Weldon Kees and the Midcentury Generation: Letters, 1935-1955 Book

Not just a supplement to James Reidel's Weldon Kees bio, VANISHED ACT, this is a must-read for fans of this multitalented writer. Knoll does a good job of linking Kees' letters with biographical information and other material. I wish Kees hadn't stopped writing short stories in favor of reviews--unlike Knoll, I don't consider criticism to be his metier--but one need not agree with Knoll on all such matters to find this book fascinating, and sometimes disturbing, as when Knoll juxtaposes a hallucinatory letter, about visions of menacing dogs, by Kees' wife with Kees' similarly themed poem, "The Contours of Fixation". Knoll makes a case for Kees being just slightly ahead of major cultural trends of his era, while refusing to join any clique, since as Kees himself wrote, "Plurality is all." I don't normally read collections of letters by writers--curling up with WE DREAM OF HONOUR: JOHN BERRYMAN'S LETTERS TO HIS MOTHER is my idea of hell--but there's an exception to every rule....