num_pages: 378
description: In 1935, Welch, an English art student of 20, was hit by a car in an accident that curtailed his career as a painter and precipitated his death 13 years later. In the interim, Welch redirected his talents to writing novels (three of which have recently been reprinted), a journal and these short stories. Though he credited the accident with having saved him from becoming "a precious young man in a gallery," preciousness and an antic imagination couple in his writing in an annoying way. Eccentric aristocrats, brooding laborers, precocious children and passive yet predatory young women are summoned up in brilliant if febrile images, only to be allotted great dollops of adolescent loneliness, more reflective of the author's sensibility than their own. Whenever possible, their costumes are allowed to slip, revealing other aspects of Denton Welch himself: his sensitivity, snobbery, sexual ambiguity and, sadly, his avid appetite for a life that was slipping away.
language: English
title: Welch: Journals
titlecomplete: Welch: Journals
genres: LGBT, Memoir
ratings_count: 30
publisher: Dutton Books