A Visit to Priapus and Other Stories

by Glenway Wescott, Jerry Rosco (Editor), Wendy Moffat (Foreword)

Just as E. M. Forster's novel of gay love, Maurice, remained unpublished throughout his lifetime, Glenway Wescott's long story "A Visit to Priapus" was also destined to be a posthumous work, buried from 1938 until this century in Wescott's massive archive of manuscripts, journals, notebooks, and letters.            The autobiographical story is about a literary man, frustrated in love, who puts aside his pride and makes a date with a young artist in Maine. Lavishly rendered in Wescott's elegant prose, the tale is explicit where it needs to be, but—as is typical of Wescott—it is filled with descriptive beauty and introspective lessons about sex and sexuality, love and creativity.            Previously published in anthology form in the United Kingdom, "A Visit to Priapus" is presented for the first time in book form in America, containing previously uncollected stories, including three never before published. The result is a candid portrayal of the gifted but enigmatic writer who was famous in youth and remained a perceptive and compassionate voice throughout his long life. Drawn together from midcentury literary journals and magazines of the 1920s and 1930s, as well as from Wescott's papers, the stories were inspired by his life, from childhood to old age, from Wisconsin farm country to New York, London, Germany, and Paris.Finalist, Gay General Fiction, Lambda Literary Awards

Genres: Fiction, Short Stories, Queer, LGBT

186 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2013

About the author

Glenway Wescott grew up in Wisconsin and briefly attended the University of Chicago where he met in 1919 his longtime partner Monroe Wheeler.

In 1925 he and Wheeler moved to France, where they mingled with Gertrude Stein and other American expatriates, notably Ernest Hemingway, who created an unflattering portrait of Wescott in the character of Robert Prentiss in The Sun Also Rises.

Eventually, Wescott and Wheeler returned to America and lived in New York City, and later on a large farm in Rosemont, New Jersey owned by his brother, the philanthropist Lloyd Wescott, along with other family members.

Wescott's early fiction, the novels The Apple of the Eye (1924) and the Harper Prize winning The Grandmothers (1927) and the story collection Goodbye, Wisconsin (1928) were set in his native Midwest.

Later work included essays on political, literary, and spiritual subjects, as well as the novels The Pilgrim Hawk (1940), which shared a narrator in Alwyn Towers with The Grandmothers, and Apartment in Athens (1945). Wescott's journals, recording his many literary and artistic friendships, offering an intimate view of his life as a gay man, were published posthumously under the title Continual Lessons.

Reviews

[Joseph Pfeffer · Rating 4 out of 5]

At the end of each year, it seems, some generous publisher gives us an unexpected gift that enriches our reading lives. Last year The Library of America presented us with The Collected Writings of Joe Brainard, and we learned the meaning of writing in the moment. This year's present is A Visit to Priapus and Other Stories, by Glenway Wescott, from the University of Wisconsin Press. An eclectic collection, Visit to Priapus reminds us again of why we should read Wescott, and raises the question of why he's almost been forgotten by the general reading public. Glenway Wescott usually appears as a minor, peripheral figure of the Lost Generation of expatriate writers of the 1920's, even though he wasn't really an expatriate. He did, however, spend some of those years living in France and Germany. He moved in the same circles as Hemingway, Fitzgerald, Stein and other Lost Generation icons, but never achieved either their popular success or critical acclaim. He was then, and remains today, something of a cult writer, venerated by those who read him over and over, largely ignored by everyone else.

Why is this? A couple of reasons suggest themselves. One is that Wescott was an openly gay writer at a time when that simply was unacceptable. You could hint at it all you wanted but to live as Wescott did, in what today would be a gay marriage, was never acknowledged, or if it was got deplored by nearly everyone. The title story in this collection is a long piece about a kind of gay one-night stand, written in 1938. It reads something like a chronicle of an Internet date that didn't quite work out but wasn't a disaster. It passed the time, and Wescott, in his characteristic manner, gave it a lot of thought and strove to discover its significance, along the way giving a rich portrait of a would-be artist who is faintly ridiculous but nonetheless has, shall we say, certain charms. The more important reason, though, is that Wescott is largely an interior writer. His descriptions of nature, architecture, people ("He had an elegant, calamitous face, with broad lips covered with fine wrinkles.") are as good as anyone who ever wrote, but such externals are never what he's after. He's interested in the minutiae of his own consciousness as it passes moment by moment through various permutations. As he says in one of his best stories, "I can vouch for it only in the vain way of the poet or novelist or dramatist - by avowal of psychic adventure and infirmity of my own." In this, the only writer he reminds me of strongly is Marcel Proust, so that Wescott's sensibility seems more French than English or American. This may be why he never caught on as did the great Lost Generation masters. Speaking for myself, I read Hemingway and Fitzgerald because all the people who know about that sort of thing tell me I must. I read Wescott because he's impossible to resist. Once I enter his world, he inhabits my consciousness. It's as though he talks to me and I talk back to him. He opens worlds.

A Visit to Priapus is uneven, as are all such collections. The stories "Adolescence," "The Babe's Bed," "The Stallions," and the essay "A Call on Colette and Goudeket" are as good as anything you'll read. I could make a case for "An Example of Suicide" being the best American short story, period. At least it is in the way it speaks to me. Wescott at his most translucent speaks from my soul and writes my life. Here he is in Example: "Little inward suicide of my own, a bit at a time, the while I have gone on rather enviably and not undignifiedly living...Not madness at all, but only careless ways of thinking and feeling and talking by which I have driven myself and others almost "mad." Not evil, but gradual, mechanical forfeitures of the opinion of those whose enthusiasm about me I most require. Not vice, but various debauch and despoiling of my talent: literary imagination let go in a sort of onanism, revery, riddle; the will to write depressed and dismembered; book after book aborted, and so forth. All of this perfectly undramatic, all harmless, and all petty, not worth committing suicide about - yet, I dare say, relevant. For little by little it might have brought me to a point of modesty and mediocrity at which it would have been a good idea to kill myself, the thing to do next, the suitable dramatic gesture. I suppose it may still."

Like I say, Glenway Wescott, you write my life.

[Matthew · Rating 4 out of 5]

This novella is often referred to as the heir-apparent to E.M. Forster's MAURICE -- in that it's a deliberately posthumous semi-autobiographical gay romance and Wescott worshipped Forster and knew him personally. That's what drew me here.

But the style of the novel is remarkably different from Maurice. The absolute openness and frankness of emotion, sex, and romance is a style that is far more akin to Kate Chopin -- and reminded me a great deal of the spirit in her incredibly short stories -- super-charged with emotions, complex character psychology, and rich descriptions rolling through like a powerful sea that characters are somehow able to swim through.

Here we have the story of what should be a very simple affair that was arranged as a "break" for our narrator so he could go off and having an amazing romp. It's immediately more complex and paints a gorgeous view of the paradoxical way in which affairs of this kind played out when behind closed doors -- as opposed to out in public.

This particular edition -- not to go full nerd -- is well-curated. The editors selected some of Wescott's self-reflective short fiction and built a psychological background for the Priapus narrator.

A damn fast read.

[Eric Rietveld · Rating 4 out of 5]

There’s nothing better than stumbling across something that intersects so perfectly with your interests. I picked this up for the purpose of reading yet another posthumously published gay piece by a well known author. Little did I know that the the story behind the story involved a throuple and my favourite gay photographer, George Platt Lynes. The titular story was a delight, but I was also surprised and entertained by several of the other expertly included short stories/essays, in which the universal gay experience was clearly present and immediately recognizable. I very much enjoyed this collection and its ability to connect me to our gay forefathers.

[Alan · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far, I've only read the first 3 stories, only one of which was a dud. "The Babe's Bed" was long, boring and pointless. "Adolescence" was engaging and well-written. As for "A Visit to Priapus," this was a gem that was drowned in words. There were probably ten pages worth of needless information. I'd have much preferred a Reader's Digest condensed version. Was the author paid by the word? I may go back and read the other stories if I find myself willing to do more scanning to get through the fluff.

UPDATE: I went back and scanned the remaining stories. Such a book wouldn't get published today. Maybe there was a time when such rambling and excessive, unnecessary details were appreciated. This reminds me of when actors accept roles in films they know are crappy just because they need the money. Only two stories in this book were worth my time, and even they were too wordy.

[Bill · Rating 4 out of 5]

I rarely read short story collection, they remind me too much of record albums; one or two hits, a few B sides, and the rest filler. A Visit to Priapus and Other Stories was a totally delightful find. What a tragedy that most of these stories went unpublished for so long. Even more than the Visit to Priapus story the ones which really spoke to me were Adolescence, The Odor of Rosemary, and The Love of New York. Even though the city has changed much since the 1940s I share Wescott's obvious feeling for the city. His fondness for France was also apparent in his writing.

Living in New Jersey, the brunt of many a joke, I was hoping for more of a narrative in the essay The Valley Submerged. Maybe that wasn't realistic. But the following essay about Collette more than compensated. My only real disappointment with the collection was that it ended with such a thud. Even for an experimental short story I admit I had to skim the last few pages of Sacre de Printemps. I hope that anyone else who reads the book doesn't let the final story color their enjoyment of the whole, since I these stories should be better known and shared.

[willowdog · Rating 3 out of 5]

Wescott's writings in this anthology of short stories and autobiographical essays are often eloquent, dense, and elaborate. The wonderfully gay story A Visit to Priapus is very candid and revealing. Unfortunately, only 4 of the works in this volume have very much gay content. This may be because of the years which these were written--although one could read "gay" in a number of the other stories.

[David Zachariason · Rating 5 out of 5]

A most enjoyable collection of the writings of Glenway Wescott, the best is the story from which the book takes its name. Written in 1938 and published posthumously, much like Forster's "Maurice", it is a look at what his themes might have been had the times been different. Don't ignore the other stories, though - Wescott was a marvelous writer, and the selected items reflect that perfectly.
The least satisfying, for me, is the previously unpublished, experimental "Sacre de Printemps".