Features May 1989
States of grace: the novels of William Maxwell
On Maxwell’s novels.
The simplest things are often not what they seem.
—William Maxwell, The Château
. . . who knows what oversensitive is, considering all there is to be sensitive to.
—William Maxwell, So Long, See You Tomorrow
In an age when editors of literary fiction increasingly prefer the sensationally modish to the quietly accomplished, when tastemakers at glossy magazines look upon twenty-eight-year-old first novelists as superannuated, and when supposedly serious critics neglect distinctive new novels in order to gush over the latest well-nigh interchangeable specimens of Brat Pack minimalism— in such an age, what could be more démodé than a thoroughgoing enthusiasm for William Maxwell?1 For...
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