Glenway WescottRecensioni

4/26/22

This was the story of a weird love between Madeleine Cullen, a wealthy, middle-aged, Irishwoman and her pet hawk. She ignored her "wild children" and Irish aristocrat husband in favor of her hawk. The entire story takes place in 1929, in just one afternoon in the garden of Madeleine's friend, Alexandra, a wealthy young American living in Chacellet, France. I did not see a lot of plot, the story is told through the dialogue of the characters. This was pretty boring! I gotta stop reading novellas and/or short stories! But hey, am cleaning off those shelves. The cover is also odd, and I've spent too much time trying to connect it to the story. 136 pages½

Very nicely done, the sort of thing that'll appeal to people involved in crafting something, while also causing them/we to feel a little ripped off. As even the introduction points out, making a hawk into a symbol isn't much of a novelty, nor is the Anglos-abroad (Wescott does make me want to read Henry James, which is a mark in his favor), nor is the ever so slightly farcical country-house plot.

So, to justify my own enjoyment of this, I'm forced to interpret the book thusly: the hawk is not, in fact, a symbol for anything, and the point of the novel is the narrator's failure to discover anything worthy to be symbolized by the 'symbol'. The hawk exceeds all of Alwyn Towers' life experiences, his thoughts, and his feelings; the hawk certainly exceeds the experiences, thoughts and feelings of its Irish keeper and her husband. Any romantic, idealizing, transcendentalist attitudes fail to capture the real danger and magnificence of the animal. In short, this is a short novel about the writer's failure to produce a work adequate to its subject--while, at the same time, it's a perfect little gem of a book.

> Babelio : https://www.babelio.com/livres/Wescott-Un-appartement-a-Athenes/231174
> Le Livre de Poche (celiatas) : https://fr.calameo.com/books/0043038443afedcb9a996

> Tout comme son extraordinaire Faucon pèlerin (un des " trésors de la littérature américaine du XXe siècle ", a écrit Susan Sontag dans le New Yorker), Un appartement à Athènes de Glenway Wescott décrit une troublante relation triangulaire. Dans cette histoire d'un couple de Grecs qui, dans l'Athènes occupée par les nazis, est obligé de partager son appartement avec un officier allemand, Wescott met en scène un intense drame de la cohabitation et du rejet, de la résistance et de la contrainte. Un appartement à Athènes - le livre de Wescott qui, de son vivant, a connu le plus grand succès critique et commercial - décrit une grande et terrible guerre vue sous l'angle de la vie quotidienne. C'est l'histoire forte et insolite d'un combat spirituel dans lequel il est presque impossible de distinguer le triomphe de la défaite. " Je n'ai lu aucun autre livre - qu'il soit fiction ou document - qui m'ait, autant qu'Un appartement à Athènes, fait sentir la faim et l'étouffement, le repli sur des positions intérieures, le besoin de construire des défenses intérieures, de réorganiser et de réorienter, derrière le masque de la soumission, toute la structure de sa vie et toute sa raison d'être. " (Edmund Wilson) " Une belle étude de l'humiliation et de la noblesse, culminant dans le drame et se résolvant dans le désespoir... Sa modération, son absence l'exagération et sa sérénité sont aussi admirables que l'idéal grec qu'elles reflètent et honorent. Partout éclate la dignité d'un style dans lequel rien n'est inutile ou insuffisant. "
—(Eudora Welty, Amazon.fr).

> Un ballet morbide, orchestré de main de maître par l'auteur du Faucon Pèlerin.
—A. Fillon, Lire

Brief, elegant, edgy, and profound, I found myself enraptured by this little gem. I was quickly taken in by the narrator's voice, and while not much happens, there is an incredible tension in all this not-happening. A masterpiece of restrained narration.

Reading these remarkably beautiful and moving short stories, it becomes apparent why Wescott's subsequent career, successful as it was in some ways, was such a disappointment to himself and his friends, for surely, these are the stories of a writer of great promise. Those of us who live in the Midwest will also be reminded how very difficult life was even for our grandparent's generation. These stories of small town life in post-pioneer Wisconsin are told with bright, chiselled, even lapidary prose. Wescott's descriptions of nature are especially vivid and sensitive, often, as one might expect, tending to mirror the emotional states of the characters, almost all of whom are in some way cramped and stifled by the stultifying life they are forced to live.½

A quiet masterpiece; a single afternoon, drinks, conversation, scandal, and a hawk. Maugham admired Wescott's prose, and reading this you can see why.

My YouTube review is here: https://youtu.be/XCZyivmZ07k

Glenway Wescott was an enigma in American literature. After a promising start, his talent seemed to fizzle and for the last decades of his life he produced very little, devoting himself to foundation and literary group work. Still, his novels have always had a small cult following. In this posthumously published journal one finds a mixture of short anecdotes, philosophical musings, excerpts from letters, nature writing, and searing self examination. The fun of the book comes from the stories (Wescott seems to have known everyone) and from the frank discussion of gay life in wealthy artistic circles in mid-century New York and Paris. However, his continuous discussion (whining about) of his artistic and financial failure gets tedious. Some of the writing is clearly highly polished and written with an ear to posterity; some of it clearly off the cuff. Indeed, it is difficult to tell how much of his journals were included and how they were edited. Some will find the frankly erotic, even pornographic descriptions of his sexual encounters (often in groups) to be disturbong.½

a story about a family forced to take in a German soldier in Athens during ww 2. the first part of the novel is told from the husband and German soldier's point of view, the second half from the wife. the novel has some very interesting twists. a nice read

This is a harrowing story of a domestic situation in occupied Greece during the 2nd World War. The atmosphere is menacing and tense. The reflections about, and by, the various characters are fascinating. I found this a moving and gripping piece of work.

Regarded by a longstanding cult audience as a minor masterpiece, it is hard to come to this book objectively. I think without the reputation I would not have made it beyond the first few pages of this very short novella because the style is so mannered: short sentences, often broken into little clausal fragments - paragraphs frequently concluding with elaborately conceived apothegms. Wescott's narrator is staying with a female friend at her French country house. They are visited by a somewhat eccentric Irish couple, the female half of which takes a hunting hawk everywhere she goes. Tensions develop, there is some byplay among the three servants. The hawk causes a disruption. That is all. But it is observed so carefully and described so exquisitely that one becomes drawn in and fascinated. Michael Cunningham's introduction to this edition is helpful.½

308. Apartment in Athens, by Glenway Wescott (read 12 Feb 1947) I read this book in February 1947 but was not moved to mention it in the diary I kept in those days and now I don't remember anything about it so I conclude it was not very memorable.

La acción del libro transcurre en un sola tarde de verano a finales de la década de 1920 en una casa de campo francesa, cuya propietaria, Alexandra Henry, una joven heredera norteamericana, hospeda a un compatriota llamado Alwyn Tower, el narrador del libro.½

Glenway Wescott was a good friend of Somerset Maugham's, and so I had hoped he might have come under his influence more than is suggested by this novel. Or, perhaps that's unfair; Maugham was a great teller of tales but sometimes he lacked the philosophical insight into his characters that might have propelled him into the first rate; Wescott's book is more devoted to the psychology of his characters than the lives they live.

'Apartment in Athens' is an interesting piece, following the life for a year of a family in Athens whose home is taken over by a German officer during the second world war. Their routines are shattered, they suffer the depravities of subservience, and in the end they are punished though they are innocent. The characters, and indeed the plot, work well as metaphors for the war and the warring nations, but one has to wonder if there is enough here for a novel. A novella, or a piece in a collection of short stories, might have been more suitable; as it is, there is not enough plot here to carry the book all the way.

My YouTube review is here: https://youtu.be/XCZyivmZ07k

In één ruk uitgelezen, dit dunne boekje van Glenway Wescott. Af en toe wat te simpel, wat te kort door de bocht in algemeenheden en generalisaties over de vrouw. Maar werd er ooit een boek over valken geschreven dat teleurstelde?*

Dit boek ademt de jaren '20 in al zijn observaties. The great Gatsby bazuint vanop de achtergrond en dit vanaf de eerste pagina waarop de jonge Amerikaan de deur opendoet en het echtpaar Cullen binnenlaat - mevrouw Cullen met een valk op de gehandschoende vuist. De Amerikaan - een talentloos schrijver vanzelfsprekend - tracht tijdens het verloop van een middag, die bruusk wordt afgebroken, de verhouding te schetsen, & laat zich daarbij voornl. leiden door hoe ze zich t.a.v. de valk gedragen. Af en toe zet hij (en hij sleurt daarin de lezer mee) de valk (en zijn honger) en de vrouw (en haar begeerte) op gelijke hoogte. Dat zijn misschien wel de beste stukken uit het boek.

http://occamsrazorlibrary.blogspot.com/2009/06/de-slechtvalk.html½

"Any learned person or pious Catholic will see at a glance that this is not a learned work... The rapidity and superficiality... were... essential. It was to be, not a series of more than three hundred and sixty-five formal portraits, but a simple picture of a crowd..." A delightful book.