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A William Maxwell Portrait

Memories and Appreciations

Michael Collier editor Edward Hirsch editor Charles Baxter editor

Format:Hardback

Publisher:WW Norton & Co

Published:7th Sep '04

Currently unavailable, and unfortunately no date known when it will be back

A William Maxwell Portrait cover

William Maxwell, who died in July 2000, was revered as one of the twentieth century's great American writers and a longtime fiction editor at The New Yorker. Now writers who knew Maxwell and were inspired by him—both the man and his work—offer intimate essays, most specifically written for this volume, that "bring him back to life, right there in front of us."

Alec Wilkinson writes of Maxwell as mentor; Edward Hirsch remembers him in old age; Charles Baxter illuminates the magnificent novel So Long, See You Tomorrow; Ben Cheever recalls Maxwell and his own father; Donna Tartt vividly describes Maxwell's kindness to herself as a first novelist; and Michael Collier admires him as a supreme literary correspondent. Other appreciations include insightful pieces by Alice Munro, Anthony Hecht, a poem by John Updike, and a brief tribute from Paula Fox. Ending this splendid collection is Maxwell himself, in the unpublished speech "The Writer as Illusionist."

ISBN: 9780393057713

Dimensions: 218mm x 150mm x 23mm

Weight: 505g

236 pages