person
also known as Tate

Poet and critic of the Southern group, and in dialogue 73 the occasion rather than the subject: his departure from the Sewanee Review is what opened the editorship Ransom recommended McLuhan for. He belongs to the circle — with Brooks and Ransom — that carried McLuhan's early work into print.

Across the dialogues

73

Given a structural role rather than a passing mention — his resignation is the vacancy that creates McLuhan's unrealised alternative career

The vacancy is dated to the moment McLuhan's own direction was still open, which is what gives the road-not-taken its force rather than making it a late curiosity.

"So he suggested when Allen Tate quit as the editor of Swanee Review, which I think happened at sort of maybe end of 45, start of 46, sometime in there,"
Cameron McEwenhedgedqualifier: “I think happened at sort of maybe end of 45, start of 46”

Connections

His resignation around the end of 1945 opened the editorship McLuhan was recommended for.