The Pilgrim Hawk

by Glenway Wescott, Michael Cunningham (Introduction)

This powerful short novel describes the events of a single afternoon. Alwyn Tower, an American expatriate and sometime novelist, is staying with a friend outside of Paris, when a well-heeled, itinerant Irish couple drops in—with Lucy, their trained hawk, a restless, sullen, disturbingly totemic presence. Lunch is prepared, drink flows. A masquerade, at once harrowing and farcical, begins.

A work of classical elegance and concision, The Pilgrim Hawk stands with Faulkner’s The Bear as one of the finest American short novels: a beautifully crafted story that is also a poignant evocation of the implacable power of love.

Genres: Fiction, Novella, Classics, France, Literary Fiction, American, Novels

136 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1940

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

[Guille · Rating 4 out of 5]

“El amor es en sí mismo una exageración que tiene tendencia a ser contagiosa.”

Es verdaderamente sorprendente lo desconocidos que son novela y autor, muchísimo más de lo que se merecen. “El halcón peregrino” es una magnífica novela, una novela que, como Sontag en su ensayo “Cuestión de énfasis” o Michael Cunningham en el prólogo que acompaña a la obra en la edición que he tenido la suerte de leer, relacionan o equiparan con obras como “El buen soldado”, “Los papeles de Aspern” o “El gran Gatsby”. A mí me recordó muchísimo a la obra de Fitzgerald, por su estilo, por el tipo y la complejidad de los personajes, porque en ambas se elige la primera persona y el punto de vista de un espectador más o menos neutral respecto de los hechos escandalosos que narra.

“Cuando el amor te ha dado satisfacciones descubres que una gran parte del resto de tu vida es solo el pago por ellas.”

Entonces, ¿cuál es la razón de tan injusto olvido? Cunningham apunta varias razones: la escasa obra del autor, el carácter más europeo que americano de la novela y un título realmente poco atractivo (quizás el “El gran Gatsby” hubiera corrido la misma suerte caso de llegar a titularse, como tenía previsto el autor, “El enamorado ambicioso”).

La novela es elegante y sutil, corta en páginas pero densa en contenido, llena de reflexiones fascinantes y provocadoras.

“Poseía ese aire de inocencia que suele ser típico de las mujeres adoradas por muchos y atormentadas por uno solo.”

“Odio a los animales que adquieren ese tipo de sentimientos: que reconozcan el timbre de tu voz y acudan a tu olor deseando ser tocados… Lo detesto. Es como una parodia de nuestra conducta, todavía peor.”

Una mirada melancólica, reflexiva y lastimosa de un ya maduro Alwyn Tower (protagonista de una novela anterior del autor, “Las abuelas”) a un significativo hecho de su pasado. Como toda narración en primera persona, lo dicho es una visión subjetiva, quizás reconstruida, quizás reinterpretada, del suceso en verdad acaecido, del que además solo se tiene, claro está, una perspectiva parcial. Tan importante es lo que se dice como lo que se calla y tan o más interesantes que las acciones de los personajes protagonistas del suceso son las reflexiones y conclusiones del que las cuenta y lo que de él nos dicen ambas.

Hace poco me quejaba en un comentario a otro libro, “La muerte de Ivan Ilich”, de lo sobradamente remarcados que eran los rasgos de los personajes y lo expresa que era la intención del relato, su moraleja. “El halcón peregrino” es todo lo contrario. Wescott tiene la gran inteligencia y habilidad para conducirnos con maestría socrática hacia esa verdad que creeremos haber descubierto por nosotros mismos, y que el autor no revela del todo hasta casi la última frase –y que yo me abstendré muy mucho de descubrir aquí-, añadiendo al gran placer de su lectura el de la satisfacción por una vanidad reforzada. Curiosamente, al igual que en aquel relato, también aquí asistimos al lamento por una vida malgastada (o por cómo la vida no nos ha dotado con los dones necesarios), y aunque el foco se pone aquí también en las relaciones humanas, la perspectiva y las conclusiones difieren profundamente.

Llegados a este punto, más de uno podrá preguntarse que dónde queda el halcón. Este animal es la extravagante mascota de uno de los personajes, uno de los desencadenantes del drama, la columna vertebral de las reflexiones del autor sobre el amor, el matrimonio, el compromiso y la libertad,...

“¿Cuánta libertad constituye un estímulo para el hombre, y cuánta empieza a ser un desperdicio, una locura?”

... y, sobre todo, un gran símbolo.

“Solo un halcón como individuo es esclavo; la especie es libre… Entonces sucede al revés que en la especie humana… solo el individuo puede aspirar a liberarse a sí mismo.”

[Flo · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novella using a hawk as a metaphor for marriage. So complex in such a small space. Superb writing. Too bad Glenway Wescott didn’t write much else.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Cullens, a boorish, wealthy Irish couple, pay a visit to their friend Alexandra Henry, an American heiress living in France. Rather than bringing a bottle of grocery store wine or a modest floral arrangement, Mrs. Cullen brings her 'pet' hawk Lucy—the hooded, undomesticated, pigeon-eating symbol of the book. Fortunately enough, Alexandra has another guest staying with her named Alwyn Tower (that's a man, not an office complex) to do the play-by-play on all the character psychology, so if the blinking, glow-in-the-dark symbolism of the book escapes your notice, he's the giant, pointing finger that says, 'Hey. Will you look at that?' Even though Tower is mostly cold and supercilious, I'll admit that he can turn a nice phrase here and there—which makes many of his trite insights more digestible than they really have any right to be.

The entirety of this very brief novel takes place during this visit and consists (in large part) of Mrs. Cullen's Wild Kingdom-like reportage on the habits of the hawk and the ins and outs of falconry, which—after a brief flirtation with political radicalism—is her latest hobby. Of course, many of these avian behaviors she describes are synonymous in some blindingly metaphorical sense to the workings of her troubled marriage, as well as to the tumultuous relationship between Jean and Eva, two servants in the house. (At one point, the hawk shits on the parquet floor. Ain't that just the way love is?) But it doesn't help that the Cullens are unlikable, and any interest we normally might take in their conjugal health is surpassed by an urgent desire to get away from them.

It's hard not to respond to The Pilgrim Hawk with a patronizing attitude and to send it off with a pat on its quaint little head. On the one hand it seems puffed-up and dated—both in style and sensibility—but on the other hand I wasn't bored at all by it. Some of the passages, in fact, had me thinking, 'Wow. This must be a lot better than I think it is.' But it's all in the service of something so banal that it's just not easy to get excited about.

[Jesse · Rating 5 out of 5]

After finishing The Pilgrim Hawk I couldn't help but feel as if this sparkling novel(la) was structured like an iceberg, its crystalline prose and the sharp lines of its prosody creating shimmery effects somewhat akin to a diamond refracting sunlight.

It's all very impressive--or at least impressive enough--in and of itself. But an icebergs placidly floating across a tranquil bodies of water masks a larger reality: only about 1/10 of the iceberg is ever actually visible. The mass and bulk lurks far beneath the water line, unglimpsed, unseen, and nearly impossible to get a full handle on. Of course, one doesn't have to grasp or even be aware of the entirety of an iceberg to be awed by it; but the fact remains that what is rendered visible is buttressed by what remains necessarily out of view.

So yes, my thoughts on The Pilgrim Hawk are essentially a Formalist's nightmare, dependent on knowledge and information found outside the text itself. But my reading of the novel represents one of those situations where my knowledge about the author completely shaped and shaded my thoughts when experiencing the actual text for the first time. And it led me to believe that The Pilgrim Hawk is a text containing hidden, incalculable depths.

Though I've read quite a bit on Wescott's life--something I'll return to shortly--after reading Hawk I finally read some direct analysis of the novel that I had been putting off, namely, Michael Cunningham's introduction to the NYRB edition, and Susan Sontag's late essay "Where the Stress Falls," a reflection on Wescott's novel which transforms into a more broad analysis of first-person narration in 20th century literature. I was rather startled to discover that both of these writers, both who are gay, neglect to mention the fact that Wescott himself was a gay man, not even throwing it out as a possibility that might affect interpretation of the novel and its possible meaning(s). Which, okay, I can understand, especially since both writers in question are themselves often described as being ambivalent about their sexuality within public spheres. But Wescott, whose life spanned a large chunk of the 20th century, was not as circumspect, which is a major reason why he looms large in the gay canon despite leaving behind a relatively scant oeuvre ("he has a certain syrup but it does not pour," remarked friend Gertrude Stein in the infamous The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas). I could write biographical information endlessly, but most pertinent is the fact that in 1919 Wescott met Monroe Wheeler--a book publisher who later became a major figure in establishing the MOMA--and the two men remained partners until Wescott's death in 1987. And while it's not hard to predict that this remarkable fact was left out of both men's New York Times obituaries, everything I have read attests to the fact their relationship was a well-known fact and they were "out" as romantic partners as much as the times allowed (which, it must be admitted, was the rarified and relatively accommodating transatlantic expatriate/New York City arts and culture world).

I drudge up these interesting but perhaps superfluous-seeming biographical details because I think it holds an important bearing on the volucrine symbol of the title. For indeed, the manner in which the titular hawk, a falcon named Lucy, is handled throughout the narrative seems to lay at the heart of most critiques (truth be told, that was my initial reaction too). Generally regarded as a heavy-handed symbol for a marriage of a particularly stifling and restrictive sort, when considered on that level it does come across as a perplexingly flatfooted flaw marring what otherwise comes across as a text of incredible linguistic and observational agility. But as I began thinking about the possible reasons why a gay man would take on this particular topic and what it might look from that particular perspective I found that what had initially seemed straightforward started becoming more and more elusive. A few scattered ideas that crossed my mind:

-Wescott was writing at a time when it was still a widely practiced social convention for not-straight men to enter into marriages, and a number of men in Wescott's circle did exactly that (Lincoln Kirstein, Carl Van Vechten, W. Somerset Maugham, Chick Austin, and Jared French, are several off the top of my head). From this angle, what had originally seemed like rather nondescript expository dialogue suddenly seemed pregnant with potential meaning. Consider: "some such hopeless attempt to escape, crazy fit of freedom, comes over all domesticated falcons at fairly regular intervals, [Madeleine Cullen] explained, especially in their first year or two… they never get over being wild" (26). Or this odd digression (allow me to quote it in full):

"Falcons, she informed us, do not breed in captivity… little by little the perfectly wild creature surrenders, individually, in the awful difficulty of hunger. But surrender is all, domestication is all; they never feel at home. You can carry male and female side by side on the same cadge year in and year out; nothing happens. They will cease to fight but they stay solitary. Scorn for each other for giving in, or self-scorn, seems to break their hearts. They never build a nest or lay an egg. Not one chick or eyas is ever reared in bondage. There is no real acceptance or inheritance of the state of surrender" (27-8).

Or what about Madeleine's later remark that "Lucy gives up her freedom and stays with me because it's a better life, more food and more fun" (49)? The idea of giving up and accepting "captivity" combined with the phrase "because it's a better life" sends shivers down my spine.

-Larry Cullen despises the falcon not only because she is the main object of his wife's attention and affection, but it also becomes clear that Lucy's presence literally prevents him from making direct physical contact with his wife. One of the most well-known facts about Wescott's life is the long-term ménage à trois relationship Wescott and Wheeler entered into with George Platt Lynes, who would go on to become a celebrated photographer. From the sections of Wescott's published journals that I have read, it is clear that Wheeler benefitted most from this arrangement, and that the beautiful, young, and effeminate Platt Lynes overwhelmingly preferred Wheeler as a sexual partner, which often left Wescott feeling excluded and dejected. Despite using the narrator as his very literal stand-in, I suspect the character of Larry was fully informed by Westcott's personal experiences as well.

-But why then, make Lucy a female hawk? It seems much more straightforward within the context of the story and all of its interpretations for the hawk to be a tercel (the term for a male hawk, as Madeline explains at one point). As is, it's a female presence at the root of the distance in the Cullen's relationship… and of course I'm going to follow up on the possible implications of that fact. Indeed, throughout The Falcon Hawk Madeleine Cullen continuously reveals unexpected dimensions: far from the frail-seeming woman tottering on "the highest heels" (6) that literally needs to be helped across the cobblestone driveway, we come to find out that in reality she is a healthy, lusty, vivacious, and incredibly driven woman who rides a horse magnificently, etc, etc. And isn't the idea of a "lady falconer" itself a rather bizarre one, an unexpected juxtaposition of traditional images of masculinity and femininity? All I'm saying is that symbolically there might be something to the fact that Madeline's affections are centered on a falcon than a tercel; could Lucy's captivity subtly mirror a possible type of imprisonment Madeline herself secretly experiences?

Even the title itself, it occurred to me after the fact, contains its own puzzling obscurities. Aside perhaps from wanting to avoid being confused with a certain, celebrated Dashiell Hammett novel, why a "Pilgrim Hawk" and not "Pilgrim Falcon?" By opting for a generalized term for his title, Wescott neutralizes gender particularity, opening up even more possibilities for interpretation.

I could go on and on along similar lines, but this has already started crossing that unwieldy space between "review" and "unanticipated term paper," and so I'll bring this to a close. Basically, the point I'm trying to make is that when taking into consideration Wescott's personal life--and make no mistake, Alwyn Tower is a stand-in for Wescott, a "character" that reappears throughout much of his work--and most particularly, his sexuality, we go a long way in starting to fathom the hidden 9/10s of the iceberg. And as a direct result, what at first glance comes of as a pretty but thin facade is effectively shattered, and whole chasms of possible meaning are suddenly, unexpectedly revealed.

[Tittirossa · Rating 5 out of 5]

Cito dal risguardo "Ha scritto Christopher Isherwood che Il falco pellegrino è uno di quei capolavori in cui è sempre più raro imbattersi. Romanzo perfetto, capace di sorprendere riga dopo riga.

E' vero.
E' scritto talmente bene, che tutti gli aspiranti scrittori dovrebbero leggerlo, e poi smettere di scrivere per un anno.

Lo finisci, e ti viene voglia di rileggerlo.

Parla di un falcone, un uomo, una donna, qualche comparsa (compreso l'io narrante), la vita, l'amore, le passioni, le scelte. Inevitabili, inutili, utili, dolorose. La cattività come paradigma.

[Tony]

This could be an afternoon read, this story of an afternoon in Chancellet, told in the early 40's, but set in "May of 1928 or 1929."

Chancellet must be a painful place in the forties, although one of the least changed in France, I suppose, because it is unimportant.

That is a remarkable, sublime sentence, occurring early in this book. For if this little, out-of-the-way place is unimportant now, it was surely unimportant then. And if painful now, then it would be painful then too.

No Frenchman is a character in the book; no Frenchwoman. Our narrator, an American expatriate, is entrenched in the home of Alexandra, another expatriate. They are not lovers, just friends, and they spend their days being expatriates. A husband and wife from Morocco serve them. Along come the Cullens, a married, peripatetic Irish couple, and their chauffeur. Seven characters this afternoon. Unless, of course, you count the falcon, Lucy, perched on Mrs. Cullen's arm.

What happens that afternoon, in May of 1928 or 1929, in this unimportant place, is seemingly sui generis. But, of course, a falcon is not fed half a pigeon just to move the story along. And Larry Cullen, drunk on "pre-war vodka", doesn't lean in - still some of that fine pre-bolshevik distillation on his somewhat accelerated and audible breath - and confess his state of cuckoldry merely to titillate.

(I seem to be on a roll with critter symbolism, having just finished The Lion of Boaz-Jachin and Jachin-Boaz. And this is my third novel, after The Goshawk and The Adventures of Augie March, with falconry storylines read in the past year.)

We watch a marriage unraveling.

There is not as much sweet safety in marriage as one hopes. Hunger and its twin, disgust, are in it too; need and greed; and passage of time, the punishment.

We watch, too, a lustful eye, and a separate peace. Unlike Chekhov, Wescott does not introduce the gun until the end. Right before our narrator is told, "You're no novelist."

I hope you'll stay for the squab.

[robin friedman · Rating 5 out of 5]

Discovering The Pilgrim Hawk

It is always special to discover a new book or author. My brother gave me a copy of this short novel, "The Pilgrim Hawk" by Glenway Wescott. I hadn't heard of the book or author before. Published in 1940, "The Pilgrim Hawk" has been reissued by the New York Review Books "Classics" series, which specializes in "reclaiming hidden gems of literature with introductions by distinguished contemporary authors." The Pulitzer-prize winning novelist Michael Cunningham wrote the introduction to the NYRB "The Pilgrim Hawk", describing it as "a work of brilliance". A NYRB reading group guide to the novel with discussion questions is available online.

The author, Glenway Wescott, (1901 -- 1987) grew up in rural Wisconsin and lived as an expatriate in France in the 1920s. He was one of the few individuals at the time who was openly gay. He wrote poems, novels, and stories, but his writings in these genres ceased in 1945. "The Pilgrim Hawk" received critical recognition when it was published but soon fell into oblivion. The work has been highly praised by contemporary critics, and it is valuable to have it accessible in the NYRB edition.

"The Pilgrim Hawk" is set in rural France in the late 1920s and is narrated by an unsuccessful American novelist approaching middle age, Alwyn Tower. Tower is staying at the villa of his close friend, an American woman named Alexandra Henry, referred to throughout as "Alex". The nature of the relationship between Tower and Alex, including what seems to me likely sexual frustration, remains ambiguous. The story takes place in a single afternoon when a wealthy Irish couple, the Cullens, en route to Hungary, comes to pay their friend Alex a visit. In its brief course, Wescott's novel explores the complexities of three relationships, those between Larry and Madeline Cullen, between Jean and Eva, house servants of Alex, and between Tower and Alex. Much of the course of the story is set out in the opening paragraph of the work and then gradually unpacked:

"The Cullens were Irish, but it was in France that I met them and was able to form an impression of their love and their trouble. They were on their way to a property they had rented in Hungary; and one afternoon they came to Chanceller to see my great friend Alexandra Henry. That was in May of 1928 or 1929, before we all returned to America, and she met my brother and married him."

Madeline Cullen comes into the story with her pet hawk, Lucy, perched on her wrist. It is rare to have an animal become an effective character in a story, but Wescott succeeds. Lucy is painstakinly and convincingly described and becomes the focus of the story in her own right, not merely as a symbol. She and the human characters each explore in their own way the tension between independence, freedom, and wildness, and love and domesticity.

The book moves slowly. It is made by its style which is at once beautifully dense and precise. Every word tells. The book also has a detailed structure in which scenes develop and are foreshadowed in what comes before. The story centers upon Tower's increased understanding of the relationship between the Cullens, from their apparently staid and shallow exteriors to the tensions not far below the surface in what Tower describes in his opening as "their love and their trouble". As the work proceeds, it expands its focus to include Tower himself and his relationship to Alex. Tower is himself a hawk-eyed observer of people and scenes. The book develops the tension between the ability to describe and understand people on the one hand and the ability to be involved and to attempt a relationship with another person on the other hand. My attention moved as I read this novella from the Cullens and their relationship to Tower himself and to what I understand as the frustration of his relationship to Alex. Perhaps the shortening of Alexandra Henry's name to "Alex" suggests something as well of the difficulties of Tower's relationship to her.

This short subtle work requires patience and concentration to read. It shouldn't be read quickly and would benefit from being read through twice. I was glad to find "The Pilgrim Hawk", to reflect upon it for itself, and to be reminded of the breadth and depth of literature written by Americans.

Robin Friedman

[Hux · Rating 2 out of 5]

Goodness, this was dull.

It concerns some posh people in a big house with servants in France and one day a couple, the annoying Cullens, arrive and -- get ready for the marriage analogy -- they bring a hawk with them. More specifically, the wife brings a hawk (as you do), and the narrator (a very blank individual) provides the details of this somewhat banal encounter. They have dinner for a start, then go for a walk on the grounds (owned by a loony politician), and get into arguments, and the husband resents the bird and sets it free (but it comes back ) and... oh, I couldn't tell you anymore, I was so bored.

It would appear that this bird is to be seen as a metaphor for marriage, the stifled need for freedom and individuality within the confines of a constraining environment which is inevitably taken away by domesticity and routine. I think that's the moral of the story here. I don't know. I don't care. Because I was so unutterably bored. Did I mention how bored I was? There's an introduction where Michael Cunningham compares this book favourably to the Great Gatsby and I totally agree with him. Because that book is awful too, perhaps the most overrated piece of dry blah in history. But anyway...

The writing's fine, clear and concise, but goodness it's so very dull. If you've read one book about rich Americans swanning about Europe in the '20s, having dinner parties, and saying 'old sport' every now and then... you've read them all. You've read this. Did you enjoy it? No, of course not. Because it's as dry as a fat woman's thighs rubbing against each other on an unfeasibly arid autumn day.

[G.G. · Rating 3 out of 5]

Michael Cunningham, in his introduction to the New York Review of Books edition of Glenway Westcott’s novel, makes some big claims:

To my mind, The Pilgrim Hawk stands unembarrassed beside Ford Madox Ford’s The Good Soldier, F. Scott Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby, and Henry James’s “The Aspern Papers.” […] Each shares the conviction that, as far as human affairs are concerned, it may be better to live hugely and tragically, even in the service of some grand, ardent mistake, than submit to the seductions of mildness, reason, and order.

One sees what he means—and yet I wasn’t convinced that The Pilgrim Hawk is quite as good as that. Certainly, the narrator of the novel, Alwyn Tower, is a figure reminiscent of Nick Carraway in Gatsby: a participant in the action, but as the observing centre, always on the outside.

Tower tells the story of what happened one afternoon “in 1928 or 1929” at the home of his “great friend” Alexandra Henry outside Paris. Larry and Madeleine Cullen, an Irish couple “on their way to a property they had rented in Hungary” arrive in a chauffeur-driven Daimler; Mrs. Cullen bears “a full-grown hooded falcon on her wrist.” The four sit around drinking, smoking, and talking for the rest of the day, and Mrs. Cullen spends a good deal of time telling the others about falcons; among the characteristics she mentions is that they do not breed in captivity. “There is no real acceptance or inheritance of the state of surrender.” So yes, the hawk is of course a symbol, and readers will form their own ideas about the work the hawk does here. One of the bird’s functions is to increase the tension: the conversation goes round and round, everyone affable enough, but in the presence of a wild creature, it can only be a matter of time before someone lets go.

As Cunningham writes, “Almost every page contains some small wonder of phrase or insight, some instance of the world keenly observed and reinvented.” For me, The Pilgrim Hawk is about marriage, and Tower’s view is bleak.

Unrequited passion; romance put asunder by circumstances or mistakes; sexuality pretending to be love—all that is a matter of little consequence…compared with the long course of true love, especially marriage. In marriage, insult arises again and again and again; and pain has to be not only endured, but consented to; and the amount of forgiveness that it necessitates is incredible and exhausting. […] To see the cost of love before one has felt what it is worth is a pity; one may never have the courage to begin.

Just who Tower is talking about here I leave readers to ponder for themselves.

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

O Falcão Peregrino é um romance que aborda os sentimentos e as relações entre as pessoas; por vezes (ou sempre) mais extenuantes e complexos do que domesticar uma fera selvagem.

A acção decorre - nos anos 20, numa casa de campo em França - durante uma tarde, em que os Cullen - um casal de irlandeses ricos - visitam a sua amiga Alex. O narrador é Tower, um hóspede da casa, que se diverte observando o casal, enquanto se questiona sobre as relações amorosas.
"Amor não correspondido, romance destroçado por peculiaridades ou erros cometidos, sexo fazendo-se passar por amor — nada disso tem real importância, não é mais que um sobressalto voluntário e passageiro, comparado com a longa prova do verdadeiro amor, em particular o casamento. No casamento, as ofensas repetem-se continuamente; e a dor deve não apenas ser suportada, mas consentida; e a assombrosa quantidade de perdão que um casamento exige torna-se esgotante. As satisfações do amor, descobrimos mais tarde, temos que as pagar durante boa parte do resto da nossa vida, prestação atrás de prestação..."

Uma das oito personagens deste romance, para mim a mais fascinante, é o animal de estimação de Madeleine Cullen, um falcão: Lucy um "pássaro simbólico e universal; uma imagem primitiva com asas de ferro, manchas cor de ferrugem e patas de esmalte; uma homicida alada, como um anjo, sanguinária e predadora de luxo."


Nota: O falcão peregrino é o animal mais veloz do mundo, chegando a atingir a velocidade de 350 km/hora. Muitas das suas presas, caçadas em voo picado, morrem instantemente apenas com o impacto.



"Girando e girando em voltas crescentes
O falcão não pode ouvir o falcoeiro.
Tudo se desmorona..."
— W. B. Yeats

[Michael · Rating 5 out of 5]

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.

[Tosh · Rating 4 out of 5]

A very strange socially elegant short novel that deals with a hawk that sort of observes the world or at the very least this particular world. It sort of reminds me of going to a dinner party and not really knowing anyone - yet you stay too long. The novel had that affect on me, yet I am going to re-read it shortly. Why? My first reading some years ago made me think 'this is really good, why?' So there is an essence of a mystery of it all that pleases my sense of aesthetic.

[Daisy · Rating 3 out of 5]

Marriage is like a tamed hawk. It clips your wings, limits your freedom but at least you know where your next meal is coming from.
A novella that looks at long-term marriage where neither of you are the gorgeous things you were in your youth, you put up with the embarrassments the other cause you (the husband gets drunk and foolish, the wife with eccentric obsessions and the hawk pooping on the floor), you make concessions to please the other even though they may make you unhappier and yet you still love each other so will never willingly leave the confines of it.
A strange beguiling piece that has the most poetic descriptions of a hawk you will ever find.

[Sketchbook · Rating 2 out of 5]

Life is almost all perch, observes the author, there is no nest. No one is with you. So there you sit, he continues, and dream and doze to save trouble. The metaphor here is a house pet -- a hawk named Lucy. I am not persuaded.

[Dov Zeller · Rating 4 out of 5]

If I felt free to make new bookshelves all the time (and not afraid of being overwhelmed by a superfluity of them) I would make one just for this book called Love and Trouble. Not that that couldn't be the title of everything.

I read this book a while back, assigned reading in a class I was taking, and I appreciated it a lot. While some people complain that Wescott tries to knock readers over the head with some cave-man mallet of symbolism, I felt very differently about it. I am in awe of of the kinds of quiet concision and subtlety running all through the text. There is not a word out of place, and one is constantly feeling the pressure of it, and yet not much really happens, except small personal and interpersonal tragedy that can feel at once acutely particular and broadly metaphorical. There's the slightest bit of James in here but not quite so evasive or jumpy, and a lot more cool and intimate.

Right now I am going back to read the first paragraphs and I find them almost astonishing. Just the fist sentence has so much in it.

"The cullens were Irish; but it was in France that I met them and was able to form an impression of their love and their trouble."

There is something so withdrawn about the voice: "an impression of their love and their trouble." And yet, clearly the narrator is speaking of them for a reason. He must have some investment in their story. So why is he working so hard to modulate his voice, or forcing himself to remember something painful, and why does he feel the need to explain, even make excuses as to why he was with them. It is a way of starting the book off-balance, pushing a reader away and making them hold on just a little tighter to keep footing.

"They were on their way to a property they had rented in Hungary; and one afternoon they came to Chancellet to see my great friend Alexandra Henry. That was in May of 1928 or 1929, before we all returned to America, and she met my brother and married him."

There is not the familiarity one might expect. "My great friend Alexandra Henry." Still the forced calm and distance.

"Needless to say, the twenties were very different from the thirties, and now the forties have begun. In the twenties it was not unusual to meet foreigners in some country as foreign to them as to you, your peregrination just crossing theirs; and you did your best to know them in an afternoon or so; and perhaps you called that little lightning knowledge, friendship. There was a kind of idealistic or optimistic curiosity in the air. And vagaries of character, and the various war and peace that goes on in the psyche, seemed of the greatest interest and even importance."

It seems the kind of meditation that could be the start of a much longer novel, but this is a slip of a thing, painful and spare, and with a strange sense of humor. I love the word peregrination in the middle of this second paragraph. It brings us back to the strange title, Pilgrim Hawk, which might as well be peregrine falcon, for that is just about the exact meaning of it, and yet, it is nothing of the sort. And "your peregrination just crossing theirs" makes it seem that we are the birds, the animals being observed from afar, we have been the animals in flight all along, with our strange migrations and social habits.

If I wanted to write more I'd have to reread the book. Maybe at some point. (And perhaps I really will make a new shelf for that.)

[diario_de_um_leitor_pjv · Rating 4 out of 5]

COMENTÁRIO
"O Falcão Peregrino"
Glenway Wescott
Tradução de José Miguel Silva
Introdução de Michael Cunningham

Leitura rica e rápida. Uma pequena novela. UmA história que vacila ser algo cómica, algo trágica ou algo surreal.

Uma tarde. Uma casa (e seus arredores). O narrador corresponde ao escritor falhado instalado na casa de uma amiga. Recebem a visita de um surreal casal rico de irlandeses que se passeiam com um Falcão.

No contraponto o casal de empregados da casa e o motorista do casal irlandês adensam com detalhes cruzados os pormenores da trama.

E assim Wescott prende o leitor numa viagem simbólica cheia de micro peripécias em que o Falcão se resignifica como paradigma na tensão existentes entre personagens.

Um texto extraordinário, bem escrito - preciso e sucinto, como refere na introdução Michael Cunninghham - e com um construção narrativa, na minha opinião, brilhante que nos deixa agarrados nas mirabolantes situações caseiras que parecendo insignificantes provocam tempestades perfeitas.

Uma nota pessoal. Que livro tão perfeito. Tão adequado a reflectir. Tão aparentemente simples.

[Nelson Zagalo · Rating 1 out of 5]

Tinha expectativas altas criadas por múltiplas reverências contemporâneas feitas ao texto, desde logo a sua reedição na coleção NYRB Classics, depois o texto introdutório de Michael Cunningham.

Por isso quando comecei a ler sobre uma personagem da alta sociedade que andava com um falcão atrás de si como animal de estimação, dei inicialmente o desconto. Mas quando a personagem começa a falar sobre a impossibilidade de amestrar estes animais, do seu sofrimento, comecei a desligar. Pouco depois chegava a vez de ridicularizar os cães. Pelo caminho, fala-se apenas de viagens pelos múltiplos continentes, do enorme sofrimento que é viver, viver enquanto se respira.

Enfim. Existem aqui algumas ideias interessantes, mas o texto sofre de um enorme pedantismo, a que se junta um conjunto de ideias completamente datadas. Por isso, não posso sequer dizer que tenha sido uma experiência média, simplesmente não gostei.

[Julian Worker · Rating 3 out of 5]

The praise for this short novel on the back cover compares the book to Faulkner's The Bear in terms of the finest American short novels. As I can't stand William Faulkner, I should have been warned that I might not fully appreciate this piece of work.

However, I bought the book and I have read it all, to the very end, unlike my attempts at reading Faulkner novels where I usually give up at the end of the fifth sentence on page 25.

Having said that, I didn't like any of the characters at all - credit to the writer of course and hence the three stars - and if they'd all died at the hands of a mad axeman at the end I would haven't been upset.

Anyway, at the end of the 1920s, two independently wealthy Americans are living in suburban France - one the owner another a house guest perhaps loosely based on the author - when who should show up one afternoon but a wealthy pair of visitors who are being driven by their chauffeur to Budapest. Mr and Mrs Cullen bring with them the hawk of the title by the name of Lucy. While the chauffeur goes to the kitchen out of sight to leer and flirt with Eva, the wife of the chef Jean, the four rich people take centre stage although the main character is the hawk. Mr Cullen's feelings about his wife are directed both in his actions and his words towards the hawk, whereas Mrs Cullen, a fading beauty, is both fearful and spoilt.

With Jean and Eva cooking dinner, Mrs Cullen suddenly decides she has to leave to go to see her brother. Something happens in the car between The Cullens just after they depart and the car returns, but there seems to be no going back for The Cullens, no going back to what they had between them when they'd arrived earlier that same day.

[Iris · Rating 4 out of 5]

As a Minnesotan, I was startled to learn that Glenway Wescott is from my neighboring state of Wisconsin; so, too, is his narrator, who seems to have stayed in Europe since serving in World War I. Startled, because "The Pilgrim Hawk: A Love Story" (1940) is very European in structure and sentiment. It's a novella about one afternoon in a garden and home in France. The narrator is a keen observer and hyper-self-aware, self-critical thinker, spending the day with his female friend Alex. They have guests: a rich Irish couple driving through Europe in their Daimler out of economy because even a luxury road trip is cheaper than maintaining their estate.

The pilgrim hawk, named Lucy, is the focus of the narrator's fascination, and he offers enchanting descriptions of the bird's movements as she perches the Irish woman's gloved hand, pulsing with energy. The action and drama unfolds surprisingly, and bitterly, with the hawk always in the center. This is a fine and subtle story that I look forward to returning to in coming years.

[Telma Castro · Rating 4 out of 5]

Foi um gosto esmiuçar estas oitenta e nove páginas. Há livros bem mais extensos no que nos dizem muito menos.
Esta novela de Wescott é uma espécie de miniatura da sociedade, onde a riqueza metafórica e simbólica sobressaem. O universo confinado em que se desenrola a narrativa é minuciosamente escolhido, com aquela ironia afiada que aprecio e personagens muito bem caracterizadas; tudo está no seu seu devido lugar, nada é deixado ao acaso. O talento do autor é muito evidente nesta encruzilhada de emoções de liberdade e clausura.
Recomendo.

[Siv30 · Rating 5 out of 5]

לסקירה מפורטת בעברית, קישור לבלוג שלי -

https://sivi-the-avid-reader.com/הבז-...

[Jenna · Rating 4 out of 5]

A novella of penetrating psychological insight. The story unfolds amid the expatriate community living in France in the naively optimistic years between the two World Wars. WWI's aftermath and WWII's incipience affect the characters' lives in a fashion that is scarcely perceptible and yet not insignificant, reminding me of how in the classic Japanese film The Makioka Sisters (another work of art about the private lives of a declining aristocracy in the 1940s) the imminence of WWII is barely mentioned and yet unignorably important. When Wescott describes the pet falcon of one of the main characters as having the shape of a "six-pointed star," is this entirely accidental, I wondered? Is it an accident that The Pilgrim Hawk's characters, who are living in a Europe that is about to be completely shaken-up and to have all its borders re-drawn, are always using national stereotypes to try to make sense of the people they meet: "How rare pulchritude is among the Irish," "His British complexion suggested eating and drinking rather than hunting and shooting," "Although of common Germanic origin he was very strict about manners," and so on?

The plot concerns two unmarried people, a man and a woman, who are visited one afternoon by a married couple. The increasingly melodramatic antics of the married pair, which are largely instigated by the husband's jealousy of his wife's much-coddled pet falcon, cause the unmarried pair to reassess their own ambiguous relationship and their unstable perceptions of themselves. Although The Pilgrim Hawk predates Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? by two decades, it is not completely dissimilar to it.

The relationship between the two unmarried characters is presented ambiguously: the unmarried man, who also happens to be the book's narrator, is forthcoming about many things, but he is not very forthcoming about his feelings toward the unmarried woman. Are they merely friends? lovers? former lovers? Is the unmarried man based on Glenway Wescott himself, an openly gay man? The book's ending, which, like the ending of To Kill a Mockingbird is heavily foreshadowed on the very first page, has a sadness to it, mirroring in its own small way the deep sorrows that would soon overtake its characters' Europe.

[Kathy · Rating 4 out of 5]

Brilliant novella I found at the library whilst looking through the Donald E Westlake books available. It caught my eye and the weight of the slim paperbook held its own attraction. I have not read this author before. This book was published 1940 and features a day in the French countryside in the late 1920s.
The house is owned by a young American woman heiress and she is enjoying the company of a male friend (also American) who writes fiction and who serves as our narrator. They are to be visited by a wealthy Irish couple, arriving in their chauffeur-driven Daimler along with the lady's new pet, a hawk.

I was interrupted by a complicated phone call full of tragic detail and cannot now do this book justice. It's a rare gem.
If the book is hard to find, I noticed the kindle book is available inexpensively at this moment in time. The paperback is just 108 pages but the font is miniscule, set in Trump Mediaeval.

[Juan Medina · Rating 3 out of 5]

"La humanidad, en cambio, tiende al histrionismo, preocupándose de ensayar con todo detalle cada arrebato de pasión..."
GW

[Lobstergirl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A strange, beautifully written novella about an aristocratic Irish couple, the wife's completely engrossing hawk, and two rich expatriate Americans, chewing the fat in a French villa one afternoon as servants prepare them a dinner of pigeons with white currants. Sentences like "We could hear their hunting horns which sounded like a picnic of boy sopranos, lost" had me thinking five stars right away. The entire novella didn't live up to that level, but how often do you see the phrase "avian haberdashers"? As a narrator, Alwyn Tower reminded me of Nick Carraway, at the center of all the action yet hovering above it more as observer than participant.

Cover art by Nam June Paik (32 cars for the 20th century: play Mozart's Requiem quietly)

[Rogue Male · Rating 5 out of 5]

9/10

[Richard · Rating 4 out of 5]

A quick, intricately constructed novel that unwinds like clockwork. Using a hawk as a kind of central metaphor and narrative binding agent, Glenway Wescott (What a name! Where have you gone, Glenway Wescotts?), sharply observes the unraveling relationships of eight creatures over the course of an afternoon. The narrator is visiting his friend or possibly love interest Alexandra at her house in Paris. They are in turn visited by Alex's Irish/British friends the Cullens who also bring along Mrs. Cullen's hawk, Lucy, and their chauffer, Ricketts(!). The hawk is completely wild, only kept at Mrs. Cullen's side by a hood, a leash, and the promise of food. Still, she is obsessed with it, makes it central to her life, and loves it for its complete indifference to human artifice. Her husband is jealous of the bird for the same reason. He's smothered by the need to maintain respectability and placate the whims of his wife - which often involve getting Mr. Cullen mixed up in dangerous hunting expeditions or dipping his aristocratic and ambivalent toes in revolutionary activity. With the addition of Lucy to their relationship, Mr. Cullen understandably starts feeling obsolete. Mrs. Cullen makes it clear that if the bird were released from its captivity, it would live a harsh life of hunger and eventually die of starvation as its eyesight, strength, or quickness failed. Both Cullens see a reflection of this possibility in their own lives, should either of them leave the other. As the Cullen's relationship is stretched to its limit, the narrator and Alex, unattached to each other or anyone else, but looking for the right person, are forced to examine what they want out of a relationship and what they may end up with. The handsome and confident chauffer, Ricketts, causes a similar upheaval in the life of Alex's married servants. As they wait for pigeon to be served, the hood comes off - all their fears come to the surface in a drunken act of protest, and a desperate final scene.

[Justin Evans · Rating 4 out of 5]

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.

[David · Rating 2 out of 5]

I didn't really like the Cullens coming back. Why did they have to come back? It had been a tight little play, and then everything was hysterical and silly.


"We could hear their hunting horns which sounded like a picnic of boy sopranos, lost."

"How rare pulchritude is among the Irish, I said to myself;" Er.....

"He was a large man, not really fat but with bulk and softness irregularly here and there, not so much in the middle as up and down his back, all around his head, in his hands."

"A little narrow frown, an efficient survey, only to discover if there was anything in it for her personally; and there was not."

"His wife gave him that look of hers which was the opposite of applause;"

[Francesca · Rating 2 out of 5]

Credo di non averlo capito. Un racconto più che un romanzo. Veloce, immediato, istantaneo. Quasi un testo perfetto per una piece teatrale. Non i è piaciuto però. Credevo meglio. Nessuna interiorizzazione dei personaggi, nessuna contestualizzazione dell’ambiente. Conferma della mia poca predilezione per i racconti brevi.