A Heaven of Words: Last Journals, 1956–1984

1965–1969

– T he mid-sixties are a time of strength forWescott, personally and as a public figure. Several of his books are reprinted in paperback, and The Pilgrim Hawk, already in the Dell mass market paperback Six Great Modern Short Novels, is re-released in hardcover by Harper & Brothers. This leads to a respectful review in the New Yorker by Howard Moss that means a great deal to Glenway personally. Still, three new books that could have happened, all in this five-year period, slip away. Regarding the often-delayed, reorganized “AWindfall,” on December 14, 1965, the renowned editor Cass Canfield writes impatiently, “Please let me know whether there’s anything we can do from the Harper end to facilitate things.”The only major holdup is the long story “The Stallions,” which Wescott needs to expand and finish. Though his fragmentary drafts are beautiful, he struggles with this last serious attempt at fiction. He could substitute something else, but won’t give up. Even years after “A Windfall” is abandoned, he attempts to revive “The Stallions” draft, a hopeless perfectionist. Likewise, his Life magazine piece on Maugham leads to a book contract for the tentatively titled “The Old Party: An American Reminiscence of Somerset Maugham.” He has plenty of material already written and plenty more in mind, but he loses interest in the work and it slips away, even as he sees inferior Maugham memoirs published . Finally, Katherine Anne Porter at the height of her fame suggests 117 118 1965–1969 he organize a volume of letters, the years of correspondence between Porter and friendsWescott,Wheeler, and Barbara HarrisonWescott. It’s a difficult editing chore but, even so, another contracted book is delayed from one deadline to another until Porter’s editor Seymour Lawrence kills the project. Glenway could have used—rather than a highbrow editor like Canfield and his staff or a highly literary one like Robert Phelps— a ruthless shirt-sleeves editor (like Russell Lynes of Harper’s Magazine) to help with these works. On the other hand, “TheValley Submerged” (Southern Review, Summer 1965) reveals the aging Wescott at his best in a new form—not literary anecdotes and criticism, but the personal essay; storytelling in spellbinding lyrical prose. The essay about the state’s flooding of Stone-blossom and the surrounding valley is filled with meaning deeper than the waters of Spruce Run Reservoir, and points to fine work up ahead.When Katherine Anne Porter first read a draft of the essay, she wrote, “Your ‘The Valley Submerged’ is in your best vein; I read it fast and then went back and read it slow, and wanted more.” Wescott’s service at the Academy-Institute of Arts and Letters continues and includes important work for the federal copyright law revisions of 1966.Wheeler avoids mandatory retirement at the Museum of Modern Art by working for the board of trustees in fundraising and foreign travel for exhibits. Monroe’s elderly parents pass away within a two week period. Lloyd survives a serious illness, but he and Glenway lose their sister Marjorie in California. Glenway’s younger companion John Connolly changes his career from secretary to William Inge to lighting engineer for CBS television. In 1967 Connolly takes a partner, British Merchant Marine captain Ivan Ashby, who becomes part of the extended family. The new Lincoln Center, especially the New York City Ballet, becomes an important part of Wescott and Wheeler’s world. Their social lives remain rich, from celebrity dinner parties at Wheeler’s apartment to Truman Capote’s Black and White Ball at the Plaza, to the Rolling Stones at Madison Square Garden. Then at long last Wescott returns to Europe, with trips centered around visits to the Rothschilds for the winter holidays of 1966/67, 1968/69, and the early seventies. Glenway 1965–1969 119 gives his future readers an inside view of the world of Baron Philippe and Baroness Pauline at Mouton Rothschild.  january 2 Phallus worship. Am I what is called a size queen? Not really. Natural causes of this predilection due to (A) boyhood comparison, and (B) to tumescence itself. Why are straight men less subject to it? Because they are more self-loving, self-centered; also less preoccupied with symbols of sex, fetishes, and more concerned with sexual gratification, sensation and release. Note that most of those I have desired most were genitally largely endowed—Jacques, Bernard...