Finnley Wren

by Philip Wylie

This book stands as one of the greatest American responses to the thrown gauntlet that is Tristram Shandy. An innovative, uproarious sentimental education, this novel marries the mordant satire of Wylie's Generation of Vipers to what might in other hands have been an ordinary story of frustrated ambition and frustrated love, turning forty-eight hours' worth of drunken conversation into an emotional and typographical explosion.

Philip Wylie (1902–1971) published more than forty books (both fiction and nonfiction), essays, and short stories in his lifetime. A member of the founding staff of the New Yorker, his essays and stories regularly appeared throughout the '40s and '50s in Vanity Fair, Redbook, the Saturday Evening Post, and Cosmopolitan.

Genres: Fiction, Literature

192 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1934

About the author

Born in Beverly, Massachusetts, Philip Gordon Wylie was the son of Presbyterian minister Edmund Melville Wylie and the former Edna Edwards, a novelist, who died when Philip was five years old. His family moved to Montclair, New Jersey and he later attended Princeton University from 1920–1923. He married Sally Ondek, and had one child, Karen, an author who became the inventor of animal "clicker" training. After a divorcing his first wife, Philip Wylie married Frederica Ballard who was born and raised in Rushford, New York; they are both buried in Rushford.

A writer of fiction and nonfiction, his output included hundreds of short stories, articles, serials, syndicated newspaper columns, novels, and works of social criticism. He also wrote screenplays while in Hollywood, was an editor for Farrar & Rinehart, served on the Dade County, Florida Defense Council, was a director of the Lerner Marine Laboratory, and at one time was an adviser to the chairman of the Joint Congressional Committee for Atomic Energy which led to the creation of the Atomic Energy Commission. Most of his major writings contain critical, though often philosophical, views on man and society as a result of his studies and interest in psychology, biology, ethnology, and physics. Over nine movies were made from novels or stories by Wylie. He sold the rights for two others that were never produced.

Reviews

[Jonathan · Rating 5 out of 5]

The full title of this wonderful little book is:

Finnley Wren – His Notions and Opinions together with a Haphazard History of His Career and Amours in these Moody Years, as well as Sundry Rhymes, Fables, Diatribes and Literary Misdemeanors – A Novel in a New Manner

which should tell you everything you need to know....

Of course it most certainly is not "in a new manner", as sprung from Rab's codpiece, spurted from the Shandian loins...

Fans of Take Five and Theroux may well find lots to like here.

I found a nice review which sets out all the info you need here:
http://rrhorton.blogspot.co.uk/2015/0...


Dalkey are reprinting it in November

http://www.dalkeyarchive.com/product/...

So either get a cheap 2nd hand one now, or give Dalkey your hard earned money when they get this lovely book back out there...

[Joel · Rating 5 out of 5]

Finnley Wren is an American masterpiece. Funny, heartbreaking, and scathing in its criticism of the banality of American culture, it is as relevant today as it was in 1934. That it was published at all in 1934 is remarkable, given the overt mocking of religious piety and sexual mores, but that it is not more widely read and studied today is a pity. It is not a beautifully written book--Wylie seems much more interested in showing off his intelligence and wit than weaving aesthetically pleasing sentences--but it is precise and smart and very funny and challenging. Wylie captures the essence of what it is to be American--boastful, self-conscious, self-centered, generous, wounded, and full of funny stories and sad stories. Good luck finding a copy of this book, that has been out of print for decades, but if you do, you will be blessed.

[Kevin Adams · Rating 4 out of 5]

What a dazzling book full of great wordplay and ideas. Again, 1934!!! Blown away by that and where literature was in the world. Please find and read this book. My copy is from the great Dalkey Archive.

[🐴 🍖]

the bulk of what's here really floated my boat -- the lists and exhaustive descriptions of minutiae, the obsession with cellular biology, finnley's "epistles" (actually a coupla excellent satirical sci-fi short stories), the tale of romancing hope, the harrowing explosion in the alaskan backwoods, and especially the device in the penultimate chapter of zooming out to see what every character, major and minor, was up to, which i plan on stealing asap. what i'm feeling less warm toward are the rants by finnley w/ which the novel is studded -- he's always just left to, like, fulminate ad infinitum w/o anybody ever getting a word in edgewise, let alone issuing a rebuttal. particularly in the part where he's going on about how eugenics is the cure for all the world's ills (which, 1934 is the worst time in recorded history to be espousing that, imo, followed closely by all other time periods) a dissenting viewpoint woulda been welcome. but read it still probably! (ooo fun fact btw -- that lenny bruce routine about how if christ died today christians would be wearing little electric chairs instead of crosses? the idea appeared in this book years earlier)

[MJ Nicholls · Rating 5 out of 5]

For readers expecting a Sternean epic along the lines of Chris Scott’s Bartleby, or B.S. Johnson’s Travelling People, this 1937 novel might disappoint in its mild madness. It is, however, a fabulously written comic performance with some neat typographical moments, and some strange ones, recreating a drunken weekend in the acquaintance of the title character, a very ordinary man in a very typical 1930s America. Hilarious, essential.

[Zack Walters · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wylie is such a treasure, I’m super grateful to have been directed to him by Tom Robbins inadvertently by him sharing that Generation of Vipers shifted his axis and help set his trajectory.

Pleasant, fun read, philosophical critique of our stupid nonsense of a society we live in, told in an innovative way (for 1931), incorporating the author within the story as a main player pushing the narrative.

*spoiler alert


I do wish it went into more detail about how Ricardo and Genevieve handled the death of Hope (I feel like it was just a bit devoid of the emotional weight of life and death) also, what happened, what caused it and how he got over it. Hard to believe he stayed at the firm, I’d think it would be too hard for both parties.

All in all, so well written, I can overlook the often meandering of plot.

Not from the book, but, “life is but a dream,” sums up the story for me, maybe it’s where I am in life as well. Learned a few new words too, thanks Phil!

[William Pugsley · Rating 5 out of 5]

One of the best novels I've read in a long while. Third book by Wylie I've read, but much different. A deep and accurate look at life today, nearly a hundred years ahead of his time. Expertly written in a style more akin to current writers than contemporaries. Why is that hack F. Scott Fitzgerald widely known and revered and Philip Wylie's name and work all but forgotten?

[Ralph Carlson · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent and very different kind of novel. Highly enjoyable. Well worth reading.

[Karl Kraus · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite his obviously immense talent -- obvious to anyone who has read his best work -- Wylie has sunk, quite probably irretrievably, into oblivion, and there are several reasons for this:

1. Wylie suffered from an advanced case of Protestant Work Ethic. If he didn't crank out 10,000 words each day, he felt himself a failure. Needless to say, with that kind of attitude he rarely spent time writing and rewriting a given passage until it radiated lustrously. Nope, it was into-the-typewriter-and-out.

2. Wylie suffered, for much of his life, from an advanced case of alcoholism. Much of his later work suffers from that "the wheel is spinning, but the hamster is dead" phenomenon. Needless to say, the alcoholism didn't do his health any favors, and the resulting hospital bills only served to increase the pressure he felt to crank 'em out.

3. Wylie had all of the virtues and shortcomings of an autodidact, with the result that his social criticism is a mixed bag. Whatever one might think of Carl Jung, Wylie certainly appreciated his work on a deep level; he was one of the first Americans of note to examine intensively the effects of nuclear holocaust and, like a good science fiction author (and he could be a very good one indeed), warn of eventual environmental collapse. On the other hand, his most famous work, *Generation of Vipers*, is quite the mixture of the insightful and the appalling. His progressive attitude on homosexuality -- progressive at least for his time -- might win him points nowadays, but his excoriation of Momism, the Cinderella Complex, and women in general certainly wouldn't. (Hmm, that oddly makes him not unlike a certain K. Kraus. . . .)

Which brings us to *Finnley Wren*, one of two novels of his in which everything clicked and the inspiration ran white hot. (The other, of course, is his *Opus 21*, the only shortcoming of which is that stylistically it breaks no new ground.) Or, more to the point, it's one of the few novels of his in which he yields to the temptation to engage in Literature -- and does so successfully -- whereas most of his novels are social commentaries bundled up into ill-fitting fiction overcoats. But *Finnley Wren* really is, as others have noted, the reincarnation of Laurence Sterne in the garb of a 1930s American modernist, consistently imaginative and sometimes jaw-droppingly funny.

[Robin · Rating 1 out of 5]

Boring, pseudo-psychological, faux biography of the title character that actually starts out by telling of his birth. (Dickens' David Copperfield is the only book I know that can begin like that and get away with it.)

I only read the first 40 pages, and was forcing myself to do that.

Don't you make that same mistake!