Robert Cantwell

Robert Cantwell

Robert Emmett Cantwell (January 31, 1908 – December 8, 1978) was a novelist and critic. His most notable work, The Land of Plenty, focuses on a lumber mill in a thinly disguised version of his hometown of Aberdeen, Washington.

Cantwell, who was born in Little Falls (now Vader), Washington, attended the University of Washington (1924−1925), then spent the next four years working at Harbor Plywood Co., (1925−1929) in Hoquiam, Washington. In 1929, after selling a short story to The American Caravan, he moved to New York City, where he started work on his first novel, Laugh and Lie Down (1931). From 1930 to 1935 he wrote a second novel, The Land of Plenty (1934) and began work on a biography of Bostonian E. A. Filene, in collaboration with Lincoln Steffens. This work was never completed.

Cantwell then worked on the editorial staffs of Time (1935−1936) and Fortune (1937), then became associate editor of Time (1938−1945). Cantwell spent the next three years researching and writing the biography, Nathaniel Hawthorne: The American Years (1948). From 1949 to 1954 he worked as the literary editor of Newsweek and then took up freelancing again until 1956 when he began an association with Sports Illustrated which lasted the rest of his life. He worked on a number of articles, three of which became books: Alexander Wilson: Naturalist and Pioneer (1961), The Real McCoy (1971), and The Hidden Northwest (1972). Subjects of his articles include chess, ornithology, sports in the movies and literary figures in sports.

Ernest Hemingway considered Cantwell "his best bet" in American fiction. Cantwell died in 1978, at age 70, in New York City.