Word: lowneys
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...glimpse of the rewards awaiting a faithful disciple of the Handy method, the would-be writer is assigned a cell furnished with an army bed, lamp, table and typewriter in one of the barracks. He is expected to cut himself off from all social contact with the outside world: Lowney is adamant on "dedication." Reveille sounds for 5:30 a.m. breakfast, and then the writers are sent to their cells and typewriters. Afternoons are devoted to physical culture, exercises, or work on the "rock pile"-carting bricks or laying walks. Visitors are barred, and Lowney once heaved bricks...
Dreiser v. Proust. The new trainee is not allowed to write. He copies books of Lowney's choice-Joyce. Hemingway, Faulkner, Dos Passos and Raymond Chandler. Says she: "They copy the story from comma to comma, from cover to cover. It helps their typing and helps them forget themselves." No writer dares copy anything else. One disgruntled ex-trainee remembers being caught with a copy of Proust, which "Lowney snatched from me, ripped up and threw away. 'I didn't tell you to read that,' she shouted. 'Your God-damned style's too intellectual...
...writer copies to suit her. Lowney moves him along to "skits." What about? "A bird, a dog. a boy. a tree." Out of these literary acorns, feels Lowney. giant novels may grow. "I mark them and I write ideas all along the margins where they could develop, where they could get a stream of consciousness." Her marginalia are often crisp ("This becomes idiotic") and sometimes to the point ("You say his uniform was clean. This is the first time I've seen anyone in this story with any clothes on"). Says Tesch: "Lowney really helped me. She went through...
Cheer & Heartbreak. Lowney has fed, clothed and sheltered as many as 17 writers at one time, currently has only four in residence. But she is often disappointed. The maverick personalities she attracts-social rebels, ex-jailbirds, protesting college boys-sometimes desert the colony at the crucial moment. Says Lowney: "I've had four books just about finished here that walked out. Good books. It's heartbreaking." But she is consoled by the fact that two novels are now in progress at the colony and six completed ones are currently in the hands of publishers...
...support the colony, almost silent partner and husband Harry Handy contributes $400 a month from his pay as a refinery manager for the Ohio Oil Co. But the real mainstay is Novelist Jones, who has expressed his whopping gratitude to Lowney by sinking $60,000 of his royalties in the colony and naming it a beneficiary in his will. Jones is on the last lap of a mammoth second novel (600,000 words written) about a love affair between a returned war veteran and a schoolteacher. He took eight years to write Eternity. "Today I can do in two years...