AMERICAN AUTHORS CHALLENGE--MAY 2024--WILLIAM MAXWELL

William Maxwell was as American as could be---born and raised in the Midwest, studied at Harvard, lived most of his adult life in New York City. He wrote novels, short stories, and innumerable book reviews; he was fiction editor at The New Yorker for nearly 40 years. He worked with iconic authors: Cheever, Nabokov, Updike, Salinger, Isaac Bashevis Singer, Mavis Gallant, and many others. He was, in Eudora Welty’s words, “headquarters” for fiction writers at the magazine. He befriended and mentored many of his authors, welcomed them into his home on the upper East side of Manhattan, and when he died at the age of 91, some 25 years after retiring from The New Yorker, several of his younger mentees were bereft. They paid tribute to his kindness, generosity, attentiveness and accessibility in a collection of reminiscences titled A William Maxwell Portrait, any single selection from which will make you regret that you never met the man yourself, or that you have waited this long to read his work.

Maxwell was a great admirer of correspondence as a literary form--he collected volumes of letters of authors from several centuries, and his own correspondences with Eudora Welty, with Sylvia Townsend Warner, and with Frank O’Connor have been collected and published. Much of his fiction is quite autobiographical , which he freely acknowledged. He lost his mother in the influenza epidemic in1918, when he was 10 years old, and spent the rest of his life processing that loss. It is a recurring theme in his novels and stories.

Maxwell was married for 50 years to Emily Noyes, a highly regarded painter, who also reviewed children's books for The New Yorker. They were universally reported to be a devoted couple, and despite a significant age difference, died within a week of each other. Maxwell’s novels include The Came Like Swallows, The Chateau, The Folded Leaf, Time Will Darken It and So Long, See You Tomorrow. His work has been collected by The Library of America in two volumes. He also published two children’s books, and a memoir, Ancestors, A Family History.

I've read 3 by Maxwell over the years: Ancestors: A Family History; So Long, See You Tomorrow; and the short story collection Over by the River and Other Stories. I enjoyed them all, although the story collection was uneven for me: I enjoyed the Illinois stories, but the NY stories not as much.

I'll be reading They Came Like Swallows.

Local note: Maxwell spent his high school years and some college in Chicago; his description of the city and his high school (based on Senn HS in Chicago) in So Long, See You Tomorrow is spot-on.

I will be reading The Chateau.

I've read three at least of his novels, so will focus on : What There is to Say We Have Said: The Correspondence of Eudora Welty and William Maxwell, and maybe reread one of the novels.

At least I have 2.5 weeks of annual leave starting tomorrow, so hope to get more reading in.

I have the Library of America collections, so I'm spoiled for choice here. I'm inclining toward either The Chateau or The Folded Leaf, simply because, having read A William Maxwell Portrait, I feel I know less about the stories of those two novels than some of the others. The contributors to that appreciation talked at length about So Long, See You Tomorrow, and Time Will Darken It, so I want to let their comments fade a bit before approaching those. And I really want to read What There is to Say We Have Said, because, well, Welty AND Maxwell...

Ok, ok, ok. Joe Mitchell. He's not William Maxwell. Forget I mentioned him.

>6 weird_O: I have a copy of that on my shelf as well. Was Mitchell's fiction edited by Bill Maxwell at The New Yorker?

I have never even heard of William Maxwell (hiding head in shame). My choices are limited so I have chosen The Heavenly Tenants.

>8 alcottacre: No shame, Stasia. I only knew about him before because of his connection to Eudora Welty, and I feel bad that he's been on my shelves for decades, unread.

>9 laytonwoman3rd: I did not even know of his connection to Eudora Welty, whom I have read in a very limited way.

>10 alcottacre: Welty is one of those authors who I think I would have absolutely loved to know, and now Maxwell is too.

>11 laytonwoman3rd: Wow!

I am looking forward to reading Ancestors: A Family History. If FamilySearch is to be believed, Maxwell was my 9th cousin once removed through his mother. I know my line is correct all the way back to our common ancestor, but I don't know about his!

ETA: I am currently reading The Stories of John Cheever!

I am very tentatively planning to read The Chateau. I have it here in an omnibus (passed on to me by LW3 when she acquired her LoA editions of his work). Tentative because I seem to be in the middle of a floppity gillion books at once, all of which I really want to keep reading pretty much right now. So the month is looking a tad booked, reading wise. But the intention is there, and it's fairly short, so we shall see. And he's loving on a cat in the picture, so he gets a little bump right there.

Hi - never heard of Maxwell, so chose the most appealing title, The Chateau = 2 stars.

>13 cbl_tn: Ohhh...that's fascinating! And John Cheever's son Benjamin was one of the contributors to A William Maxwell Portrait.

>15 m.belljackson: Interesting, I read it some years ago and gave it 4*'s.

>17 Caroline_McElwee: okay...check out my Review and I'll compare with yours!

okay - can't find it - and everyone else really liked it...

I don't think I did a review, I'm better at doing them now. Though I see one person gave it 5*. It's lucky for authors we all have varied tastes, but I'm always intrigued when a book splits its readers.

I just cane across They Came Like Swallows on one of my lists around here, so I might actually get to it. and >14 lycomayflower: I think floppity gillion is a great phrase.

>20 ffortsa: Actual photograph of the books she purports to be reading all at once:

>21 laytonwoman3rd: How many eyes does she have?

I should not talk - I am reading at least that many all at the same time, lol.

>21 laytonwoman3rd: Hmm, not too far off that myself, though the Cazalet series has taken the lead at the moment. Love the lime bookshelf.

I finished They Came Like Swallows (1937); I thought about it for a couple of days and feel that it needs a re-read to appreciate it properly. But I'll try to summarize.

It is Sunday November 10, 1918 in Logan, Illinois, a small town in central Illinois. The book is divided into 3 sections: the first from the perspective of 8 year old Bunny (Peter); then from 13 year old Robert; and lastly from James, their father. We soon come to realize, however, that the book is really about mother and wife Elizabeth, who is the center of their world.

Each quiet section has its moments of joy, anger, grief, day-dreams, wistfulness for the past, and perhaps more than anything else, guilt. This is a beautifully written book, and yet sometimes it's not what's said that is important; it is the unsaid, the implied feelings. I read it in 3 sittings, making myself stop to process what I'd read. A gem.

Just started What there is to say we have said, i can see there will be a lot of feint pencil dots in the margins!

I finished Maxwell's The Heavenly Tenants this evening. I had never even heard of William Maxwell before this challenge and I am eager to read more of his writing after reading this children's book. I am not sure why it is rated so low here on LT as I quite enjoyed it. We meet the Marvell family - mother, father, 11 year-old Roger, 8 year-old Heather, and the 5-year old twins, Tim and Tom. The dad is something of an amateur astronomer and teaching the children about the zodiac signs in the night sky. The family runs a farm and they are heading to a visit with their grandmother. The man who is supposed to look after the farm while they are gone is hampered by a bad hip and is unable to do so. Bright lights light up the vacated farmhouse and soon all of the neighbors are showing up wanting to know what is going on at the Marvell house. . .

Granted there is not a lot of depth of characterization here, but it is a kid's book, after all. I thought Maxwell was inventive in the way he told the story, his take on the folk tales of sprites and spirits helping out mere mortals.

Eudora must at some stage have stayed at Shelleys Hotel in Lewes, as she writes a letter to Maxwell on Shelleys headed notepaper on 13 August 1963 with the words: "Let's pretend we are meeting here".


The Shelleys Hotel, Lewes (NMP)

I stayed at Shelleys in 2020. Years prior I used to see the little hand drawn advertisement for the hotel in the Folio Society magazine, and dreamed of staying there. I finally made it. Not at its best as it was during the pandemic, in a break between lockdowns, but nice all the same.



I suspect Welty stayed here when she was visiting Virginia and Leonard Woolf's house, Monks House, in Rodmell, which isn't far from Lewes.



Welty and Maxwell were great admirers of Virginia.

>27 Caroline_McElwee: Beautiful...thanks for sharing the photos. Got a little shiver over you staying where Eudora must have stayed.

>27 Caroline_McElwee: Love to hear if there is a history behind the Pottery Bowl at the top?

>28 laytonwoman3rd: I know Linda. I suspect many notables have stayed there over time. I think the hotel has had a bumpy ride since my stay, but has survived it seems. It once was owned by Percy Bysshe Shelley's family.

>29 m.belljackson: I am a glutton for ceramics Marianne, so just an addition to my collection bought in a little gallery there.

>30 Caroline_McElwee: Me too - I was the Potter/Owner of Burnt Earth many years back.

>31 m.belljackson: How lovely Marianne.

> And in 1966 Maxwell saw David Warner play Hamlet in Stratford-upon-Avon Linda!