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The Outermost Dream: Literary Sketches
The Outermost Dream brings together essays and reviews by William Maxwell, one of America's foremost writers and editors. Maxwell chose deliberately to focus on biography, memoir, diaries, and correspondence when reviewing "what people said and did and wore and ate and hoped for and were afraid of, and in detail after often unimaginable detail they refresh our idea of existence and hold oblivion at arm's length." In reading his reviews, we are struck by Maxwell's skill in choosing the one particular, the haunting moment, that further illuminates our understanding of the power of an individual life. His discernment is equally telling whether writing about literary luminaries such as Virginia Woolf, Lord Byron, E.B. White, Isak Dinesen, or delving into the diaries of an unknown Victorian curate with vivid dreams of murder and mayhem.
264 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1989
3 people are currently reading
108 people want to read
About the author
William Maxwell
119 books368 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
William Keepers Maxwell Jr. was an American novelist, and fiction editor at the New Yorker. He studied at the University of Illinois and Harvard University. Maxwell wrote six highly acclaimed novels, a number of short stories and essays, children's stories, and a memoir, Ancestors (1972). His award-winning fiction, which is increasingly seen as some of the most important of the 20th Century, has recurring themes of childhood, family, loss and lives changed quietly and irreparably. Much of his work is autobiographical, particularly concerning the loss of his mother when he was 10 years old growing up in the rural Midwest of America and the house where he lived at the time, which he referred to as the "Wunderkammer" or "Chamber of Wonders". He wrote of his loss "It happened too suddenly, with no warning, and we none of us could believe it or bear it... the beautiful, imaginative, protected world of my childhood swept away." Since his death in 2000 several works of biography have appeared, including A William Maxwell Portrait: Memories and Appreciations (W. W. Norton & Co., 2004), My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell by Alec Wilkinson (Houghton-Mifflin, 2002), and William Maxwell: A Literary Life by Barbara Burkhardt (University of Illinois Press, 2005). In 2008 the Library of America published the first of two collections of William Maxwell, Early Novels and Stories, Christopher Carduff editor. His collected edition of William Maxwell's fiction, published to mark the writer's centenary, was completed by a second volume, Later Novels and Stories in the fall of 2008.'
William Keepers Maxwell Jr. was an American novelist, and fiction editor at the New Yorker. He studied at the University of Illinois and Harvard University. Maxwell wrote six highly acclaimed novels, a number of short stories and essays, children's stories, and a memoir, Ancestors (1972). His award-winning fiction, which is increasingly seen as some of the most important of the 20th Century, has recurring themes of childhood, family, loss and lives changed quietly and irreparably. Much of his work is autobiographical, particularly concerning the loss of his mother when he was 10 years old growing up in the rural Midwest of America and the house where he lived at the time, which he referred to as the "Wunderkammer" or "Chamber of Wonders". He wrote of his loss "It happened too suddenly, with no warning, and we none of us could believe it or bear it... the beautiful, imaginative, protected world of my childhood swept away." Since his death in 2000 several works of biography have appeared, including A William Maxwell Portrait: Memories and Appreciations (W. W. Norton & Co., 2004), My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell by Alec Wilkinson (Houghton-Mifflin, 2002), and William Maxwell: A Literary Life by Barbara Burkhardt (University of Illinois Press, 2005). In 2008 the Library of America published the first of two collections of William Maxwell, Early Novels and Stories, Christopher Carduff editor. His collected edition of William Maxwell's fiction, published to mark the writer's centenary, was completed by a second volume, Later Novels and Stories in the fall of 2008.'
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
March 2, 2020
This is the second of William Maxwell's non-fiction books I've read. I prefer his fiction.
January 16, 2026
A wonderful, wonderful book, easily read. Maxwell writes about things, people I never thought I'd be interested in, and he does it such a way that I was sent scurrying to find out more, to find their books. I just wish he had written more collections like this ...
January 27, 2012
Maxwell's writing has an easy, seductive grace, and he chooses surprising ways to begin and end these literary reviews and sketches of writers' lives, so that each individual essay seems merely to meander pleasantly. However, as you weave into and out of these sketches, Maxwell's way of structuring his writing begins to infect your own mind, and you start to see new beginnings and endings all around you, new avenues into stories and unexpected ways to bring your own meandering thoughts into enjoyably satisfying full stops.
October 3, 2011
We know Maxwell as a brilliant editor and novelist. In this collection he explores the lives of known and unknown people in different periods of history. He is keenly aware when biographers are misinformed. particularly if he had known the person. Frank O'Connor, for example, is one where he had a completely different take on the man than his biographer. Some of the essays are about people he knew at the New Yorker: Louise Bogan, E. B. and Katherine White, Sylvia Townsend Warner and many others. Superb writing and every essay is a gem.
January 12, 2019
A collection of book reviews sounds boring, but these are just great. Old fashioned in the sense that there is wit, not snark.
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews