With ample funds from his books and occasional Hollywoodrnwork, Bromfield succeeded for a time. Several carefully chosenrnfarmers and their families joined the Malabar experiment,rncreating the community life for which he longed. Bromfield’srnclearest achievement came in renewing the soil of his farm, andrnhis experience led to the founding of Friends of the Land. Hisrnnonfiction accounts of farm life and the care of the soil foundrna large following, and thousands of pilgrims came to MalabarrnFarm. All visitors were treated to lavish meals, cooked entirelyrnfrom products grown on his land.rnhi the year before his death, however, “market forces” hadrntheir revenge. Farm income fell, while off-farm costs mounted.rnMedical bills skyrocketed, too, as Bromfield—a heavyrnsmoker—was diagnosed with lung cancer. Eventually, he wasrnforced to sell part of the farm—a cherished wooded tract—tornpay his debts. Financial difficulties after his death also preventedrna clean transfer of the farm to his daughters, and hisrndream of a familial restoration on the land came to naught.rnFriends of the Land took over the property, running it as arnmodel farm, until this group, too, succumbed to bankruptcy.rnThe farm then passed to the state. The Age of Eisenhowerrnproved no more hospitable to the Jeffersonian dream thanrnhad the Age of McKinley.rnThat afternoon, driving East from Malabar Farm on StaternRoute 39,1 passed through Ohio Amish territory. The greenrnhills between Loudonville and Berlin were teeming with countryrnpeople. Horse-drawn cultivators worked the brown earth,rnwhile tow-headed children, by the hundreds, filled the yardsrnand buggies. Small cottage industries, attached to ancestralrnhomesteads, did a booming business. Old women sat on thernporches of their daughter-in-laws’ homes, sewing, snappingrnbeans, and exchanging gossip in German. The “eternal peasant,”rnwhom Bromfield both admired and feared, survives nearrnthe place where the nobler dream of a natural aristocracy on thernland was again ground into the dust.rnTwo years before his death, Bromfield published a work ofrnpolitical theory—A New Pattern for a Tired World. Written inrnresponse to the Korean imbroglio, the book was anti-interventionist,rnanti-imperialist, antimilitarist, and antistatist. But afterrn15 years of personal struggle against federal agricultural bureaucrats,rnBromfield had good words to say aboutrnentrepreneurial capitalism. While celebrated by the fledglingrnindividualist right, the book drew the scorn of a new generationrnof Eastern critics, who dismissed it as the work of a crank, arnonce-promising novelist who had betrayed his gifts and succumbedrnto rural fantasies and petty fascism.rnIndeed, Bromfield was a voice of the Old America, a nationrnshaped by the legacy of Jamestown and Plymouth Rock. Hisrnnovels spoke to the ideals, dreams, fears, and frustrations of therninhabitants of that nation in crisis and decline. Citizens of thern”New America”—shaped by Ellis Island, the Democratic Empire,rnand Image Metaphysicians such as Henry Luce—couldrnscarcely comprehend Bromfield’s message. This, more thanrnany other factor, accounts for the near-oblivion into which hisrnreputation as a fiction writer would fall. But this New Americarnnow gives way to a still “newer” version, as fresh tidal wavesrnof “international market forces” and Third Worid immigrationrncrash onto the American landscape. In this unsettled time, perhapsrnLouis Bromfield will again find an audience.rn