William Goyen: Selected Letters from a Writer's Life

Through the many letters reprinted in this volume, Robert Phillips allows us a glimpse into the world of a writer, who for most of his career suffered the indignity of indifference and the bitterness of rejection; only within the past two decades has Goyen's work received much critical attention. The book is divided into 7 sections, beginning with 1932, when Goyen recieved his B.A. in Literature from Rice Institute, until 1983, when the author died of lymphoma. Each section contains a chronology of letters that at first glance reads like a travelogue, a reflection of Goyen's inability to reconcile with the idea of place. Many of the pages reveal how he would settle somewhere new, begin to write, start to feel hemmed in, and move to another destination. Still, even when in California or New York, he never lost touch with those he most cared for, and he always considered Texas his home. The lyricism that echoes throughout his fiction and poetry is also heard amidst his letters. There are passionate notes to Katherine Anne Porter, whith whom he reportedly had a two-year relationship, comments to novelist Daniel Stern made during the time that Goyen was his editor at McGraw-Hill, as well as evidence of both the creative euphoria and crippling depression that he experienced throughout his life. Due to an estrangement over the publication of his masterpiece, The House of Breath (1950), there is not much correspondence with family members, but perhaps that is just as well since Phillips' aim was to focus on "letters about his writing, the writing of others, and art and literature in general " (xii) . The result then, is an autobiographical picture never before seen within the modest amount of Goyen scholarship that currently exists. We learn of an early military experience that almost cost him his sanity, his resentment at being called a Southern writer, and the writers he considered most influential, including Eliot, Pound, Frost, Welty, Porter, and Flaubert. Robert Phillips has done an amazing job in editing this epistolary volume. He offers us Wiliiam Goyen as friend, lover, and writer, whose raw, human vision is made clearer through his own words. This is an indispensable source for anyone wishing to learn more about a man whose importance to the canon of modern American literature has yet to be realized.