Louis Bromfield’s Americarnby Allan Carlsonrnf^.fccd it besfe bis K.-rn, _,.^^-^ire”v..ilc fmad » gmnl-sixt.rn-jt {iowww-00O,GahS ioatcrfing gosxjs Bear the back o, • …^ .rntya!edbyTo!3i(:^!kF.’Ȥiggli;3.« with U under bis a r a wheis isoiiiorn! bike baskei,’ he wtnild have • divtr^ > klaxon liom wifh a chrome bell aodrn’ngijsrd a»J htiug aea«y osd hail*”’ Ormijiog, Nitk, inil Ibe bom in dw birnlearly atw Brsggs h&ad-p*stic feu^vcr to the hardware sectis»;*l his eyeia atsS iahalcdrno ihe FASij. goi o”rn^”he bike rp–*”rnMalabar Farm drew a large crowd the summer day I wasrnthere, mostly busloads of the elderly on excursion fromrnthe “senior centers” of Ohio. They came to see Louis Bromfield’srnlegacy—the once famous agricultural experiment that isrnnow a state park. Most of their interest centered on the tour ofrnBromfield’s “Big House,” his attempt to integrate all of Ohio’srnhistoric architectural styles into a single statement of man’s attachmentrnto the land. On the tour, we saw the grand study andrndesk where Bromfield wrote the essays that were collected inrnPleasant Valley, Malabar Farm, and Out of the Earth. Wernviewed the great hall where Ijauren Bacall and HumphreyrnBogart, Bromfield’s closest Hollywood friends, exchanged theirrnwedding vows, and we stood in the very room where the couplernspent their wedding night (on twin beds).rnA favorite of book clubs, publishers, newsreels, and the readingrnpublic until his death in 1956, and winner of the PulitzerrnPrize 30 years earlier for his novel FMrly Autumn, Bromfield isrnnearly unknown among Americans below the age of 50. Nonernof his novels has been elevated to the canon taught in Americanrnliterature classes. While a half-dozen of his books are stillrnin print in the Czech Republic and India, a would-be Americanrnreader must prowl the used book stalls to find a comparablernselection. Despite a fascinating life spanning the interwarrnAmerican expatriate community, Europe’s smart set, Hollywoodrnin its Golden Age, and the early environmental moc-rnAllan Carlson is the publisher of Chronicles, president of ThernRockford Institute, and author most recently of From Cottagernto Work Station: The Family’s Search for Social Harmony inrnthe hidustrial Age (Ignatius).rnment, not a single serious biography of Bromfield has beenrnwritten.rnThis fate is even more curious, considering the unanimousrncritical praise he received in the 1920’s, a golden age of Americanrnletters. Bromfield’s career itself reads like a fashionablernnovel of the time. A veteran of World War I who had observedrnthe carnage on the Western Front, he returned in 1924 to livernin France, where he was befriended by Gertrude Stein. His earlyrnbooks—The Green Bay I’ree, Possession, Early Autumn, and ArnGood Woman—exhibited a deep contempt for the values andrnhypocrisv of Puritan morality and seemed to celebrate extramaritalrnsexuality. Indeed, he opened The Green Bay Tree withrnan illicit tryst between his heroine, Lily Shane, and Ohio’s governor,rna thinly disguised Warren G. Harding. Bromfield relishedrnnaturalistic and primitive locales, setting A Good Womanrnpartly in the pagan backcountry of East Africa. In all ofrnBromfield’s fiction, the men are weak and ill-formed, while hisrnfemale characters are full-blooded and dominant. Possession,rnas example, chronicles the ruthless rise of a small-town girl,rnEllen Tolliver, to international fame as a pianist. A GoodrnWoman reaches cynical, even nihilistic conclusions about thernfutility of human effort.rnEven more to the critics’ taste, young Bromfield was a stridentrnanticapitalist. He decried the transformation of the Townrn(a fictionalized Mansfield, Ohio) into an iron-and-steel centerrnwith evocative language: “In the fading twilight that now surroundedrnthem the Mill yard became a fantastic wodd inhabitedrnby monsters of iron and steel…. I ligh in the air, lights, redrnand green, or cold piercing blue-white, like eyes appeared onernby one peering down at them wickedly…. Dancing malignantrn26/CHRONICLESrnrnrn