Later Novels and Stories: The Château / So Long, See Yo…
Later Novels and Stories: The Château / So Long, See You Tomorrow / Stories and Improvisations 1957–1999
In the works included in this second volume of Maxwell’s collected writings, William Maxwell draws the reader close with narratives that blur the line dividing memoir and fiction. While he continues to explore his signature subject matter—one boy’s life in small-town Illinois—he also broadens his canvas to depict scenes from adult experience. His protagonists include a young American intoxicated by postwar France, a middle-aged New Yorker tending the illusion of family happiness like a pot of African violets, an old man haunted by shame and loss and regret. His voice, always one of the wisest and kindest in American fiction, now becomes also one of the most intimate, a quiet Midwestern voice that communicates the melancholy joy of being alive and of seeing things exactly as they are. The Château (1961) is a story of innocence–innocence rebuffed but sometimes also rewarded with the return of affection and wonder. The setting is France in 1948, the place and its people still recovering from the German occupation. A newlywed American couple spends two weeks in the Loire Valley at the château of Mme Viénnot, an impoverished aristocrat whose actions and motivations are inscrutable to her paying guests. These young Americans are anything but ugly. They are earnest and generous, misunderstood and misunderstanding, and, like their hostess, exquisitely vulnerable. So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980) is an Old Testament tragedy played out on the Illinois prairie. It is told by a witness to this tragedy’s devastation—an old man much like Maxwell who, some 60 years after the murderous events he describes, struggles to forgive his failure to reach out to the survivors. Part autobiographical memoir, part imaginative re-creation of a crime of passion, it is unique in form and, in the words of Charles Baxter, “an unobtrusively perfect example of literary art.” In these two works Maxwell reaches the summit of his art as a novelist, but he is no less a master when he takes up shorter forms. All his best short stories are collected here, including “Over by the River” and “The Thistles in Sweden,” two classic evocations of New York City life, and the complete contents of Billie Dyer (1992), a companion volume to So Long, See You Tomorrow collecting seven fictionalized portraits of figures from Maxwell’s youth. The volume concludes with 40 delightful "improvisations"—fairy tales that Maxwell wrote mainly to entertain his wife—and the essay “Nearing Ninety” (1997), his moving valediction to a lifetime of reading and storytelling.
994 pages, Hardcover First published September 4, 2008
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About the author
Librarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database. William Keepers Maxwell Jr. was an American novelist, and fiction editor at the New Yorker. He studied at the University of Illinois and Harvard University. Maxwell wrote six highly acclaimed novels, a number of short stories and essays, children's stories, and a memoir, Ancestors (1972). His award-winning fiction, which is increasingly seen as some of the most important of the 20th Century, has recurring themes of childhood, family, loss and lives changed quietly and irreparably. Much of his work is autobiographical, particularly concerning the loss of his mother when he was 10 years old growing up in the rural Midwest of America and the house where he lived at the time, which he referred to as the "Wunderkammer" or "Chamber of Wonders". He wrote of his loss "It happened too suddenly, with no warning, and we none of us could believe it or bear it... the beautiful, imaginative, protected world of my childhood swept away." Since his death in 2000 several works of biography have appeared, including A William Maxwell Portrait: Memories and Appreciations (W. W. Norton & Co., 2004), My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell by Alec Wilkinson (Houghton-Mifflin, 2002), and William Maxwell: A Literary Life by Barbara Burkhardt (University of Illinois Press, 2005). In 2008 the Library of America published the first of two collections of William Maxwell, Early Novels and Stories, Christopher Carduff editor. His collected edition of William Maxwell's fiction, published to mark the writer's centenary, was completed by a second volume, Later Novels and Stories in the fall of 2008.'
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
Author 9 books996 followers
I've said this elsewhere, but it's worth repeating: If not for goodreads, I would not have met Mikki. If not for Mikki, who recommended So Long, See You Tomorrow so highly to me, I don't know that I would've ever read Maxwell. That was in May, 2012, and since then Maxwell has become one of my favorite writers and I'm closing in on reading all of his works. I can't thank Mikki enough. Not all of the stories here are 5-stars worthy, nor is one of the novels (though they all come close), but the volume as a whole is, and for some of the same reasons I noted in my review of Maxwell's Early Novels and Stories. (I've reviewed all his novels separately.) The very short stories that Maxwell called "improvisations" he wrote mostly for his wife for Christmas gifts and though they are quite different from his other fiction-writing, they are a revelation. He says so much in each one in so few pages. I'm 'on the record' elsewhere for saying that I don't get along with fables and allegories -- and these do have a fable-like feel, but they are so different. Perhaps it's because he's not hitting you over the head with a moral or an abstract concept. He's simply telling a story, many with the feel of a once-upon-a-time, the feel of a fairy tale, but not of the kind with a pat happily-ever-after ending. I loved them. One day, and I hope very soon, I will reread his masterpiece, the book that started this journey for me, and I plan on doing it with Mikki. As I am writing this review on Valentine's Day, please consider it a 'love letter' to both Maxwell and Mikki.
364 reviews12 followers
William Maxwell is a revelation. I thoroughly enjoyed his clear-eyed prose. This collection includes 2 full novels. The Chateau, a charming travelogue of a young couple's trip to postwar France, reminded me of MFK Fisher, and the haunting So Long See You Tomorrow would be enjoyed by any fans of Truman Capote's In Cold Blood. Throughout it all, Maxwell combines precision with warmth, and the emotions of a young man with the distance that comes with age. Maxwell lived to be 91 years old. Also recommended is his moving interview with Terry Gross on Fresh Air in 1995. You get a real sense of why he was known as the "wisest, kindest" writer.
1,001 reviews10 followers
Read just about 200 pp of this - the few pieces that have not been published elsewhere. A couple short stories, and his second group of "Improvisations". Those are fun, had not read any of them before. Not set in his usual IL, they do read like fairytales. Some Prefaces and a couple other occasional pieces. Editor Carduff adds a nice 30 "Chronology" - which is a useful mini-biogrpahy of Maxwell.
I appreciate LOA of putting together in one place many hard to find items, but I do prefer to read the individual books. Easier to handle, and LOA has thin paper with small print. Not hand-hold friendly.
"So Long...." is one of my all time favorites, and one of the few books I have read multiple times.
On to "Billie Dyer" - in its original, stand-alone publication hardcover.
The construction of Library of America books is very helpful when you're coming at an author you don't know--the chronology at the back, the notes on the text. Maxwell was a staff editor at the New Yorker for many years in the mid-twentieth century but before now I had never read his own work. For a Library of America book group we read The Château, published in 1960, and I was not impressed. It is a long, rambling story of a young couple's postwar trip to France in 1948 when rations were still in place. The couple tries to understand the French people they meet, often without success; they are in love with France and they want the French to love them back. There is no real plot, which makes it slow going, and Maxwell occasionally slips into what could generously be called "stylistic experiment," with a disembodied outside voice asking, in italics, for more information or clarification. Maxwell had trouble writing the novel, which he knew was almost more a travel diary. My own sense is that it wouldn't have been published if he were not in the influential position he had at the New Yorker. I liked better a couple of short pieces collected in the same volume, little fables Maxwell called "improvisations." I still intend to read his last novel, So Long, See You Tomorrow, supposed to be his finest work (and blessedly short). ************
Changed my rating of the volume from three to four stars after reading "So Long, See You Tomorrow," a wistful memoir that imagines enough to qualify as a novel. At its heart is a simple friendship between two boys, the author and a schoolmate, who live near each other due to the changed circumstances of their parents' lives. The schoolmate moves again after his father commits a murder and kills himself. Maxwell meditates on the "shipwrecks" of their lives, capturing the poignant silences that keep people apart, in particular the things that can't be said in the small town Midwest of the early twentieth century and the things that can't be said between boys or between men.
Although I had seen his name in a book catalog once, I had not read William Maxwell before nor did I know anything about him. This volume includes two novels, The Chateau and So Long, See You Tomorrow and several short stories. Much of his writing seems to be grounded in his autobiography, for his home town and characters similar to his mother and father and other relatives appear in these works. Although not much of dramatic import happens, the stories are surprising interesting, often revolving around memories of the past and how they help explain the present. I was very impressed with Maxwell's writing and look forward to reading the Library of America edition of his earlier works.
Recently discovered this well-know New Yorker writer's novel about a midwestern tragedy between two families, beautiful prose "So Long See You Later".... and a very intensely emotional story; unique; loved it! Now reading the new collected works by Maxwell, "Early Novels and Stories" and this collection shows the same emotional and detailed writing............influenced by Virgina Woolf perhaps?
370 reviews48 followers
I really enjoyed this volume of interconnected stories and novels. The first novel is about his honeymoon trip to Europe after World War II. The second novel is about a murder that happened in the town where he grew up. The stories are mostly connected to Maxwell's childhood town of Lincoln, Illinois and the improvisations are fairy tales for adults.
378 reviews10 followers
I strongly recommend this wonderful collection. One of Maxwell's stories, "The Thistles in Sweden", is as good as an excellent John Cheever story, and that is high praise. Maxwell is so skilled at evoking lost decades, countries, relationships and emotions. The book moved me to tears in several places. I would like to own this book so I could go back to it.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews