Synopses & Reviews
Review
“
The Grandmothers is made out of thick, rich layers of human problems and personalities. To read
The Grandmothers is to be washed by waves of cleansing pity.”—Harry Salpeter,
New York World, 1927
Review
“Distinguished by sensitive interpretation . . . an epic of the pioneer family. . . . It was the grandmothers who made America, and the grandfathers submitted to them their own and the nation’s destiny.”—John Carter,
New York Times Book Review, 1927
Review
andquot;When a writer like Wescott is famous in youth, it is the later years that are often more fascinating.andquot;andmdash;Jonathan Gathorne-Hardy, author of Sex the Measure of All Things: A Life of Alfred C. Kinsey
Review
andquot;A frank and insightful collection of later journals from a brilliant gay writer and Lost Generation survivor. Full of literary and sexual anecdotes, wise ruminations on the writer's craft, and poignant reflections on growing older as a writer and a lover of men, A Heaven of Words shows Wescott's Haymeadows home to be a microcosmic, literary Downton Abbey.andquot;andmdash;Kevin Bentley, author of Wild Animals I Have Known: Polk Street Diaries and After
Review
andldquo;Frank, honest, and fascinating,
A Heaven of Words: Last Journals, 1956?1984 is highly recommended.andrdquo;andmdash;
Midwest Book ReviewReview
andldquo;Roscoandrsquo;s selections reveal important information about Wescott yet allow Wescottandrsquo;s great ideas and minor foibles to become visible.andrdquo;andmdash;
Lambda Literary FoundationReview
andldquo;These entries are the work of a master of the craft of self-examination and reflection, written from the perspective of mature experience. Brilliantly edited and loaded with photographs, this volume goes on the shelf with the best of those writers we call The Lost Generation.andrdquo;andmdash;
OutSmart MagazineSynopsis
Glenway Wescott’s poignant story of nineteenth-century Wisconsin was first published in 1927 as the winner of the prestigious Harper Prize. Like F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway, Wescott left the Midwest behind to live as a writer in 1920s Paris. In this novel, based on Wescott’s own life and family, the young Alwyn Tower leaves Wisconsin to travel in Europe, but finds himself haunted by a family of long-dead spirits—his grandparents and great-uncles and aunts, a generation whose young adulthood was shattered by the Civil War. Their images were preserved in fading family albums of daguerreotypes and in his own fragmented memories of stories told to him by his strong and enduring grandmothers. To disinter and finally lay to rest the family secrets that lingered insistently in his mind, Wescott writes, Alwyn was “obliged to live in imagination many lives already at an end.”
The Grandmothers is the chronicle of Alwyn’s ancestors: the bitter Henry Tower, who returned from Civil War battlefields to find his beautiful wife Serena lost in a fatal fever; Rose Hamilton, robust and eager, who yearned to leave the cabin of her bearded, squirrel-hunting brothers for the company of courteous Leander Tower; the boy-soldier Hilary Tower, whose worship of his brother made him desperate; fastidious Nancy Tower, whose love for her husband Jesse Davis could not overcome her disgust with the dirt under his fingernails; Ursula Duff, proud and silent, maligned among her neighbors by her venal husband; Alwyn’s parents, Ralph Tower and Marianne Duff, whose happiness is brought about only by the intervention of a determined spinster.
Synopsis
Charm, wit, compassion, wisdom, literature, nature, sex, humor, politics, sorrow, love: these themes fill the late journal pages of enigmatic American writer Glenway Wescott. From humble beginnings on a poor Wisconsin farm, Wescott went on to study at the University of Chicago, narrowly survive the Spanish flu pandemic, and eventually emerge as an influential poet and novelist. A major figure in the American literary expatriate community in Paris during the 1920s and a prominent American novelist in the years leading up to World War II, he spent a decade living abroad before relocating permanently to New York and New Jersey with his partner, Museum of Modern Art publications director and curator Monroe Wheeler.and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160;and#160; Together they mixed with such intellectual and creative greats as Jean Cocteau, Colette, George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus, Somerset Maugham, Christopher Isherwood, Marianne Moore, W. H. Auden, Truman Capote, Joseph Campbell, and scores of other luminaries. During the second half of his life, Wescott wrote nonfiction essays and worked for the Academy Institute of Arts and Letters, all the while keeping journals in which he recorded the experiences that fostered his love of life, literature, the arts, and humanity. A Heaven of Words looks back on Wescott's entire fascinating life and reveals the riveting narrative of his last decades.
About the Author
Glenway Wescott (1901andndash;1987) began his writing career as a poet but is best known for his short stories and novels, notably The Grandmothers (1927), The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story (1940), and Apartment in Athens (1945). Jerry Rosco is author of Glenway Wescott Personally: A Biography, also published by the University of Wisconsin Press, and coeditor of Continual Lessons: The Journals of Glenway Wescott, 1937andndash;1955. He lives in New York City.
Table of Contents
IllustrationsPrefaceand#160;Introduction1956andndash;591960andndash;641965andndash;691970andndash;741975andndash;791980andndash;84Afterwordand#160;A Glossary of Glenway Wescott's ContemporariesIndex