Glenway Wescott Personally: A Biography

As a writer, Glenway Wescott (1901–1987) left behind several novels, including The Grandmothers and The Pilgrim Hawk, noted for their remarkable lyricism. As a literary figure, Wescott also became a symbol of his times. Born on a Wisconsin farm in 1901, he associated as a young writer with Hemingway, Stein, and Fitzgerald in 1920s Paris and subsequently was a central figure in New York’s artistic and gay communities. Though he couldn’t finish a novel after the age of forty-five, he was just as famous as an arts impresario, as a diarist, and for the company he kept: W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Marianne Moore, Somerset Maugham, E. M. Forster, Joseph Campbell, and scores of other luminaries.
     In Glenway Wescott Personally, Jerry Rosco chronicles Wescott’s long and colorful life, his early fame and later struggles to write, the uniquely privileged and sometimes tortured world of artistic creation. Rosco sensitively and insightfully reveals Wescott’s private life, his long relationship with Museum of Modern Art curator Monroe Wheeler, his work with sex researcher Alfred Kinsey that led to breakthrough findings on homosexuality, and his kinship with such influential artists as Jean Cocteau, George Platt-Lynes, and Paul Cadmus.

2002 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, Biography.

As a writer, Glenway Wescott (1901–1987) left behind several novels, including The Grandmothers and The Pilgrim Hawk, noted for their remarkable lyricism. As a literary figure, Wescott also became a symbol of his times. Born on a Wisconsin farm in 1901, he associated as a young writer with Hemingway, Stein, and Fitzgerald in 1920s Paris and subsequently was a central figure in New York’s artistic and gay communities. Though he couldn’t finish a novel after the age of forty-five, he was just as famous as an arts impresario, as a diarist, and for the company he kept: W. H. Auden, Christopher Isherwood, Marianne Moore, Somerset Maugham, E. M. Forster, Joseph Campbell, and scores of other luminaries.
    In Glenway Wescott Personally, Jerry Rosco chronicles Wescott’s long and colorful life, his early fame and later struggles to write, the uniquely privileged and sometimes tortured world of artistic creation. Rosco sensitively and insightfully reveals Wescott’s private life, his long relationship with Museum of Modern Art curator Monroe Wheeler, his work with sex researcher Alfred Kinsey that led to breakthrough findings on homosexuality, and his kinship with such influential artists as Jean Cocteau, George Platt-Lynes, and Paul Cadmus.

Library Journal

The life of Glenway Wescott (1901-87) spanned an interesting range of eras, from 1920s Paris, where he was acquainted with Hemingway (who despised him for his homosexuality), Fitzgerald, and Stein; through the world wars; to 1950s and 1960s New York, where a sexual revolution was taking place. There he found himself in the middle of a remarkable group of gay artists, including Christopher Isherwood, W.H. Auden, and E.M. Forster. Though Wescott is best known in modern American literature courses for the lyric 1927 novel The Grandmothers and the novella The Pilgrim Hawk, Rosco, who coedited a volume of Wescott's journals (Continental Lessons), focuses on the way this Wisconsin farm boy came to terms with his sexuality in a world still governed by a strict Victorian code of conduct. Although he learned early to be a master storyteller largely from the example of his friend W. Somerset Maugham he was unable to complete a novel after the age of 45. His energy was channeled into other interests, among them Museum of Modern Art curator Monroe Wheeler, with whom he fashioned a lifelong and stabilizing relationship, and Alfred E. Kinsey, in whose work on American sexuality he became immersed in the 1950s. More than a biography of an unjustly ignored American writer, Rosco's work portrays a fascinating panorama of the evolution of America's gay artistic community. Recommended for libraries with holdings in gay studies. Charles C. Nash, Cottey Coll., Nevada, MO Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.

Jerry Rosco is a writer and editor and the coeditor of Continual Lessons: The Journals of Glenway Wescott 1937–1955. He lives in New York City.

Jerry Rosco is a writer and editor and the coeditor of Continual Lessons: The Journals of Glenway Wescott 1937–1955. He lives in New York City.