Glenway Wescott Personally: A Biography
The life of Glenway Wescott (1901-87) spanned an interesting range of eras, from 1920s Paris, where he was acquainted with Hemingway (who despised him for his homosexuality), Fitzgerald, and Stein; through the world wars; to 1950s and 1960s New York, where a sexual revolution was taking place. There he found himself in the middle of a remarkable group of gay artists, including Christopher Isherwood, W.H. Auden, and E.M. Forster. Though Wescott is best known in modern American literature courses for the lyric 1927 novel The Grandmothers and the novella The Pilgrim Hawk, Rosco, who coedited a volume of Wescott's journals (Continental Lessons), focuses on the way this Wisconsin farm boy came to terms with his sexuality in a world still governed by a strict Victorian code of conduct. Although he learned early to be a master storyteller largely from the example of his friend W. Somerset Maugham he was unable to complete a novel after the age of 45. His energy was channeled into other interests, among them Museum of Modern Art curator Monroe Wheeler, with whom he fashioned a lifelong and stabilizing relationship, and Alfred E. Kinsey, in whose work on American sexuality he became immersed in the 1950s. More than a biography of an unjustly ignored American writer, Rosco's work portrays a fascinating panorama of the evolution of America's gay artistic community. Recommended for libraries with holdings in gay studies. Charles C. Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, MOCopyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.