Reviews for William Maxwell: A Literary Life

The average rating for William Maxwell: A Literary Life based on 2 reviews is 2.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2013-08-08 00:00:00 Fernando Rodriguez I am not sure that working in a bookstore carries quite the same cache that it used to. When i was in high school and then later, in college, all of my friends wanted to work in bookstores (actually a bookstore or a record store~as music stores were still called back then even though vinyl was already on its way out), like that would be The Coolest job. My first bookstore job was as a Christmas temp at a mall Waldenbooks (and i had actually had a job working at a music store~in that same mall a couple of years earlier~a chain that now also sells books~go figure) where i worked for a month and then quit to work another temp job at a ski resort with my boyfriend (i also had two other jobs at the time so my schedule was a bit full). About a year later i started at a tiny B. Dalton in the same mall (again it was a third job), i stayed there for about a year before i moved out of state to start library school and i loved it (actually it reminds me very much of the library i work in now~the staff feeling at least), minimum wage and all (by that time i had ditched my food service job and was squeaking by as a bookstore clerk, library shelver, and library volunteer~pay was lousy but i figured it was good experience, and it did put me ahead of many of my future classmates~surprisingly few had any public service experience~but at the time the last thing i wanted to be was a Public librarian~ugh). Anyway, i do like to read books by fellow bibliophiles and bookpeople to try and recreate/evoke (re-evoke?) that whole feeling. I was rather excited to hear about Wendy Werris' An Alphabetical Life: Living It Up in the World of Books hoping for just such a tale, and i was actually a little disappointed. The book actually had great reviews so i can't really say why it didn't grab me, perhaps i didn't really care for Werris' personality (or what i could sense of it through the covers of a book)~perhaps she was a little like me~i've often wondered if i am very likable~tho it doesn't concern me much. Perhaps it was the sales rep in her. Perhaps it was that there were very few parts that felt like a personal story to me (or even a story of a fellow bibliophile). I do know that she seemed to be limited to her own world though she was speaking for the publishing world at large because i caught her in a few mistakes and inconsistencies which i knew to be wrong just from my own little book world (and that just irks me). Overall i'm glad i read the book, glad i didn't purchase it (don't you just love libraries?), but that's just my opinion~most of the reviews were much more positive...

Review # 2 was written on 2011-09-30 00:00:00 Cesar Ibarra I picked this book up at the library because, let's face it, it's about books. About a life working with books. Sadly, I didn't like the narrator of the book, which meant that I didn't like the book much. An Alphabetical Life is Wendy Werris's memoir of how she started a career in books, first in a bookshop, then as a publisher's representative. I'm pretty sure this is also supposed to be about how it's like working in a male-dominated profession, and how she works to overcome various obstacles. Unfortunately, I never really connected with her, or felt that there was a larger story than whatever anecdote she was currently relating. Even after reading the book, I'm not how being a woman publishing rep between then and now has changed. I don't see any clear changes, and it might as well be as chauvinistic as when Ms Werris first started out. And yes, her surviving that long is a really great thing, but it's really because she decided to conform, not because she made waves and changed the industry or something. So lesson here: if you're in a male-dominated world, act like what they expect, and they'll let you survive. Plus, Ms Werris comes across as very self-centered. She has siblings, but I didn't see any evidence of her living a life with them until she mentions things like having to borrow money from one of them. Well, actually, this is pretty admirable, if the siblings don't want to be in a book. But then again, she does blame her parents for her screwed up family dynamics (of which, she appears to play a central role), so it doesn't particularly seem as though she's censoring for the sake of her family. In fact, what made me think she was self-centered isn't the lack of family in her book, but the way she treats others and her job. She got fired quite a few times, and each time, I couldn't help but think that she deserved to get fired for acting like a child. And of course, she wanted to get fired at that time. Not very responsible, in my opinion. The book wasn't all bad though. I have a feeling that if I had the same character as Ms. Werris, I would have enjoyed it very much. She's not a bad writer, because her account of her rape was well-written, and I really felt for her then. I thought she was very brave in the way she handled it. So overall, the one part of the book that made me feel for the author wasn't related to books. I would say that as an account of a life with books, it doesn't work out. This review was first posted at Inside the mind of a Bibliophile