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Portraits of four contemporary writers in Part 3 of Robert Lowell’s Life Studies have often been regarded as an interlude or a collection of desultory episodes and anecdotes with no essential relation to the rest of the book. Especially, lots of references and allusions to persons, places, episodes, and works scattered throughout the four poems have further served as a formidable impediment to the understanding and appreciation of them. However, the movement from a more formal mode of elegy in the first two poems through a light-hearted reminiscence of young poets’ antics to Lowell’s own scathing critique of commercialized American society put into Crane’s mouth parallels that of the entire book and, therefore, gets us ready for the more autobiographical poems of Part 4. Moreover, the notion of the writer as outsider or cultural hero embossed in all the four poems invites us to read them both as “a parabolic autobiography” and as a cogent criticism of contemporary American culture and society.
