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Title: My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell by Alec Wilkinson ISBN: 0-618-12301-6 Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Co Pub. Date: 04 April, 2002 Format: Hardcover Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $22.00 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (2 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: Outstanding
Comment: "When I was twenty-four I decided that I would try to become a writer," [p7] writes Alec Wilkinson in the opening pages of My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell. Young Wilkinson was then introduced to one of the legends of 20th Century American literature, William Maxwell, who would become like a second father to him.
Maxwell (1908-2000) was both a brilliant novelist (his 1937 novel They Came Like Swallows is considered a modern American masterpiece) and a legendary fiction editor. At The New Yorker magazine, Maxwell helped shape a generation of writers by editing such luminaries as J.D. Salinger, John Cheever, John Updike, and Vladimir Nabokov. When Salinger finished the manuscript of The Catcher in the Rye, the first person he showed it to was William Maxwell. [p93] Wilkinson learned Maxwell's lessons well: he would himself become an award-winning novelist and, for the last twenty years, has worked as a writer for The New Yorker.
My Mentor is an engaging literary memoir in three parts about three men: Alec Wilkinson, Wilkinson's father, and Maxwell. Part One is mainly about Maxwell's early life and development as a writer. Throughout, Alec Wilkinson's adoration for his mentor is unabashed. He is to be commended for using Maxwell's own autobiographical writing to tell the story of how his mentor became both a man and a writer. By using Maxwell's own writing, Wilkinson gives us a clear sense of just how accomplished a writer Maxwell truly was.
Maxwell was born in Lincoln, Illinois; his young life changed forever when he was ten years old and his mother died. This traumatic childhood event would shape much of Maxwell's later writing. During the Great Depression, Maxwell moved to New York City where he was hired to work at The New Yorker, then under the editorship of Harold Ross.
Maxwell would spend four decades at The New Yorker, editing other writers' work while spending his spare time on his own fiction. Maxwell befriended Kirk Wilkinson, Alec's dad, after the two met while waiting for a commuter train. Kirk Wilkinson was brusque and outgoing; Maxwell was sensitive and introspective. Their friendship was a marriage of opposites.
The two men, both of whom worked for magazines in New York, drove together to the train station each morning. "Maxwell's dependence on my father," writes Wilkinson, "was practical, and my father's dependence on Maxwell was emotional. He knew no one else like Maxwell-so receptive, so kind, so quick to respond to gestures of friendship." [p6]
It was through his father that Alec Wilkinson found his "second father," William Maxwell: "Because I was afraid of my own father," writes Wilkinson, "I was drawn to someone who was his opposite." [p108] Maxwell served as Wilkinson's writing coach and closest confidante: "Maxwell was privy to every decision of any consequence that I made during the last twenty-five years," Wilkinson notes. [p168] Maxwell taught young Wilkinson about writing, about living, and eventually, about dying with dignity.
Through Maxwell, as described in Part Two of My Mentor, Wilkinson learned the art and craft of writing. They "worked side by side for fifteen years." [p87] Maxwell would read Wilkinson's prose, explain how it might be improved, and then might take out scissors and cut and paste the whole manuscript, rearranging the sentences in order to improve the whole. Wilkinson learned the all-important lessons of simplicity and economy and rhythm. If My Mentor is any evidence, Wilkinson was a stellar pupil. The book is elegantly written; the prose is both accessible and often quite beautiful.
With Maxwell's help, Wilkinson wrote and published his first book about the year he spent as a policeman on Cape Cod. It's a subject that Wilkinson writes lovingly about in the early pages of My Mentor. He was admittedly a lousy cop, smashing up his police cruiser on more than one occasion, but he adored the work and the camaraderie with the other policemen.
The third and final part of My Mentor is about Maxwell's death in 2000, at age 91. Wilkinson visits his mentor's deathbed: "He was extremely thin and frail, and I knew he must be dying, but all I felt was the happiness of being with him." [p150] Maxwell then, in a fitting end to their relationship, reveals how proud he is of Wilkinson.
My Mentor is a marvelous book about a marvelous, transcendent friendship between an old man and a young man. Maxwell's kindness comes across on every page, as does his wisdom. Those unfamiliar with Maxwell's impressive opus will, after reading Wilkinson's loving account, likely find themselves seeking out the master's sadly-neglected fiction. Maxwell was clearly a great man, as well as one of this nation's great writers and editors. Alec Wilkinson was fortunate indeed in his choice of a mentor.
Rating: 4
Summary: Interesting reading for William Maxwell fans
Comment: I gave this rather slight book four stars partly I was so ecstatic to find it. As a tremendous fan of William Maxwell, it was a treat to be able to learn a little more about him. Wilkinson is a graceful writer, and talented in his own right, but I found myself skipping the parts about his life in my eagerness to get to more about Maxwell. Wilkinson mentions in passing that this book should not serve as a biography of Maxwell, and it's not one. However, I do hope such a biography is forthcoming. I also hope that this book might spark renewed interest in Maxwell's work, which in my opinion is overlooked and under-appreciated.
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Title: They Came Like Swallows by William Maxwell ISBN: 067977257X Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 25 March, 1997 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: Ancestors : A Family History by William Maxwell ISBN: 0679759298 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 17 January, 1995 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Folded Leaf by William Maxwell ISBN: 0679772561 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 01 October, 1996 List Price(USD): $13.00 |
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Title: The Outermost Dream : Literary Sketches by William Maxwell ISBN: 1555972640 Publisher: Graywolf Press Pub. Date: 01 September, 1997 List Price(USD): $12.95 |
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Title: So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell ISBN: 0679767207 Publisher: Vintage Pub. Date: 03 January, 1996 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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