Growing Up With Legends

In this evocative and engaging memoir, Thomas Wright recalls, with eloquence, frankness, and humor, a man coming to terms with his homosexuality and seeking his happiness in ignorant and repressive times. Throughout his life and in his travels, Wright gathered a distinguished circle of friends that included some of the most influential writers of the mid-20th century, among them Tennessee Williams, Paul Bowles, and Christopher Isherwood. Scion of an old Louisiana family, Wright left the South after college to live in the scintillating Manhattan of the late 1940s. Stimulated by the Columbia University of Trilling and Van Doren, he went on to develop lasting friendships with Allen and Caroline Tate, Tennessee Williams, and socialized with William Inge, Chester Kallman, Speed Lankin, Bill Goyen, Carson McCullers' family, and Harold Norse.

Wright moved to southern California in the 1950s to become a writer. There he became intimate with Christopher Isherwood and Edward James (the purported son of Edward VII of England), enabling him to move in circles that included Igor Stravinsky, Gerald Heard, and Aldous Huxley. In the 1960s he began his travels, moving first to Mexico, then to Europe and on to Morocco, where he became a confidante of Paul Bowles. By the mid-1970s Wright began traveling again, moving throughout Latin America and finally settling in Guatemala where he now resides. Wright's honest treatment of his homosexuality and personal remembrances of the literary legends he befriended will inspire and fascinate readers.

In this evocative and engaging memoir, Thomas Wright recalls, with eloquence, frankness, and humor, a man coming to terms with his homosexuality and seeking happiness. He tells anecdotes and gives bittersweet character sketches of some of the most influential writers of the mid-20th century, among them Tennessee Williams, Paul Bowles, Christopher Isherwood, Aldous Huxley, W.H. Auden, poet Harold Norse, playwright Speed Llamkin and many more.

Publishers Weekly

When at age 16 the author, now a 70-year-old travel writer who has lived for the past 20 years in Guatemala, met Allen Tate at the University of the South, there began what he terms "the first of the living legends with whom I was destined to grow up." First off, Wright offers a balance sheet of his personal characteristics when he arrived in New York City at age 19: "blond, athletic attractiveness... intelligent, friendly, energetic [but] mainly homosexual [and] sexually repressed." Aside from the fact that the title's legends are less than legendary for the most part (Speed Lankin, Gavin Lambert), Wright also discusses legends he never knew, explaining in some detail how he missed the chance to meet Truman Capote. Readers interested in the arcana of the minor literati of 1950s and '60s Manhattan and Southern California will find reasonably involving fare here, but Wright's episodes and observations center largely on himself, leading one to believe that he is the main legend. And for all the talk of legends, some of the more notable parts of the book center on descriptions of a sex scene in Morocco and Wright's participation in it. Photos not seen by PW. (Apr.)

THOMAS E. WRIGHT was born in Louisiana, studied at the University of the South, and obtained an M.A. at Columbia University.