Angol
William Maxwell, who died in 2000, is revered as one of the twentieth century's great American writers and a fiction editor at The New Yorker. These intimate essays, most written for this volume, are offered by writers whose lives were affected by him and manage to "bring him back to life, right there in front of us" at least for a while. Alec Wilkinson writes of Maxwell as a 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 her 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 Ending this collection is Maxwell himself, in the unpublished speech "The Writer as Illusionist".
