William Goyen: Selected Letters from a Writer’s Life - Softcover

Goyen, William

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0292729642 ISBN 13: 9780292729643

Publisher: University of Texas Press, 1995

Synopsis

Proclaimed "one of the great American writers of short fiction" by the New York Times Book Review, William Goyen (1915-1983) had a quintessentially American literary career, in which national recognition came only after years of struggle to find his authentic voice, his audience, and an artistic milieu in which to create. These letters, which span the years 1937 to 1983, offer a compelling testament to what it means to be a writer in America.

A prolific correspondent, Goyen wrote regularly to friends, family, editors, and other writers. Among the letters selected here are those to such major literary figures as W. H. Auden, Archibald MacLeish, Joyce Carol Oates, William Inge, Elia Kazan, Elizabeth Spencer, and Katherine Anne Porter.

These letters constitute a virtual autobiography, as well as a fascinating introduction to Goyen's work. They add an important chapter to the study of American and Texas literature of the twentieth century.

About this title

About the Author:

A longtime friend of William Goyen’s, editor Robert Phillips is Director of the Creative Writing Program and Professor of English at the University of Houston. He also edited Letters of Delmore Schwartz and Delmore Schwartz and James Laughlin: Selected Letters.

Review:

"Goyen's work requires much of a reader, but these letters provide an intimate 'portrait of the artist' from Texas that makes reading it and them well worth the effort." Texas Books in Review "Letters this impassioned about one's art have few if any analogues or forebears. They take their place in the tradition of Baudelaire, Flaubert and even Dostoyevsky... His prose has the emotional power of poetry...and these letters deal unceasingly with the torment of getting his vision into the right language... Goyen's letters are almost never preoccupied with philosophical grandstanding but with the daily details, the constant affirmation of a tough choice -- the 'agony and ecstasy' of creating some of America's most distinctive prose." San Antonio Express-News "...an exceptionally responsible volume, one that belongs--for the eloquence of its...accounts of the writer's life, intention, and travail--with other important American documents of the period--the journals of Wilder and Wescott, the letters of Cheever and Bogan..." Richard Howard

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Texas Press
• Publication date: 1995
• ISBN 10: 0292729642
• ISBN 13: 9780292729643
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 471
• Editor: Phillips Robert