Murray Morgan to Muriel Cowley, 6 April 1989 -- "You and Malcolm changed our lives"

Malcolm Cowley, who championed Skid Road and named last Wilderness, died March 27, 1989. Murray wrote an appreciation to his widow, Muriel.

Dear Muriel...

Almost forty years have passed since our paths crossed in Seattle during the "dirty poet" of 1950 uproar. We haven't seen you since, but you and Malcolm changed our lives and have remained a strong presence with us. 

Rosa and I never visit the Olympic peninsula without remembering our rainswept trip. I recall my chagrin when Malcolm asked me, as the local expert, to identify a tree at Lake Quinault. I couldn't. He said it looked like a redwood to him. I said that we don't have redwoods this far north. But it was a redwood, an import, but very much redwood. I recall with pleasure you both took at Lake Crescent, with the fog sweeping across the treetops. That trip marked the first time we left small daughter Lane -- then aged three months -- at home; so we think of you when we look after the granddaughters. Lane, like your Robbie, is an editor, writer, and sometimes a college prof. 

Most of all, of course, I remember Malcolm's help in the writing of Skid Road, my book about Seattle. He was the only editor I have encountered who could look at a graph and say "what if you put it this way" and give an example which not only solved the problem but served as a lasting lesson. He broke my addiction to the Associated Press declarative sentence, persuading me to risk occasional prolixity. I still glow on remembering that in my next book, The Last Wilderness, about the peninsula, he said I had achieved a sentence that required sundering.

I owe it to Malcolm that Skid Road is still in print, still picks up honors (it has been named one of the best Washington books of the past hundred years by a committee of scholars for the state centennial), and it has made it possible for me to find publishers for books on topics I care about. Like Faulkner, I owe him a debt no man can pay. And I'll remember you both whenever I see a trillium. 

Rosa joins in love and remembrance,

Murray