|
Burkhardt’s
speech at Lincoln College on Nov. 2 was the third in the Ralph G.
Newman annual lecture series. In it, she described the development
and organization of her soon-to-be-published "William
Maxwell: A Critical Biography." Burkhardt, whose doctoral
dissertation analyzed Maxwell’s fiction, is adjunct professor of
English at University of Illinois in Springfield and
Urbana-Champaign.
William
Maxwell died July 31, 2000, at the age of 91, just eight days
after the death of his wife Emily. Maxwell was born in 1908 in
Lincoln, where he lived until the age of 14. The elm-shaded town
of those years forms the Edenic setting for much of his work, what
he termed his "imagination’s home."
Burkhardt
used incidents from the editing of "The Folded Leaf,"
published in 1945, and "So Long, See You Tomorrow,"
1980, to show Maxwell’s development in confidence over time. In
the earlier book, he added a more optimistic ending at the
recommendation of his psychoanalyst. This "single item
included at someone else’s instigation," said Burkhardt,
was the most widely criticized aspect of the novel. In a later
reprint, he returned to his original ending.
Many
editorial recommendations were made for "So Long, See You
Tomorrow," originally published in the New Yorker, at which
Maxwell was a fiction editor from 1936 to 1976. In several
instances, Maxwell defended the authenticity of his character’s
Midwest usage over the more "correct" editorial
suggestions. He also disregarded the comment that including the
point of view of the dog diminished the credibility of the work.
"These assured responses revealed Maxwell’s confidence in
his own literary judgment," Burkhardt said, showing that he
"had grown to trust himself."
[to
top of second column] |
Burkhardt
recounted the origin of her admiration for Maxwell from her first
reading of "So Long, See You Tomorrow" as an assignment
for a graduate class. Her own mother had died not long before, and
she was struck by the narrator’s voice and how Maxwell had the
emotions "just right." She immediately sought out
Maxwell’s sources in the historical archives in Springfield and
was able to present him with some divorce documents he could not
locate when he wrote the book.
She
enthusiastically described interviews at which Maxwell answered
questions by typewriter, first a manual and eventually an
electric. At his summer home the interview was conducted outside,
and the long cord snaked through the window.
Maxwell’s
style was "very bare and very simple" and increasingly
so as he aged, Burkhardt said. In response to one of many
questions, she said he termed himself an atheist but had a
spiritual sense that included "a fragile balance of tragedy
and joy."
In
1997 Burkhardt was instrumental in securing John Updike as speaker
for the dedication of the Maxwell papers at the University of
Illinois library in Urbana-Champaign. Updike, Mary McCarthy, J. D.
Salinger, Eudora Welty, John Cheever and Vladimir Nabokov were
among the writers Maxwell edited for the New Yorker.
[Lynn
Spellman]
|
