SOURCE: “Epilogue,” in Adrift Among Geniuses, The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1975, pp. 321-31.

In the following essay, Smoller examines McAlmon's critical reception, believing that McAlmon was a successful writer despite the fact that he is lesser-known than most of his contemporaries.

It has been almost twenty years since Robert McAlmon's unnoticed death in the desert, and most of his fellow exiles have followed him to the grave. Half a century has passed since he published Ernest Hemingway's first book—half a century of war, technological acceleration, and cultural revolution. The twenties are no longer contemporary; the brave new voices raised by McAlmon's generation have faded along the corridor of time. Time and change have also dimmed the bright beacons of literature itself. The masses have their craving for vicarious excitement and adventure satisfied by television, while aesthetic sensibilities vibrate to the films of Truffaut, Bergman, and Fellini. Real...