Word: wescott
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WITH his Harper Prize Novel, "The Grandmothers," Glenway Wescott sprang into literary prominence. With the remains of that impetus he now gives us a collection of short stories. Some of them were written before the prize novel, some after. At all events, they somehow, fail to hit the mark. The opening tale, from which the collection draws its name, is an intimation of a desire of the author's to get away from the middle western background and attitude which featured his novel. In the future he will seek new fields to exploit and will let alone the Middle West...
Somehow, there is an awkwardness about Mr. Wescott's style which mars the effects he strives to produce. The sentences are too involved, and far too often there is a decided incoherence. One of the stories, called "Adolescence," seems in a fair way to present certain observations on that state when it is mangled beyond hope of success by the roundabout method of presentation. Another, "Wedding March" by name, comes considerably nearer to achieving...
...title Author Wescott implies that he is finished with his native haunts as literary copy it is just as well, since Wisconsin appears to him in unrelieved grey?a monotone of ugliness. And so do the people. Not a one of them has charm or gentleness or pleasant impulses; and the thoughts of each, tortuously analyzed, hark back to a frustration or forward with resignation and despair. Typical in the collection of stories are the drab blunderings of Amelia and her loutish husband ("The Runaways") who weary of their sterile farm, and burn the house for the insurance. Too scatter...
...flat emotions; a young musician's painful maladjustment on returning home from the greater world (Paris left-bank); a young girl's brooding over an implied sadistic horror-these are subject to Author Wescott's youthful scrutiny. He has a marked gift for creating atmospheric effects, and a keen sense of human drama ("In a Thicket," "Like a Lover," "The Sailor"); but, immature in his aping, he caters too much to Proust and Joyce...
...found therein the more loneliness because her husband, passionately devoted to their small son, needed her less than ever. There was still Zanti, of the little curiosity shop, who dispensed philosophy to Janet much as he did, volumes ago (Fortitude, published 1913), to Peter Wescott. There was Peter himself, young and successful novelist. There was old John Beamister-Zoffany Club at a quarter to one precisely-who approved Janet's quiet dignity. More important, there was the Duke, benevolently white-haired, who knew the bitterness of Janet's love for his son. But none of these were enough...