Criticism > Contemporary Literary Criticism > Hamilton, Ian - Victor Howes (review date 3 December 1982)

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Victor Howes (review date 3 December 1982)

SOURCE: Howes, Victor. “A Poet's Contradictory Life.” Christian Science Monitor (3 December 1982): B4.

[In the following review, Howes offers a mixed assessment of Hamilton's Robert Lowell, describing the biography as “both compelling and repelling.”]

The poet Robert Lowell was a mass of contradictions. In World War II he was a conscientious objector who went to jail rather than serve in the armed forces. Against United States involvement in the Vietnam war he was one of the foremost protestors, taking part with Norman Mailer and Dr. Benjamin Spock in the speeches made at the time of the march on the Pentagon. He was a pacifist.

And yet he was fascinated by power. He kept a bust of Napoleon on his table. During a budding friendship with the former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy, he sent her a life of Alexander the Great. He nourished a lifelong interest in a gallery of...

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3. Criticism
   1. Michael Fried (review date 22 August 1970)
   2. James Fenton (review date 12 January 1973)
   3. Douglas Dunn (review date 3 March 1973)
   4. V. S. Pritchett (review date 27 August 1976)
   5. Francis King (review date 4 September 1976)
   6. Richard Eder (review date 28 November 1982)
   7. Victor Howes (review date 3 December 1982)
   8. Phoebe Pettingell (review date 13 December 1982)
   9. John Simon (review date 27 December 1982)
   10. John Lucas (review date 13 May 1983)
   11. Anthony Thwaite (review date 14 May 1983)
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   13. Robert Richman (review date spring 1984)
   14. Michael Hofmann (review date 25 March 1988)
   15. Robert Ward (review date 1 April 1990)
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   19. Tom Dardis (review date 2 March 1991)
   20. Albert E. Kalson (review date summer 1991)
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   22. Martin Fletcher (review date 21 February 1992)
   23. J. L. Carr (review date 7 March 1992)
   24. Paul Binding (review date 16 October 1992)
   25. Rupert Christiansen (review date 5 December 1992)
   26. Philip Horne (review date October 1993)
   27. Michael Horovitz (review date 11 February 1994)
   28. Thomas Mallon (review date June 1994)
   29. Ann Hulbert (review date 22 August 1994)
   30. Victoria Glendinning (review date 23 October 1994)
   31. James L. W. West III (review date winter 1995)
   32. John Simon (review date January 1997)
   33. Peter Firchow (review date summer 1997)
   34. Sanford Pinsker (review date fall 1997)
   35. D. J. Taylor (review date 13 March 1998)
   36. William Scammell (review date 21 March 1998)
   37. Hugo Williams (essay date 24 April 1998)
   38. Lavinia Greenlaw (review date 26 April 1999)
   39. Helen Vendler (review date 21 June 1999)
   40. Dorothy Mermin (review date June 1999)
   41. Bevis Hillier (review date 25 September 1999)
   42. Hallman Bryant (review date fall 2000)
   43. Edward Butscher (review date spring 2001)
   44. William H. Pritchard (essay date winter 2002)
   45. Peter Porter (essay date 18 January 2002)
   46. Robert Potts (review date 1 April 2002)
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   48. Karl Miller (review date 20 April 2002)
   49. Hugo Williams (essay date 11 October 2003)
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