Good-Bye Wisconsin

by Glenway Wescott

Black cloth with gold titles, gold on spine is quite dull, front is bright. head of spine is slightly pulled and tail is bumped. Cloth is a little spotty. Decorative endpapers. Slight water stain to top edge of pages. Foxing to leading edge. 362p.

362 pages, Hardcover

First published June 1, 1928

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

[Lobstergirl · Rating 3 out of 5]

I'm often made uncomfortable by settings of rural squalor, tales of the dimwitted, and people striving to get to and stay in the middle class, hanging on by their fingertips, just barely. So, many of the stories in this collection made me uneasy (hence my unappreciative 3-star rating for a writer deep in talent). In "The Runaways," a young married couple set fire to her deceased parents' farmhouse in order to collect the insurance money; when the scheme is sniffed out as suspicious, they hit the road and join a carnival that includes the game "Hit the Nigger Baby." (The collection was published in 1928 and is set almost entirely in Wisconsin.) In "Prohibition," a family drinks a lot. The old man beats his wife. But once he rolls out of the hay cart, drunk, and spends the night in the road, he loses his hands and feet to frostbite and can no longer beat her. His smiling wife serves him whiskey with a straw.

Despite these hayseed settings, Wescott was a sophisticate who had escaped to Europe, glamor, and love with another man. In the title story he returns to Wisconsin, takes two trains to his small town, musing all the while, and self-consciously remembers the beret he is wearing when he gets into a conversation with two young locals.

In "The Whistling Swan," a young composer returns from Europe after his allowance from a wealthy patron has been discontinued, to face life in Wisconsin, where he is not quite betrothed, but probably expected, to marry a girl named Muriel.

Life had made him a gift of this girl. Originally he had loved her for her sympathy, that is, loved himself through her as well as in other ways. After he went abroad he had written, every week, not perfectly truthful records of his feeling, but love-letters of the man he hoped to become to the girl he would have chosen; a sensitive needle must have some pole to turn to. Then, having addressed so many pages to his own idealism, he dreaded seeing the real Muriel again. But she had profited by every phrase, imitated every compliment, prepared herself to meet strange expectations. Failing to love her now would be unfaithfulness not only to her, but to a work of his imagination.

I've discovered that Wescott was truly a genius when it came to writing about religion. He obviously spent many hours in churches, because his descriptions of services are so true. In "Good-bye Wisconsin" he recalls a deacon improvising a prayer. The irony here is rich.

"Dear Father, we thank Thee that we live in a day when men are given to enjoy many things that they never had before. Especially women - I think women's lives have been made easy and lifted out of the darkness, thanks to the right interpretation of Thy Scriptures. And dear Father, we hear at present a great deal of talk against Thy church. It has its limitations, we know, but it has done a wonderful work for mankind. And what have they found to take its place? Until another institution comes along which can do that work better, let us be faithful to it. Bless us in the name of the Son who, as we have seen, was born unto us this day. Amen." I realize that it is not blasphemous, for it is only rhetorically addressed to God, not meant to be heard in heaven but overheard in this town. Thus the religion of Calvin, holding its own in society at all costs, is helping itself cease to be a religion at all, the little churches becoming - oh, let us say, clubs.

"The Dove Came Down" takes place mostly in a church service, as Arthur Hale and his fiancee Emily Grover worship. At least, Emily does; Arthur has no particular belief system, and he notes with discomfort that it is Communion Sunday and soon the platters will be circulating.

Four middle-aged men awkwardly went down the aisle. The pastor removed the linen, blessed the spiritual nourishment, and sent them back to the congregation with it. A dead silence fell in the high, bare room. All the women took clean handkerchiefs out of their bodices and handbags. Silent prayers were offered - doubtless for the healing of sicknesses, the straightening of deformities, the breaking of bad habits, the return of wanderers.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

pretty good...I enjoyed picking out places I knew

[Diane · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am not much for short stories and the first story put me off a bit being a little too ostentatious for my taste even though I felt it was an interesting unique style of writing. The rest of the stories were good but I always feel like the endings are insufficient to get a complete sense of the story. It is hard for me to say if it gave a good sense of what Wisconsin was like in the 1920s but I am guessing that it does, being a Wisconsinite myself.

[Tom Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

Never-read copy, that is: an unopened book that required some folds to be "cut". (I used a playing card per https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VU7lq... ) I also purchased, from a different seller, a copy of Wescott's 'The Grandmothers' that was in the same condition, unopened; both for under forty-dollars each, not bad for ninety-year old books in pristine condition. For me this was a unique experience.

The short stories are well written; having a modern feel to their syntax. They also vary as to the quality of their storylines. From the exceptional; 'The Runaways', 'Adolescence', 'A Guilty Woman', 'Like a Lover' (the best, IMO), and 'Prohibition'; to the whinging, which is basically the remaining six. Although, of the lesser six 'In a Thicket' left me unsure as to what to think.

Loved this quote from the title page, "Beside the temple dedicated to Fear, the Lacedaemonians have others consecrated to Death, Laughter, and similar powers. They honor Fear, not as a baleful spirit to be propitiated, but because they regard it as the chief support of their body politic." Incredible; in as much as that baleful belief has descended all the way down to our present day, reptilian, Republicans.

Wescott has a biting wit. Loved this sentence describing a church deacon's prayer, "...not meant to be heard in heaven but overheard in this town." The little churches that had more in common with social clubs than to sacred buildings dedicated to meeting the spiritual needs of the town's good people.