Novelist Coleman Dowell Leaps to His Death in N.Y.

Novelist Coleman Dowell, praised by such literary giants as Tennessee Williams but generally ignored by the reading public, leaped 15 floors to his death from his apartment here Saturday, police said.

Dowell, 60, had been depressed for two years, partly over the slow sales of his novels, said Bradford Morrow, his friend and editor. Dowell left a note saying that “he just couldn’t take it anymore,” Morrow said.

Dowell’s books included “White on Black on White” and “Island People,” which playwright Williams said “attains a level of prose writing which is hardly distinguishable from a long, marvelously sustained narrative poem.”

In a 1983 review, the New York Times called “White on Black on White,” Dowell’s last published novel, “a bold examination of black pain and anger and white guilt that crackles with insights.”

“He’s a novelist who was just genuinely ahead of his time--a novelist’s novelist,” said Morrow, editor of Conjunctions, a literary journal that has published Dowell’s work.

In his works, Dowell examined sexual obsession, homosexuality and social issues, writing in a shifting, narrative voice, Morrow said.

Born in Kentucky, Dowell came to New York in the early 1950s and worked as a playwright and lyricist. He published his first novel, “One of the Children Is Crying,” in 1968.

In that book, he “sees the world with a childhood’s raw intensity,” wrote Maurice Sendak, the illustrator and writer.

“His vision of the sinister horrors of family life has the sting of truth,” Sendak said.

His other books included “Mrs. October Was Here” and “Too Much Flesh and Jabez.”