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Will West
Paperback
Published January 1, 1956
15 people want to read
About the author
Paul Metcalf
103 books12 followersPaul Metcalf (1917–1999) was an American writer. He wrote in verse and prose, but his work generally defies classification. Its small but devoted following includes Robert Creeley, William Gass, Wendell Berry, Guy Davenport, Howard Zinn, and Bruce Olds. His many books include Will West (1956), Genoa (1965), Patagoni (1971), Apalache (1976), The Middle Passage (1976), Zip Odes (1979), and U.S. Dept. of the Interior (1980).
He was the great-grandson of one of his major literary influences, Herman Melville.
Paul Metcalf was born in 1917 in East Milton, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard but left before graduating. In 1942, he married Nancy Blackford of South Carolina and over the next two decades spent long periods in the South. Metcalf traveled widely through North and South America and these travels figure largely in his work. Among his friends and associates were the poet Charles Olson (whom he met when he was thirteen), the artist Josef Albers, poet and publisher Jonathan Williams and the writer Guy Davenport. Later in his career, Metcalf was a visiting professor at the University of California San Diego, SUNY Albany, and the University of Kansas. He died in 1999, near Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
He was the great-grandson of one of his major literary influences, Herman Melville.
Paul Metcalf was born in 1917 in East Milton, Massachusetts. He attended Harvard but left before graduating. In 1942, he married Nancy Blackford of South Carolina and over the next two decades spent long periods in the South. Metcalf traveled widely through North and South America and these travels figure largely in his work. Among his friends and associates were the poet Charles Olson (whom he met when he was thirteen), the artist Josef Albers, poet and publisher Jonathan Williams and the writer Guy Davenport. Later in his career, Metcalf was a visiting professor at the University of California San Diego, SUNY Albany, and the University of Kansas. He died in 1999, near Pittsfield, Massachusetts.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
September 15, 2019
Interesting, if episodic, five chapter novelette focusing on parallelisms in North American history constructed around a symbolic modernist narrative of a Native American baseball pitcher turned murderer and fugitive from the law. Although many of the italicized parallel texts—Native American attitudes, description of the Trail of Tears, Civil War struggles, and the story of De Soto’s ill-fated Florida expedition—work well with the narrative of our pitcher/lover/murderer/son/fugitive protagonist’s, Will West, existential crisis, others are tentative at best. The fifth and final chapter was the clearest in its aims, likening contemporary Americans struggling against capitalism, power, competitiveness, and our own morality with our history of the European mindset, contending with the continent’s original inhabitants (which they considered to be savages) and the force of the continent’s indomitable natural landscape—which explains the time it took me to get motivated to read this rather short novel to its end: each chapter was a continuous, but also detached segment of the over-all narrative, with different parallel texts. So, unless you do the 98 pages at a single sitting, it’s easy to lose momentum. Too bad the best chapter wasn’t in the middle rather than at the end.
The second chapter is the most troubling of the novel, when Will meets, copulates with, and then impulsively drowns a girl he meets on a beach. As is noted here by another writer, the scene is quite reminiscent of Camus’s The Stranger. The female characters of the drowned woman, Will’s mother, and particularly the attitudes towards women of Ferd, the fifth chapter’s truck-driving character, left me uneasy in terms of the novel’s gender issues. The male characters are probably as flimsy as as the females—but in a symbolic narrative—Will West is the guy’s name for crying out loud—I suppose that's to be expected. So perhaps I’m just being too politically correct myself. Still, in some ineffable hard-to-put-my-finger-on-it way—other than the senseless murder of a woman, which is the text’s most troubling moment—I found it disturbing, distracting from the interesting elements of the novel’s strategies in terms of creating and combined modern/historical expression of the American experience. In that it was not without beauty and resonance. And, like DeLillo’s Underworld, Will West had to begin at a baseball game! Just, very just, for a novel about the U.S.A..)
As I have the collected novels of Mr. Metcalf vol. I, I will surely continue and read his second offering, Genoa, but probably not until I return home from my annual summer in the States—such things are better read at home in Italy—books about Americans named after Italian cities—heh, heh.
The second chapter is the most troubling of the novel, when Will meets, copulates with, and then impulsively drowns a girl he meets on a beach. As is noted here by another writer, the scene is quite reminiscent of Camus’s The Stranger. The female characters of the drowned woman, Will’s mother, and particularly the attitudes towards women of Ferd, the fifth chapter’s truck-driving character, left me uneasy in terms of the novel’s gender issues. The male characters are probably as flimsy as as the females—but in a symbolic narrative—Will West is the guy’s name for crying out loud—I suppose that's to be expected. So perhaps I’m just being too politically correct myself. Still, in some ineffable hard-to-put-my-finger-on-it way—other than the senseless murder of a woman, which is the text’s most troubling moment—I found it disturbing, distracting from the interesting elements of the novel’s strategies in terms of creating and combined modern/historical expression of the American experience. In that it was not without beauty and resonance. And, like DeLillo’s Underworld, Will West had to begin at a baseball game! Just, very just, for a novel about the U.S.A..)
As I have the collected novels of Mr. Metcalf vol. I, I will surely continue and read his second offering, Genoa, but probably not until I return home from my annual summer in the States—such things are better read at home in Italy—books about Americans named after Italian cities—heh, heh.
June 19, 2008
Neither as daring nor as interesting as I had hoped for. This method had been tried before, as Guy Davenport notes in his introduction to the Collected Works, by O. Henry.
It feels as though Metcalf is uncommitted to his chosen method here, and the prose suffers as a result. What is history and what is fiction? I didn't care (one shouldn't). What is much worse, I didn't care what was happening in either.
That is a rather serious problem.
Ondaatje, among others, has since taken this sort of narrative assemblage much further, and, in great contrast to this work, achieved a degree of immediacy that is sorely lacking here, as for instance in "Billy the Kid." More than anything else, that is what is lacking-- yes, prose poetry, but even prose poetry must allow the reader some investment in the proceedings.
Say prosepoetryhistory then. But unless one is greatly interested in the subject, mildly sedative prosepoetryhistory.
Sporadically pretty (not quite up to the standard of beautiful). I hope for much better things in "Genoa."
It feels as though Metcalf is uncommitted to his chosen method here, and the prose suffers as a result. What is history and what is fiction? I didn't care (one shouldn't). What is much worse, I didn't care what was happening in either.
That is a rather serious problem.
Ondaatje, among others, has since taken this sort of narrative assemblage much further, and, in great contrast to this work, achieved a degree of immediacy that is sorely lacking here, as for instance in "Billy the Kid." More than anything else, that is what is lacking-- yes, prose poetry, but even prose poetry must allow the reader some investment in the proceedings.
Say prosepoetryhistory then. But unless one is greatly interested in the subject, mildly sedative prosepoetryhistory.
Sporadically pretty (not quite up to the standard of beautiful). I hope for much better things in "Genoa."
May 14, 2025
This is the Metcalf voice I was hoping for in Genoa. Protagonist Will West, a Native American baseball player, wills himself westward. The reason, and Metcalf’s narrative-threading, I’ll leave unsaid. But I think this quote from page 5 says everything:
“It is those of us who cannot untangle ourselves from the past that are really dangerous in the present because we are only partly here our eyes are blind because our appetites are turned inward or backward chewing on the cold remnants of our inheritance of our facts of our history to try to find who we are what we are where we came from what is the ground we stand on to whom does it belong and did it belong. We are dangerous because when we come out of the past we are rich with its energies and poorly experienced in the business of daily living and we hurl ourselves across the present with the blind fierceness of a martyr or a convert defending our damage to the defenseless with a language they cannot understand a language created from false concepts of time of history of past present and future. In the end we will bring to the world nothing useful and although we may find what we have been and even what we are nevertheless for all our search the heavy helpless stumbling of men born in quicksand we will never know what we have done.”
#2025books
“It is those of us who cannot untangle ourselves from the past that are really dangerous in the present because we are only partly here our eyes are blind because our appetites are turned inward or backward chewing on the cold remnants of our inheritance of our facts of our history to try to find who we are what we are where we came from what is the ground we stand on to whom does it belong and did it belong. We are dangerous because when we come out of the past we are rich with its energies and poorly experienced in the business of daily living and we hurl ourselves across the present with the blind fierceness of a martyr or a convert defending our damage to the defenseless with a language they cannot understand a language created from false concepts of time of history of past present and future. In the end we will bring to the world nothing useful and although we may find what we have been and even what we are nevertheless for all our search the heavy helpless stumbling of men born in quicksand we will never know what we have done.”
#2025books
February 6, 2023
Had fun with this. It's his second novel, and he's still finding that Metcalf voice. It's almost there. Lots of hallmarks already appear: dual timelines/flashbacks, some stream-of-consciousness stuff, the historical awfulness of European existence with indigenous people, death.
Recommended for anyone looking for a jumping off point with Metcalf. This is sort of Metcalf-lite.
Recommended for anyone looking for a jumping off point with Metcalf. This is sort of Metcalf-lite.
December 8, 2012
review of
Paul Metcalf's Will West
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 7, 2012
When I found this bk I figured I'd found something genuinely on a small press. The press's name is "The Bookstore Press" & it's from Lenox, MA. The original date of publication being 1956, this 2nd edition is from 1973. Metcalf's name seemed vaguely familiar but I might've just been recognizing the last name somehow. Looking in another bk that I'm currently reading, A Secret Location on the Lower East Side - Adventures in Writing, 1960-1980, I find Paul Metcalf indexed & connected w/ United Artists literary magazine.
Online, a brief Wikipedia bio says that "He wrote in verse and prose, but his work generally defies classification. Its small but devoted following includes Robert Creeley, William Gass, Wendell Berry, Guy Davenport, Howard Zinn, and Bruce Olds." That's quite a recommendation. Then again, it's on Wikipedia where people routinely have their friends or underlings write glowing bios for them that're often little more than bullshit.
On the back cover blurb, Will West is described as Metcalf's "first experimental novel". Given that the bk's only 76pp long, it's more appropriately described as a novella. Is it experimental? Not much so - maybe to someone who only read mainstream pop fiction at the time it was 1st published it might be - but in contrast to Kenneth Patchen, eg, it strikes me as a bit lame. It does alternate between regular & italicized fonts w/ a POV change coinciding & sometimes the prose alternates w/ poetry. That's a little experimental. I suppose. & the namesake main character of the title, Will West, is evocative of both "Wild West" & of the character's westward journey.
West is largely of Cherokee descent & much of the italicized parts are dedicated to Cherokee culture. How accurate any of this is historically, I can't say. If it's accurate, then that might explain Howard Zinn's purported liking of Metcalf's writing.
The narrative has a dramatic drive to it that I found a bit too easy even tho it's, fortunately, not milked for all the misery it can provide. I wdn't really recommend this to anyone, it just seems too shallow - maybe his other bks are more substantial. I wonder what Sherman Alexie wd think of this?
Paul Metcalf's Will West
by tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE - December 7, 2012
When I found this bk I figured I'd found something genuinely on a small press. The press's name is "The Bookstore Press" & it's from Lenox, MA. The original date of publication being 1956, this 2nd edition is from 1973. Metcalf's name seemed vaguely familiar but I might've just been recognizing the last name somehow. Looking in another bk that I'm currently reading, A Secret Location on the Lower East Side - Adventures in Writing, 1960-1980, I find Paul Metcalf indexed & connected w/ United Artists literary magazine.
Online, a brief Wikipedia bio says that "He wrote in verse and prose, but his work generally defies classification. Its small but devoted following includes Robert Creeley, William Gass, Wendell Berry, Guy Davenport, Howard Zinn, and Bruce Olds." That's quite a recommendation. Then again, it's on Wikipedia where people routinely have their friends or underlings write glowing bios for them that're often little more than bullshit.
On the back cover blurb, Will West is described as Metcalf's "first experimental novel". Given that the bk's only 76pp long, it's more appropriately described as a novella. Is it experimental? Not much so - maybe to someone who only read mainstream pop fiction at the time it was 1st published it might be - but in contrast to Kenneth Patchen, eg, it strikes me as a bit lame. It does alternate between regular & italicized fonts w/ a POV change coinciding & sometimes the prose alternates w/ poetry. That's a little experimental. I suppose. & the namesake main character of the title, Will West, is evocative of both "Wild West" & of the character's westward journey.
West is largely of Cherokee descent & much of the italicized parts are dedicated to Cherokee culture. How accurate any of this is historically, I can't say. If it's accurate, then that might explain Howard Zinn's purported liking of Metcalf's writing.
The narrative has a dramatic drive to it that I found a bit too easy even tho it's, fortunately, not milked for all the misery it can provide. I wdn't really recommend this to anyone, it just seems too shallow - maybe his other bks are more substantial. I wonder what Sherman Alexie wd think of this?
October 14, 2012
I find the description of the beach encounter and seduction absolutely beautiful, but was saddened by the dark impulses taking over. I do see the affinity with Camus.
I identify with all aspects; the sparse vegetation on the beach, the wordless, fateful bonding of two beautiful people; the way they hold each other, the way the girl runs to the dunes. The following is my favourite extract, so full of suspense:
"Climbing to one of the higher points, they found a shady hollow directly behind it, and they jumped and skidded into the lowest part. Sitting down, facing oppositely, their hips touching, they swung their upper bodies in front of each other, and embraced hotly. There was no wind, and the sun was relentless.
Through grasses, snarling
the earth, and
Briars
Comes a murmur,
captive,
a murmur of wind
Sweat
sweat and sea air
Separating, rising, they stood back from each other. Will's trunks, and the two pieces of the girl's white bathing suit, fell to the sand. For a moment they faced each other, naked in the hot sun and dampness."
Lovely; so poetic!
The nice part of the beach scene was inspirational for my novella, 'Self's Blossom'
I identify with all aspects; the sparse vegetation on the beach, the wordless, fateful bonding of two beautiful people; the way they hold each other, the way the girl runs to the dunes. The following is my favourite extract, so full of suspense:
"Climbing to one of the higher points, they found a shady hollow directly behind it, and they jumped and skidded into the lowest part. Sitting down, facing oppositely, their hips touching, they swung their upper bodies in front of each other, and embraced hotly. There was no wind, and the sun was relentless.
Through grasses, snarling
the earth, and
Briars
Comes a murmur,
captive,
a murmur of wind
Sweat
sweat and sea air
Separating, rising, they stood back from each other. Will's trunks, and the two pieces of the girl's white bathing suit, fell to the sand. For a moment they faced each other, naked in the hot sun and dampness."
Lovely; so poetic!
The nice part of the beach scene was inspirational for my novella, 'Self's Blossom'
November 28, 2008
Not as strong as his most impressionist, history-based, work, but the prose occasionally hits a poetic stride which characterizes his best work.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews