Continual Lessons: The Journals of Glenway Wescott 1937-1955 by Robert Phelps , Jerry Rosco Glenway Wescott - 1990

United States of America: Farrar Straus & Giroux, 1990. Book. Very Good. Hardcover. 1st. 8vo - over 7¾" - 9¾" tall. 399 pages plus index. Written in the tell-all spirit of Rousseau, and with considerable literary flair, these journals by one of America's most notable modern writers offer a sprightly melange of daily events; sophisticated judgments of literature, painting and classical music; telling portraits of a wealth of fellow writers including Maugham, Katherine Anne Porter, Forster, Auden and Janet Flanner ("dear little old cold volcano"); and a goodly sprinkling of bons mots, e.g., "The thought of an artist has to be running water." Wescott (1901-1987) found fame early, with such works as his novella The Pilgrim Hawk (1940) and the bestselling Apartment in Athens (1945); thereafter, as though he enjoyed life too much, most of his major novel projects remained at the starting stage. A man of intense homoerotic sensibility, his hallmarks as a writer were incisiveness and honesty. Rosco completed this book after the death of Phelps. Both had been friends of Wescott. Author of the minor classic The Grandmothers (1927) and the later wartime bestseller Apartment in Athens , Wisconsin-born Wescott, a self-proclaimed perfectionist, opted for a career as impresario of the arts. In 1937, he settled with his lovers Monroe Wheeler and George Platt Lynes in rural New Jersey. Widely traveled and extraordinarily well read, he recorded his thoughts and activities in these journals, whose frankness made them unpublishable until now. Unless bored by Wescott's daily agonizing over a host of homosexual relationships, readers will find here some exquisite insights into subjects ranging from the Kinsey studies to Frost to Djuna Barnes to the antics of resident squirrels..