Forgotten Bromfield

Louis Bromfield is coming back. Sure, he'll never return to the top of the literary pile where he briefly reigned in the mid-1920s, because he refused to keep playing the game, had his say, then chucked highbrow esteem after he said what he had to say.

For those who don't know, Louis Bromfield was an American novelist from north central Ohio. He won the Pulitzer Prize in 1927 and seemed poised to become a literary giant. He was a close friend of Gertrude Stein, Cole Porter, Edith Wharton and many others. He helped Ernest Hemingway get his career off the ground. He was a master of characterization and meaningful, textured, perceptive description. But after clawing his way to the top and finding it a hollow, decadent, corrupt place-- and indicting it so in his early novels-- he grew bored with literature. His original life's ambition, to be a farmer, began to return to him.

Amazingly enough, Bromfield had the sheer nerve to throw away a literary career to pursue his other dream. He turned to writing more populist and popular stories, books that would hit the top-ten list and be made into movies. That ended up paying for his country estate, Malabar Farm, where Bromfield delved into farming, land conservation, and ideas of sustainable agriculture that were 50 years ahead of their time.

I am currently writing a play about the life of this quixotic man who could be equally comfortable arguing politics in a French country village with a maharaja from India or talking alfalfa yields with farmers. My play "Louie" will premiere at Bromfield's own estate, now preserved as Malabar Farm State Park, in Lucas, Ohio, in October of 2010. Stay tuned, I'll write more as I continue the script this year.