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So Long, See You Tomorrow

4.0 of 5 stars 4.00 · rating details · 2,281 ratings · 360 reviews

In this magically evocative novel, William Maxwell explores the enigmatic gravity of the past, which compels us to keep explaining it even as it makes liars out of us every time we try. On a winter morning in the 1920s, a shot rings out on a farm in rural Illinois. A man named Lloyd Wilson has been killed. And the tenuous friendship between two lonely teenagers—one privile...more

Paperback, 135 pages

Published January 3rd 1996 by Vintage (first published 1979)

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May 27, 2013 William rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: us, fiction, 20-ce, candidate-to-reread

This is a little masterpiece of narrative compression. Though only 135 pages long, it can seem at times that whole paragraphs of unwritten backstory are suggested by every line, every image. A rundown of the plot will not give you a sense of the high level of mastery involved here, but here it is anyway. In the early 1920s one married farmer befriends another married farmer then steals his wife. Both marriages break up. The adulterous wife--Fern Smith--sues her husband for divorce and wins on gr...more

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Sep 22, 2007 Maria Headley rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I don't know how I'd never read this before. It's particularly silly, because I've read possibly three entire books about William Maxwell, and certainly plenty of his New Yorker stuff, just in the way one reads randomly bits of things over the years, and they accrue, and one day, you realize, Hello, I haven't read any books by this writer that EVERYONE ADORES. Maxwell was an incredible person by all accounts - I read MY MENTOR, the Alec Wilkinson book about him, as well as a straight bio, and an...more I don't know how I'd never read this before. It's particularly silly, because I've read possibly three entire books about William Maxwell, and certainly plenty of his New Yorker stuff, just in the way one reads randomly bits of things over the years, and they accrue, and one day, you realize, Hello, I haven't read any books by this writer that EVERYONE ADORES. Maxwell was an incredible person by all accounts - I read MY MENTOR, the Alec Wilkinson book about him, as well as a straight bio, and another anthology book written by a variety of his friends about him, after he passed away. The events of his life were less incredible than the way he lived his life = at some point, in a crisis of loneliness, he decided to change his life by loving everyone, not by waiting for them to love him. It's one thing to think that - entirely another to actually do it. It seems as though he managed to do it, and as a result, he changed people's lives right and left. The thing that put me onto him to begin with, was an essay published in Tin House about Maxwell as an old man, and a much younger writer's friendship with him. It was one of those pieces of writing that made you think, "I have to change my life. I have to be better." Not to mention the fact that, at least in my head, Maxwell is my writer-grandfather. He reminds me of my real grandfather, whom I miss.

And so - onto the book. SO LONG, SEE YOU TOMORROW, is a ridiculously lovely piece of writing. It's a novella, dealing with the events and effects of a small-town love-triangle murder on the narrator, a young boy when the murder takes place, and on his friend, a boy who happens to be the son of the murderer. It's hard to break it down, though - this is a book that works not on the strength of its plot, but on the profound empathy it dispenses for everything within its covers. There is a justly celebrated section encompassing the point of view of a farm dog whose boy has moved into town, and who is left to the new owners of the farm. It will make you sob. You will likely not make it through this book without crying, and again, it's not the plot, but the soul. The book has a heart. Everyone should read it. And now, I'm back to reading the rest of Maxwell, cause clearly, I've been missing out. (less)

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Jul 28, 2010 Jimmy rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: male, novel, year-1970s

4.5 stars. I listened to a story on NPR the other day about how the police can often tell if a suspect is lying because the lies are elaborated fully with so much detail, as if to make up for the fabrication, whereas the truth is often very simple.

This book reminded me of that because it is elaborate and full of detail, from the history of the town to the history of each character to the description of one thing or another that strikes the reader as something nobody would just make up, so that t...more 4.5 stars. I listened to a story on NPR the other day about how the police can often tell if a suspect is lying because the lies are elaborated fully with so much detail, as if to make up for the fabrication, whereas the truth is often very simple.

This book reminded me of that because it is elaborate and full of detail, from the history of the town to the history of each character to the description of one thing or another that strikes the reader as something nobody would just make up, so that the world seems totally complete and real. At the same time, it is telling a simple story, but in a roundabout way. And the voice is so compelling, the tone so convincing, so filled with the seemingly trivial, that it reads like a memoir. It's a subtle, quiet, and understated writing style that reminded me a bit of Gilead.

Thinking about it now, it seems interesting because this air of truth comes from a refreshing lack of artifice in the construction/style. And yet there is plenty of artifice; in fact, this book is exactly about artifice, yet the directness and the genuineness of its tone makes it the antithesis of cleverness.

The novel takes a weird form. It starts with the narrator telling us of his childhood, the town he grew up in, his father, brother, mother, stepmother, the second house they moved into (temporarily), the house they had built and moved into eventually, then the school he went to when they moved again to Chicago. All the while, he weaves in the story of two families that lived in the same town, a story of a murder that he knew only from hearsay and from old news stories he has collected (the narrator is now older; he is looking back as he is retelling this story). His own link to the story of these two families is a very brief one: he was friends with the son of one of the families in the way children are often friends... playmates.

Then, the novel takes a turn. It starts telling the story of these two families, not from a distance or with facts from news clips like it did in the first pages, but from an intimate and imagined perspective. In fact, the narrator admits to fabricating all these details to satisfy his story, or because there is something in this story that has haunted him all these years. After a while, you begin to forget that this is his version of a story he couldn't have possibly known so intimately because the details are so strong, the characters so fully fleshed and sympathetic. The bulk of the book, in fact, lives in this other story that he recalls/imagines. And it is a sad story, of course, but one that is also rich in a way that the summary of what happened in the beginning of the book cannot be: the characters are made so human that you feel genuinely sorry for each of them. Noone is the villain here.

After finishing the book, I can't help but wonder about the way this book was written. Why did the author choose to wrap this intriguing story around another less intriguing story, by having it be told by a narrator who wasn't there? Exactly because the two stories really do interact, albeit not in a direct way. The narrator's own less dramatic story of his mother's death and having to deal with the everyday betrayal of having a new step-mother who happens to be a good person (thus, he can't even hate her for it) is something that can happen to nearly anybody, and is an emotional and cruel experience for a child even though it is totally accepted by society and not talked about much since it is the norm. But the emotions of his almost normal childhood has enabled him to empathize, then and now, with this other boy who had a much more public and dramatic betrayal within his family. In a way, this story is very much about memory, artifice, empathy, and guilt (the outside story) as much as it is about betrayal, infidelity, murder, and the cruelty of fate (the inside stories).

I do want to point out that I read this about 5 years ago, and didn't recall a single thing about it other than that I vaguely liked it. I think I enjoyed it much more this time around.(less)

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Dec 30, 2012 Jenny rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

"So Long, See You Tomorrow" is one of those books that makes me want to leave my job and hide myself away somewhere and do nothing but write until I can produce something as good as this. I agree with these reviewers:

"This is one of the great books of our age. It is the subtlest of miniatures that contains our deepest sorrows and truths and love -- all caught in a clear, simple style in perfect brushstrokes." -- Michael Ondaatje

"A small, perfect novel." -- Washington Post Book World

"What a lovel...more

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May 06, 2012 Mikki rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: lit-north-america

Rarely do I find myself re-reading books since there are just way too many on my bucket list and time is steadily counting down. However, the other day, when my feed showed TWO people adding William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow, I figured that it must be a sign, so pushing my other reading aside, I grabbed my copy of the book and asked Anne if I could read along. She said "Yes!". It was the best decision I'd made in a while.

You see, I first read this book in early 2009. It was my introduc...more

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Dec 30, 2008 Tom rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: novels

The most heart-breaking novel I've ever read (with John Williams' Stoner a close second). I've read it several times, taught it twice, and the ending never fails to put a lump in my throat.

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Aug 05, 2007 Ryan rated it 5 of 5 stars

It reminded me of Chronicle of a Death Foretold in the way the narrative seeks to unpack a murder, though this one focuses on the aftermath just as much as the events leading up to it. Maxwell packs a lot into this novella. The porousness of memory, the way we deal with loss, the way we make bad decisions that can haunt us for the rest of our lives.

Maxwell is an odd writer and his style changes throughout as the narrator recalls the past or manufactures fictions and speculations in his attempt t...more

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Dec 08, 2008 Tony rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction-mainstream

Maxwell, William. SO LONG, SEE YOU TOMORROW. (1980). *****. This novel by Maxwell was included in the Library of America’s “Later Novels and Stories,” but is available separately in several editions. I feel that it is a masterpiece of fine writing and story telling. Of all of his works – all of which are outstanding – this is probably his best achievement. It is the story of two neighbors who live out on the Illinois prairie, working the land to eke out a living. At first, they are the best of f...more

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Aug 05, 2012 Patty rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2012, fiction, family, fathers-and-sons, american-literature, coming-of-age, illinois, murder, friendship, autobiography

I regularly read the Book Brahmin column on ShelfAwareness.com. They ask authors of current books a variety of questions. One question is "What book are you an evangelist for?" Recently Matthew Batt mentioned this novel as his. It so happened that William Maxwell is someone I have wanted to read, so I picked this up. Batt is absolutely right. This is a slight, wonderful book that as Batt says, "cracks (an incident) open to reveal pretty much the entirety of human life".

There is so much story in...more

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Jun 30, 2011 Tyler Jones rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

Many decades ago the word "Postmodernism" gained currency as new way distinguishing literary fiction from the low-brow fiction that an average human might actually want to read. Verisimilitude- the goal of getting the reader to suspend disbelief in the fictional nature of fiction- was rejected in favour of exposing the novel as an artificial construct. This was often done in lazy ways like giving the protagonist a name like "Maximus Fruitcup" and it led, in my opinion, to much of the 'Seventies...more Many decades ago the word "Postmodernism" gained currency as new way distinguishing literary fiction from the low-brow fiction that an average human might actually want to read. Verisimilitude- the goal of getting the reader to suspend disbelief in the fictional nature of fiction- was rejected in favour of exposing the novel as an artificial construct. This was often done in lazy ways like giving the protagonist a name like "Maximus Fruitcup" and it led, in my opinion, to much of the 'Seventies and 'Eighties being a bad time for good fiction. Still, many great writers have always understood that postmodernism is just a different way of communicating the most personal emotions and experiences: an artificial means to a truthful end. I think So Long, See You Tomorrow is a near perfect novel, which uses post-modern elements to heighten the emotional impact of its deceptively simple story. For me this novel and James Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime are the two books that best represent a certain style of the craft of fiction.

So Long, See You Tomorrow is a story told by a man looking back on his childhood. A lonely and introverted boy coming to terms with the death of his mother. He takes the first tentative steps toward friendship with another boy named Cletus Smith. But the friendship ends abruptly by an act of violence involving Cletus's father- and coming to terms with this violent act becomes the obsession of the adult narrator. When newspaper accounts and court records prove unsatisfactory and misleading, the narrator imagines the events that led up to the tragic act. Jealousy, longing, impotent rage; all the unseemly human emotions that lived just beneath the skin of the quiet Midwestern farming community are brought forth. And the loss is made understandable, if not acceptable.

The story is made more real for the author's constant reminders that it is not real. Truth is not always found in the reportage of events - sometimes it is somewhere else. And sometimes it is the work of the artist rather than the reporter to take us there.(less)

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Jun 16, 2011 Elliot Ratzman rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: book-club

William Maxwell: where did this writer come from? He was the New Yorker fiction editor for decades, and has half a dozen books about the rural areas of Illinois where he grew up. Michael Ondaatje called this short book “one of the great books of our age”—quite an endorsement. Maxwell’s nameless narrator writes: “This memoir—if that’s the right name for it—is a roundabout, furtive way of making amends.” Is it the right name? This is a work of fiction posing as a memoir whose author uses his imagi...more

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Jul 29, 2010 Jenny rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

So Long, See You Tomorrow is about the recollection of the murder of a man who cheats on his friend's wife. The story is told from the point of view of the now grown-up friend of the son of the murderer.

It was really difficult to rate this book...I would have given as little as a 1 and as high as a 3 (maybe even 3.5 or 4), so...I guess 2 is about right. In the end, I kinda feel like I must not have understood this book. I mean, you can probably read that from my inability to really write a brie...more

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Apr 28, 2010 Andrew rated it 4 of 5 stars

I love Harvill Press. Normally I don’t pay a lot of attention to the publishers, because I find most of them produce roughly the same mix of books I love, books I hate and books I don’t care about. But with Harvill, I know for sure that every time I see that little panther symbol, I can be assured of enjoying the book. I think the first Harvill book I read was The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and then there was Broken April by Ismail Kadare and Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak and a...more I love Harvill Press. Normally I don’t pay a lot of attention to the publishers, because I find most of them produce roughly the same mix of books I love, books I hate and books I don’t care about. But with Harvill, I know for sure that every time I see that little panther symbol, I can be assured of enjoying the book. I think the first Harvill book I read was The Leopard by Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa, and then there was Broken April by Ismail Kadare and Doctor Zhivago by Boris Pasternak and a whole load of others. Now, like everyone else, it has been swallowed up by Random House, and I don’t think the panther is used any more.
So when I saw the familiar little panther symbol on the spine of this book in Fawkes bookshop in Hampstead, I decided almost immediately to buy it, even though I’d never heard of William Maxwell before. On top of the panther, it was the first line that hooked me:
“The gravel pit was about a mile east of town, and the size of a small lake, and so deep that boys under sixteen were forbidden by their parents to swim there. I knew it only by hearsay.”
Very simple words, but they communicate immediately the major elements of the story: something bad will happen in the gravel pit, affecting the childhood of this boy under sixteen who has been forbidden to go there.
The story continues in this vein, with men at the gravel pit hearing a gunshot in the early morning, and from there a murder is described, all in the same simple, restrained, non-sensational language. The narrator is an old man now, looking back on it all and feeling guilty for ignoring the son of the murderer, who he had been friends with before the murder, when he saw him again later on.
It’s a short book, just 135 pages, but it felt longer. I don’t mean that in a bad way, that it dragged on too long. I mean that, just as the first line communicated so much in a short space, so the rest of the story seems to cover a lot of ground, to make you know the characters better than you know characters in a lot of books three times as long. The language is unhurried, too, with long digressions and asides – most of the first half doesn’t deal with the murder story at all, but with the narrator’s childhood. I got to the end and wondered how on earth Maxwell had managed to cram so much into such a short book without ever sounding rushed.
One of the quotes on the inside cover is from John Updike: “Maxwell’s voice is one of the wisest in American fiction; it is, as well, one of the kindest.” I can see exactly what he meant. The book deals with murder, infidelity, jealousy, betrayal of a friend, and yet all of the characters who are doing the murdering and betraying are sympathetic in some way. He communicates the injustice of the tenant farmers’ positions, but gives the landlords their side of the story too, and doesn’t make them into stock figures. He is kind to all of his characters and gives them all a voice – even the dog gets a few paragraphs from his point of view. This doesn’t diminish the drama, but it does feel more real than a story that plays up the good vs evil dichotomy. It conveys life in all its complexities, and in the end I felt sorrier for the murderer than for his victim.
(less)

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Dec 13, 2009 Edan rated it 5 of 5 stars

I should have read this in a single sitting, but I couldn't--or wouldn't--point is, I didn't, and I regret it. This novel is not only beautiful and heartbreaking in the way that STONER by John Williams is beautiful and heartbreaking, it's also quite surprising in its use of point of view. It reminded me a little of SPEAK, MEMORY, Nabokov's memoir that plays a lot with memory and fiddling with images and moments from the past. Maxwell does something similar here, with the narrator's imagined vers...more

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Aug 21, 2011 Alexis rated it 2 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: fiction

I guess I don't like the "Honest Jim" school of self-consciously barebones Americana narrative, or the vaguely pornographic conceit of the author describing that he's going to tell you something ("Turn over a card and see...")--Jeffrey Eugenides did this in Middlemarch when breathlessly describing the journey of a recessive gene and I guess the theater of it leaves me cold. It's okay, just not for me. The low rating is because I actually think the story is badly told. The whole reason for tellin...more

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Aug 01, 2010 Ally Armistead rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Three out of five stars for this reader, though I felt as
though I should have loved the book more than I did. I can appreciate the novel's intention, which was an exploration of an old man's greatest loss and grief--that of his mother when... he was a boy--which is irrationally and empathically projected into the family tragedies of another boy, Cletus Smith, whose father murders the lover of his cheating wife. The old man imagines the pain of this situation--of its pain and difficultly on poor...more

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Oct 13, 2009 El rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: late20th-centurylit

William Maxwell is one of those authors who I've thought for a long time I'm familiar with, but then realize upon picking up a book by him that I've never read him before. And then there's the painful discovery that I've clearly been missing out all this time.

This short novel is told by an elderly man reflecting upon his adolescence. The story begins with a farmer being killed, and from there branches out into the narrator's life and friendship with the farmer's son, a friendship that is altered...more

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May 18, 2013 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: those who appreciate excellent narrative

Shelves: contemporary-fiction

Maxwell's novella, at just 135 pages, comprises so much narrative and emotion that it could have been written no other way. It has the spareness of Hemingway and of the Midwest, where it is set in a small Illinois farm community and follows the demise of two farm families and a young boy who is on the periphery.

Wracked with guilt at slighting an old friend in a new setting, the narrator writes what he knows of the circumstances that led him to make that choice; the values that dictated he keep...more

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Jan 04, 2013 Lee Razer rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: contemporary-fiction, novella

I can see why this little novel by the longtime fiction editor of the New Yorker is so highly praised, yet I have to admit that on a personal level I didn't exactly love it.

Told with impressive empathy in a discursive style, it is a sad tale of adultery, murder and the familial dissolution of neighboring tenant farmers in the early twentieth century. Much of the first half of the book is exploration of the family story of the narrator, who was only tangentially connected to the tragic developme...more

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Apr 19, 2009 Amy rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: 2009, general-fiction, top-11-to-20

This book is beautifully written. Straightforward, yet poetic story of loss. Its a slim volume that really packs a punch. The narrator barely intersects in the lives of others, but having experienced his own loss and isolation, finds himself grasping at a handful of facts later on as an adult looking back on his childhood. He tries to make sense of things, maybe to try and make sense of his on life. One of my favorite constructs of the story is in the last quarter of the book, Maxwell writes lit...more

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Dec 27, 2012 Lida rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This review has been hidden because it contains spoilers. To view it, click here.

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Aug 09, 2012 Micah McCarty rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Um, wow. I grabbed this on a whim after seeing it on Esquire's list of 75 books every man must read. I am so glad I did. I have not read anything by this author before but I definitely will now. He has the talent that I most respect in a good writer: pathos. His ability to empathize with any character and create a feeling of understanding within the reader is amazing. This is a short, simple book that drew me in immediately. I listened on audiobook which created another level to the experience....more

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Oct 05, 2012 Liza rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

In this charming, short, surprisingly dense work of fiction, the author plays with the reader in ways I found both comforting and subversive. I felt instinctively that I could trust the first-person narrator. As the story progressed, however, through some unconscious hint or conscious confession by the narrator, I learned that the line of his reliability was blurred. The blurring was a positive, emotional effect, however. It felt less like corruption, and more like freedom. The line was not star...more

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Jul 10, 2011 Dennis rated it 3 of 5 stars · review of another edition

I really wanted to like this novel. A lot. The premise seemed interesting: a small town murder told from the POV of a man who, when he was a young boy, knew one of the alleged killer's child. Based on this premise, I assumed the story was going to be exclusively about the relationship between these two boys around the time of the murder and how they tried to reconcile their conflicted feelings in light of this tragedy.

But no. That's not what this book is about.

It's about the man trying to resol...more

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Jan 03, 2013 Rosemary rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

My dad gave me this book after he read it in a Stanford continuing education course called, "The Best Books You've Never Read." And this book is exactly that - an astounding 135 pages of rich, explorative, beautiful writing, in a wonderful little novel I'd never heard of before. It reminded me of "In Cold Blood," in premise, but with a narrative style and creative exploration of memory and storytelling unlike I've ever encountered.

Favorite quote - which, in ways, is a great summary of Maxwell's...more

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Mar 23, 2010 Jamie rated it 3 of 5 stars

Shelves: the-lighter-side

What a small, lovely little book. That said, it was quite small indeed, so I'm not sure if I can give it more than three stars.

Mix 4 parts "My Antonia," three parts "In Cold Blood," and one part "Gilead" and you get this book. The interesting thing, and the reason why I believe it was recommended to me, is that this is a bit of a memoir but it's also mostly fictionalized - my total M.O. Maxwell takes his childhood memory of a town murder and recreates the facts of the murder by fictionalizing th...more

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Jun 02, 2013 Diane rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

Shelves: review-real-simple, gorgeous-prose, midwest, classics

This is one of the best novellas I have read in years. I sought it out after learning that Ann Patchett lists it as one of her favorite books.

The story is very simple: It's a man trying to make sense of a murder that happened in his small town in Illinois in the 1920s. The narrator, who himself had a rough childhood because his mother died when he was young, was once friends with a boy whose father was the accused murderer. The narrator now feels guilty that he didn't try to help the boy back th...more

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Jul 25, 2011 Colin N. rated it 4 of 5 stars

In "So Long, See You Tomorrow" the narrator, a man who grew up in rural Illinois in the 1920s, is troubled by an encounter he had in grade school with a childhood friend and the guilt he bears for ignoring him. These thoughts lead the narrator to reflect on his life as a child and a murder that occurred in his town. The narrator, based on the bits of knowledge he has about the murder, imagines and constructs a narrative that explains the circumstances that led to the killing.

The structure of thi...more

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Jun 06, 2013 John Lauricella rated it 4 of 5 stars

"Authentic" is a good one-word description of William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow--in part because the narrator's grief at losing his mother matches Maxwell's personal experience; and partly because its prose seems not to mediate between the story and the reader's apprehension of it. To read this novel is to be in touch with something honest and real, no matter how much or many of its events, thoughts, and utterances Maxwell has invented or embellished. Most importantly, So Long, See You...more "Authentic" is a good one-word description of William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow--in part because the narrator's grief at losing his mother matches Maxwell's personal experience; and partly because its prose seems not to mediate between the story and the reader's apprehension of it. To read this novel is to be in touch with something honest and real, no matter how much or many of its events, thoughts, and utterances Maxwell has invented or embellished. Most importantly, So Long, See You Tomorrow gives us what we want, I believe, from every novel: emotional truth.

The image that will live for me always is that of a ten-year-old boy walking the floors with his father, his arm around the man's waist, every night after dinner. What are they looking for, the boy's mother, the man's wife having died? What problem can they resolve, what question answer by performing this rote passage from living room to front hall to library and back, or the other way 'round? Minds filled to distraction yet unthinking; bodies numb, hearts broken.

Grief is a powerful feeling. It is not pleasant but it is pure. Uncomplicated, unqualified. In writing this novel, Maxwell discovered a way to make a secret sharer of this most private of emotions. The narrator's abiding interest in Cletus and the circumstances leading to his father's suicide are a brave attempt by a person in pain to understand a similar pain felt by other. Perhaps by imagining Cletus's thoughts and feelings at losing the life he knew--his family, his home and way of living, finally a parent--Maxwell might better understand his own response to his mother's untimely death. "Other children could have borne it, have borne it," he writes almost at the end. "My older brother did, somehow. I couldn't." It seems impertinent, almost inhuman, to task Maxwell by asking him why he could not bear his mother's death--and yet, he seems to invite the reader to ask this question.

Did Cletus bear it? How? Maxwell doesn't know, exactly, having lost touch with his almost-friend, and then, more than a year later in a large high school in Chicago, having "done something I was ashamed of afterward"; that is, having failed to speak to Cletus upon encountering him unexpectedly in a school corridor, even just to tell him that his great secret was safe because also unspoken. Physically, Cletus has endured. The state of his mind, the nature of his feelings, Maxwell can only imagine. At that point, the boys seem to merge. Maxwell, undone as his father also was by loss (until the latter remarried), cannot believe in a suffering that is less than his own.

Just a few years previously, these two boys had played on the scaffolding at the construction site of Maxwell's family's new house. With the rooms framed-out and the plaster lathe not yet done, it was possible to pass from room to room by walking through "walls." No room could contain them; every entrance had many exists. Such magical comings and goings are not available in life. In life, a boy passes through a door only to find that he has entered a room he has not wanted to enter: the room where his mother dies; the room where his father kills a man, the man having taken away the father's wife; the room where his father kills himself with a pistol-shot, his body then dragged underwater by a heavy weight bound to waist and neck with baling wire. Life is "in itself and forever shipwreck."

Eighty-some years ago, James T. Farrell wrote a novel titled, A World I Never Made, in which a boy struggles to survive, to become himself and have something of his own life, in a world already established and fraught and in large part ruined. In So Long, See You Tomorrow, Maxwell and his not-so-secret sharer Cletus find themselves placed by circumstance in predicaments no one would choose. By not speaking to Cletus the last time he had the chance, Maxwell does not learn how his friend endured. Even before, in the unwalled house, "I didn't tell Cletus about my shipwreck ... and he didn't tell me about his." Is trauma estranging, even when it is mutual? Or are boys (and men) unwilling (or afraid) to confess weakness? By reading this novel, we witness one attempt to turn weakness into strength and dissolve grief in literary art--the one means Maxwell has found to free himself from his childhood's cruel deprivation and "by the grace of God lead his own life, undestroyed by what was not his doing." (less)

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Jul 06, 2011 Kirstie rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition

This one is subtle and stays with you..though it's set in rural Illinois, it often had the tinges of Dylan Thomas in the story and characters..this is from an earlier time in the 1920s mainly but then looking back 50 years later and really has to do with a major incident that the book begins with, a murder, and how two childhood friends react. There's a great deal here about vulnerability and regret.
It's a rather short novel (an average reader could probably read it in about 90 minutes-2hours) b...more

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About William Maxwell

William Keepers Maxwell Jr. was an American novelist, and fiction editor at the New Yorker. He studied at the University of Illinois and Harvard University. Maxwell wrote six highly acclaimed novels, a number of short stories and essays, children's stories, and a memoir, Ancestors (1972).

His award-winning fiction, which is increasingly seen as some of the most important of the 20th Century, has r...more William Keepers Maxwell Jr. was an American novelist, and fiction editor at the New Yorker. He studied at the University of Illinois and Harvard University. Maxwell wrote six highly acclaimed novels, a number of short stories and essays, children's stories, and a memoir, Ancestors (1972).

His award-winning fiction, which is increasingly seen as some of the most important of the 20th Century, has recurring themes of childhood, family, loss and lives changed quietly and irreparably. Much of his work is autobiographical, particularly concerning the loss of his mother when he was 10 years old growing up in the rural Midwest of America and the house where he lived at the time, which he referred to as the "Wunderkammer" or "Chamber of Wonders". He wrote of his loss "It happened too suddenly, with no warning, and we none of us could believe it or bear it... the beautiful, imaginative, protected world of my childhood swept away."

Since his death in 2000 several works of biography have appeared, including A William Maxwell Portrait: Memories and Appreciations (W. W. Norton & Co., 2004), My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell by Alec Wilkinson (Houghton-Mifflin, 2002), and William Maxwell: A Literary Life by Barbara Burkhardt (University of Illinois Press, 2005).

In 2008 the Library of America published the first of two collections of William Maxwell, Early Novels and Stories, Christopher Carduff editor. His collected edition of William Maxwell's fiction, published to mark the writer's centenary, was completed by a second volume, Later Novels and Stories in the fall of 2008.

His complete bibliography is as follows:

Novels;
Bright Center of Heaven (1934)
They Came Like Swallows (1937)
The Folded Leaf (1945)
Time Will Darken It (1948)
The Chateau (1961)
So Long, See You Tomorrow (1980)

Short stories;
Stories (1956)
The Old Man and the Railroad Crossing and Other Tales (1966)
Over by the River, and Other Stories (1977)
Five Tales (1988)
Billie Dyer and Other Stories (1992)
All The Days and Nights: The Collected Stories of William Maxwell (1995)
Early Novels and Stories (2008)

Non-fiction;
Ancestors: A Family History (memoir) (1972)
The Outermost Dream (essay collection) (1989)

Children's books;
The Heavenly Tenants (1946)
Mrs. Donald's Dog Bun and His Home Away from Home (1995) (less)

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Books by William Maxwell

All the Days and Nights: The Collected Stories

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Quotes from So Long, See You Tomorrow

“What we, or at any rate what I, refer to confidently as memory--meaning a moment, a scene, a fact that has been subjected to a fixative and thereby rescued from oblivion--is really a form of storytelling that goes on continually in the mind and often changes with the telling. Too many conflicting emotional interests are involved for life ever to be wholly acceptable, and possibly it is the work of the storyteller to rearrange things so that they conform to this end. In any case, in talking about the past we lie with every breath we draw.” — 24 people liked it

“His sadness was of the kind that is patient and without hope.” — 13 people liked it

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BBCode	[url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/844989.So_Long_See_You_Tomorrow?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book][img]http://d.gr-assets.com/books/1320519820l/844989.jpg[/img][/url] [url=http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/844989.So_Long_See_You_Tomorrow?utm_medium=api&utm_source=blog_book]So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell[/url]

So Long, See You Tomorrow

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