American Studies Commons^™

An American Generational Autobiography: Collective Identity In Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return, John Hazlett

John D Hazlett

In the following chapter from Hazlett's book My Generation: Collective Autobiography and Identity Politics, the author argues that Malcolm Cowley's Exile's Return pioneered a new form of autobiographical narrative--the generational autobiography. Cowley's text relies for its underlying ideas of collective identity on generational theory, Marxism, and Emersoniansm.