SOURCE: "Bad Company," in The New Republic, Vol. CVI, No. 21, May 25, 1942, p. 737.

A prominent American critic, Cowley made several valuable contributions to contemporary letters with his editions of important American authors (Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, Ernest Hemingway, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner), his writings for the New Republic, and above all, his chronicles and criticism of modern American literature. In the following review, he concedes that "The Company She Keeps is not a likable book, nor is it very well put together, but it has the still unusual quality of having been lived. "

In the first episode of The Company She Keeps, the heroine deceives and deserts her husband for no reason, apparently, except that she loves a dramatic situation. Her moment of rapture comes when she tells him what she is doing. "They walked out of the restaurant together and through the streets, hand in hand, tears...