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Biography / Gay Interest / American Literature

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Glenway Wescott Personally A Biography Jerry Rosco "It is a distinct treat to recall my meetings with and listening in awe to Glenway Wescott, noted novelist, essayist, pundit, and bon vivant." —Liz Smith, syndicated columnist As a writer, Glenway Wescott (1901–1987) left behind a series of novels, including The Grandmothers and The Pilgrim Hawk, noted for their remarkable lyricism. As a literary figure, Wescott also became a symbol of his times. Born on a Wisconsin farm in 1901, he associated as a young writer with Hemingway, Stein, and Fitzgerald in 1920s Paris and subsequently was a central figure in New York's artistic and gay communities. Though he couldn't finish a novel after the age of forty-five, he was just as famous as an arts impresario, as a diarist, and for the company he kept: W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Marianne Moore, Somerset Maugham, E. M. Forster, Joseph Campbell, and scores of other luminaries. In Glenway Wescott Personally, Jerry Rosco chronicles Wescott's long and colorful life, his early fame and later struggles to write, the uniquely privileged and sometimes tortured world of artistic creation. Rosco sensitively and insightfully reveals Wescott's private life, his long relationship with Museum of Modern Art curator Monroe Wheeler, his work with sex researcher Alfred Kinsey that led to breakthrough findings on homosexuality, and his kinship with such influential artists as Jean Cocteau, George Platt-Lynes, and Paul Cadmus. "A major book and a fascinating glimpse at an author's private life as well as his writing career. Wescott's life and career are important to American literature and to the history of changing sexual mores in America. It should take its place alongside Carlos Baker's Ernest Hemingway, Mark Schorer's Sinclair Lewis, and Philip Herring's Djuna Barnes as the definitive biographical treatment."—Sargent Bush, Jr., University of Wisconsin–Madison Jerry Rosco is a New Yorker writer and editor and the co-editor of Continual Lessons: The Journals of Glenway Wescott 1937–1955. He lives in New York City. Glenway Westcott Personally won the 2003 Stonewall Award Honor Book for nonfiction, from the American Library Association GLBT Roundtable.

April 2002 324 pp.      28 b/w photos     6 x 9 ISBN 0-299-17730-0   Cloth $29.95t To order click on one of the bulleted items below For explaination of the SHOPPING CART OPERATIONS MasterCard/Visa holders, accumulate titles in the Shopping Cart and submit your order electronically. Never ordered from us before? Read this first.

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