Reviews for Byways: A Memoir

The average rating for Byways: A Memoir based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2020-02-17 00:00:00 Tim Sweeney He's such good company. I wish this had a thousand more pages.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-05-29 00:00:00 Aaron Jakubec This is the second autobiographical book I've read by New Directions publisher James Laughlin, the other being The Way It Wasn't: From the Files of James Laughlin. Both have unconventional memoir formats (though that other was compiled posthumously so I suppose form can't be attributed entirely to him.) This one is a long narrow poem with occasional interpolations of prose by others. Generally each section focuses on one person; his older relatives, girlfriends, Ezra Pound, Thomas Merton, William Carlos Williams (he published them all). He also writes about his time at Harvard, including about professor "Matty" F.O. Matthiessen, author of American Renaissance: Art and Expression in the Age of Emerson and Whitman, who was gay and committed suicide after the death of his partner, painter Russell Cheney; would be interesting to read Rat & the Devil: Journal Letters of F. O. Matthiessen and Russell Cheney.