Early novels and stories
By: William Maxwell.
Contributors: Carduff, Christopher.
Series: Library of America -- 179
Publisher: Library of America; Distributed to the trade in the United States by Penguin Putnam
Published: 2008
Place of publication: New York
Language: eng
Number of pages: 997
ISBN-13: 9781598530162
Work titles: Works.
Description: ""The novelist works with what life has given him," wrote William Maxwell. "It was no small gift that I was allowed to lead my boyhood in a small town in Illinois where the elm trees cast a mixture of light and shade over the pavements." The patterns of light, love, and a sorrow in this town, and the domestic particulars of the early 20th century, are at the heart of Maxwell's early fiction. They Came Like Swallows is the story of two boys, their father, and the unbearable loss they suffer in the winter of 1918. The Folded Leaf describes the arc of an obsessive adolescent friendship that ends in near-tragedy. Time Will Darken It paints a portrait of a small, straitlaced community where gossip can ruin even its most blameless member. The achievement of these novels is here complemented by the youthful, comic Bright Center of Heaven - out of print for nearly 70 years - and nine short stories."--Jacket.
Notes: "Christopher Carduff selected the contents and wrote the notes for this volume"--P. [5].
Table of contents: title: Bright center of heaven --; title: They came like swallows -- -- Stories 1938-1945:; title: Homecoming ;; title: Actual thing ;; title: Young Francis Whitehead ;; title: Haller's second home ;; title: Patterns of love --; title: Folded leaf --; title: Time will darken it -- -- Stories 1952-1956:; title: Trojan women ;; title: Pilgrimage ;; title: What every boy should know ;; title: French scarecrow --; title: Writer as illusionist ---- Appendix: Introduction to They came like swallows ; Preface to Time will darken it -- Chronology -- Note on the texts -- Notes.