990 (No. 114):200-217.

Bibliography

* ''A Secret History of Time to Come'' (1979) (Illustrated by Mark Hess)

References

External links

"A Last Conversation with Robie Macauley"
by Thomas E. Kennedy
''Technique in Fiction''
by Robie Macauley
Review of ''The Disguises of Love''
by Stanley Edgard Hyman

at The University of North Carolina at Greensboro
"Stranger, Tread Light"
by Robie Macauley, ''The Kenyon Review'', Vol. 17, No. 2 (Spring, 1955), p. 280.]
"Folie A Deux", short fiction by Robie Macauley
in Chapter 6 of ''Masculinity and the Other: Historical Perspectives'', pp. 138–154. {{DEFAULTSORT:Macauley, Robie 1919 births 1995 deaths 20th-century American novelists American book editors American literary critics American magazine editors American male novelists Bard College faculty Iowa Writers' Workshop faculty Kenyon College alumni Kenyon College faculty Olivet College alumni Writers from Grand Rapids, Michigan Recipients of the Legion of Merit United States Army soldiers University of Iowa alumni American male short story writers United States Army personnel of World War II 20th-century American short story writers 20th-century American male writers Novelists from Ohio Novelists from Michigan Novelists from New York (state) Novelists from Iowa 20th-century American non-fiction writers American male non-fiction writers Harvard Extension School faculty