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Glenway Wescott Personally: A Biography

de Jerry Rosco

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As a writer, Glenway Wescott (1901-1987) left behind several novels, including The Grandmothers and The Pilgrim Hawk, noted for their remarkable lyricism. As a literary figure, Wescott also became a symbol of his times. Born on a Wisconsin farm in 1901, he associated as a young writer with Hemingway, Stein, and Fitzgerald in 1920s Paris and subsequently was a central figure in New York's artistic and gay communities. Though he couldn't finish a novel after the age of forty-five, he was just as famous as an arts impresario, as a diarist, and for the company he kept: W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Marianne Moore, Somerset Maugham, E. M. Forster, Joseph Campbell, and scores of other luminaries. In Glenway Wescott Personally, Jerry Rosco chronicles Wescott's long and colorful life, his early fame and later struggles to write, the uniquely privileged and sometimes tortured world of artistic creation. Rosco sensitively and insightfully reveals Wescott's private life, his long relationship with Museum of Modern Art curator Monroe Wheeler, his work with sex researcher Alfred Kinsey that led to breakthrough findings on homosexuality, and his kinship with such influential artists as Jean Cocteau, George Platt-Lynes, and Paul Cadmus.… (més)
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I discovered Wescott in college. As an early openly gay man who had considerable success in his day, he intrigued me. He died shortly after I was born, but his last novel was published in 1945. I've reread his books, and have thought much about them, but I know there are depths that I haven't even begun to perceive.

In the course of researching and seeking out as much information on Wescott as I could get, he became something of a totem for me - a representation of all those men and women who lived in defiance of their age by living as themselves. Reading so many stories of homosexuals living out their lives half in shadow, and many talented careers ruined through public scandal, made the touching story of his 60+ years with Monroe Wheeler a comfort too, sentimental as I am.

I've owned this book for a few years now, putting it off until I could locate more of his work, not an easy task considering my reluctance to order through online channels. The scarcity of most of his work is one of the more frustrating aspects of this biography.

In writing this Roscoe seems to have had unrestricted access to the author's papers and quotes extensively interviews and anecdotes obtained from Wescott's contemporaries. He makes numerous references to Wescott's poetry, out of print for 90 years in some cases, with only one piece quoted in its entirety, and fewer than a half-dozen had more than their titles quoted.

Roscoe is an enthusiastic biographer, but much of the book reads like antique society columns and some of the scenes Rosco recreates are almost fully repeated from chapter to chapter. The saving grace here are the long biographical anecdotes from Wescott himself, Wheeler, or others that are printed in full. Wescott is full of vivid humor and writes with a high style that is at once ornate and precise. If only he had written this himself!

Wescott's career in fiction is finished before the book is half done, but his work with Alfred Kinsey is more extensive than I ever suspected and I read about his work as an essayist and lecturer with interest. Would it have been so impossible to add a bibliographical appendix to the book?

'Personally' is the key word in the title of this biography, because it does leave a reader with a clear picture of Glenway Wescott as a personality, but it leaves much to be desired for someone looking for a more rigorous examination of Wescott as an artist. I thoroughly enjoyed reading this, but I can't help but feel there's a great deal missing. ( )
1 vota ManWithAnAgenda | Feb 18, 2019 |
Glenway Prescott was a minor American novelist who has always had a small cult following. He lived, however, an astonishing life, and much of the interest in this carefully considered volume comes from watching, almost in disbelief, as the strands of his life spin out, First, he seems to have known everyone - we encounter F. Scott Fitzgerald, Cocteau, Somerset Maugham, Tennessee Williams, Marianne Moore, Isadora Duncan, Alice B. Toklas, New Rorem, W. H. Auden, Truman Capote, and just about anyone else important in the arts in New York, Paris, or London in the 1920-60s. Perhaps even more interesting for many readers is his varied, and openly lived, gay life. His romantic life and sex life, and those of many others is discussed frankly here, without ever getting gossipy. It is fascinating to see how complex and active the gay subculture was even in the decades before Stonewall. The author, Jerry Rosco, knew Wescott towards the end of his life, and clearly admires him and his work, but one comes away feeling that he has made an honest effort to give an accurate picture of what made Wescott and his circle tick. ( )
  sjnorquist | Jan 16, 2014 |
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As a writer, Glenway Wescott (1901-1987) left behind several novels, including The Grandmothers and The Pilgrim Hawk, noted for their remarkable lyricism. As a literary figure, Wescott also became a symbol of his times. Born on a Wisconsin farm in 1901, he associated as a young writer with Hemingway, Stein, and Fitzgerald in 1920s Paris and subsequently was a central figure in New York's artistic and gay communities. Though he couldn't finish a novel after the age of forty-five, he was just as famous as an arts impresario, as a diarist, and for the company he kept: W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Marianne Moore, Somerset Maugham, E. M. Forster, Joseph Campbell, and scores of other luminaries. In Glenway Wescott Personally, Jerry Rosco chronicles Wescott's long and colorful life, his early fame and later struggles to write, the uniquely privileged and sometimes tortured world of artistic creation. Rosco sensitively and insightfully reveals Wescott's private life, his long relationship with Museum of Modern Art curator Monroe Wheeler, his work with sex researcher Alfred Kinsey that led to breakthrough findings on homosexuality, and his kinship with such influential artists as Jean Cocteau, George Platt-Lynes, and Paul Cadmus.

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