Page 9 - The University of Wisconsin Press Spring 2013
Basic HTML Version
PAPERBACK ORIGINAL
MAY
LC: 2012037076 PS
192 PP. 5 ½ X 8 ¼ 24 B/W PHOTOS
E-BOOK $19.95 ISBN 978-0-299-29423-6
“A frank and insightful collection
of later journals from a brilliant
gay writer and Lost Generation
survivor. Full of literary and sexual
anecdotes, wise ruminations on the
writer’s craft, and poignant reflec-
tions on growing older as a writer
and a lover of men,
A Heaven of
Words
shows Wescott’s Haymead-
ows home to be a microcosmic, liter-
ary
Downton Abbey
.”
Kevin Bentley,
author of
Wild Animals I Have Known:
Polk Street Diaries and After
DIARIES & JOURNALS / GAY & LESBIAN INTEREST
Edited and with an introduction by Jerry Rosco
“When a writer like Wescott is famous in youth, it is the later years that are
often more fascinating.”
nathan Gathorne-Hardy, author of
Sex the Measure of
All Things: A Life of Alfred C. Kinsey
Charm, wit, compassion, wisdom, literature, nature, sex, humor, politics, sor-
row, love: these themes fill the late journal pages of enigmatic American writer
Glenway Wescott. From humble beginnings on a poor Wisconsin farm, Wescott
went on to study at the University of Chicago, narrowly survive the Spanish flu
pandemic, and eventually emerge as an influential poet and novelist. A major
figure in the American literary expatriate community in Paris during the 1920s
and a prominent American novelist in the years leading up to World War II, he
spent a decade living abroad before relocating permanently to New York and
New Jersey with his partner, Museum of Modern Art publications director and
curator Monroe Wheeler.
Together they mixed with such intellectual and creative greats as Jean Cocteau,
Colette, George Platt Lynes, Paul Cadmus, Somerset Maugham, Christopher
Isherwood, Marianne Moore, W. H. Auden, Truman Capote, Joseph Campbell,
and scores of other luminaries. During the second half of his life, Wescott wrote
nonfiction essays and worked for the Academy Institute of Arts and Letters, all
the while keeping journals in which he recorded the experiences that fostered
his love of life, literature, the arts, and humanity.
A Heaven of Words
looks back
on Wescott’s entire fascinating life and reveals the riveting narrative of his last
decades.
Glenway Wescott
(1901–1987) began his writing career as a poet but is best
known for his short stories and novels, notably
The Grandmothers
(1927),
The
Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story
(1940), and
Apartment in Athens
(1945).
Jerry Rosco
is author of
Glenway Wescott Personally: A Biography
, also published by the Uni-
versity of Wisconsin Press, and coeditor of
Continual Lessons: The Journals
of Glenway Wescott, 1937–1955
. He lives in New York City.
UWPRESS
.
WISC
.
EDU
9
O f r e l a t e d i n t e r e s t
“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 commu-
nity.”—
Library Journal
PUBLISHED MARCH 2002
LC: 2001005410 PS 328 PP. 6 × 9
28 B/W PHOTOS
E-BOOK $9.99 ISBN 978-0-299-17733-1
