Robert Cohn's literary-magazine venture

Robert Cohn's literary-magazine venture is the clearest episode in which his economic inheritance becomes cultural ambition and editorial power. What begins as financial backing for a review of the Arts develops into a publishing enterprise that gives Cohn authority, a professional identity, and a route into literary Europe, but its material costs ultimately expose the limits of that authority.

Financing and Launch

After his divorce, Robert Cohn went to the Coast and entered literary circles. He still had a small portion of the fifty thousand dollars left by his father, and he used that remaining capital to back a review of the Arts. The magazine began publication in Carmel-by-the-Sea, California, placing Cohn's money behind a cultural project rather than leaving him merely as a private beneficiary of family wealth.

Cohn initially occupied a deliberately indirect position. He was regarded as an angel, and his name appeared on the editorial page only as a member of the advisory board. The arrangement associated him with the magazine's resources without presenting him at first as its public intellectual or working editor. Yet the distinction between patronage and control did not last.

Editorial Authority and Geographic Movement

The review's publication history was marked by movement across the United States. It commenced in Carmel-by-the-Sea and finished in Provincetown, Massachusetts, a change of location that traces the magazine's changing literary setting while preserving Cohn's financial involvement. The enterprise was not a static local project; its identity developed through relocation as well as through editorial succession.

During this period Cohn's position changed decisively. The man whose name had appeared only on the advisory page became the sole editor. His money had opened the project, but he discovered that he also liked the authority of editing. The venture therefore converted economic capital into institutional and editorial power: Cohn was no longer simply supporting a magazine but directing what it published and how it presented itself.

Collapse and Consequences

The magazine's success was limited by its expense. Cohn was sorry when it became too expensive and he had to give it up. Its end was not presented as the result of a loss of interest in literature or of a critical defeat; the immediate determining force was the cost of sustaining publication. The episode consequently joins literary aspiration to the practical conditions of print production, where editorial authority depends on money, organization, and continued financing.

Giving up the review redirected Cohn's life rather than ending his involvement with writing. By then, a forceful woman who had become closely involved with him had urged a move to Europe after recognizing that the magazine was not going to rise. She believed Cohn could write there, and they stayed in Europe for three years, with the first spent traveling and the last two in Paris. The failed magazine thus became part of the chain leading from American publishing to Cohn's European literary life.

Writing and the Limits of the Venture

The magazine also helped establish Cohn's identity as someone who had discovered writing, even though the publishing enterprise itself had not become the success its backers hoped for. In Europe he wrote a novel that was later judged by critics to be poor, though the narrative distinguishes between a very poor novel and one that was not as bad as the critics called it. That distinction preserves the mixed legacy of the venture: Cohn's literary ambitions are neither wholly validated nor simply dismissed.

His cultural activity remained accompanied by other practices—reading many books, playing bridge and tennis, and boxing at a local gymnasium. The editorial venture therefore belongs to a broader pattern in which Cohn seeks structure, discipline, and recognition through successive identities. As sole editor, he found that he liked authority; as a writer, he continued pursuing the literary standing that the magazine had failed to secure.

Narrative Significance

The venture reveals how Cohn's position in the literary world is shaped by the interaction of inheritance, mobility, and institutional control. His family money makes the magazine possible, but money alone does not explain his attachment to it: once he becomes sole editor, authority itself becomes part of the attraction. The review's movement from Carmel-by-the-Sea to Provincetown, its shift from patron-backed publication to Cohn's editorial command, and its closure under financial pressure form a compact history of cultural production governed by both desire and material constraint.

Its failure also anticipates the instability of Cohn's later plans. The magazine does not give him a lasting institution, but it brings him into literary society, leads him toward Europe, and reinforces his belief that writing can provide the next stage of his life. In that sense, the venture's decisive outcome is double: it ends as a publication while continuing as a personal and literary trajectory.