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The Wayfarers
Very good condition
368 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 1945
22 people want to read
About the author
Dan Wickenden
8 booksAmerican author and retired senior editor at book publisher Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
Wickenden published many short stories in a wide array of magazines before making his mark as a novelist in 1937 with ''The Running of the Deer"--a best seller portraying two middle-class Long Island families.
Wickenden published many short stories in a wide array of magazines before making his mark as a novelist in 1937 with ''The Running of the Deer"--a best seller portraying two middle-class Long Island families.
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Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 15, 2023
Let me say it right out: it is a crying shame that Dan Wickenden’s 1945 novel THE WAYFARERS has for the most part been forgotten. Orville Prescott, book critic of The New York Times, considered it the finest American novel of that year, and it enjoyed sufficient success, including being a book club selection, to merit a British edition the following year. After that, it slipped into obscurity. For this reader, Wickenden is at least as deserving of endurance, and arguably more so, as Theodore Dreiser.
At a time when many other writers were striking out in new directions, Wickenden was content with conventional narrative. If I had to cite a probable early influence on his work, I would point to Jane Austen.
The novel traces three generations of a Midwestern American family during the era of the Great Depression in the fictional town of Biadfield. The central father figure, Norris Bryant, is trying to spring back from a drinking problem following the death of his wife. At one point he sees his grandson of seven months as having “dark eyes that look surprised most of the time as if he wasn’t used to the idea of being alive yet.” Norris’s abject love for the grandchild is rendered by Wickenden with perfect restraint.
The author speaks thematically through Norris when the father says to one of his sons: “ “Things don’t happen by accident, Charley; what happens has roots.” Or through the frustrated, theatrical widow Carola, who is described as not really belonging in Broadfield: “The Broadfield closets are crammed with skeletons, and somehow we hear about them all sooner or later.”
Wickenden is adept at showing the resentments and discord that can lie beneath the facade of togetherness at a family Christmas dinner, or the social nuances in gatherings for cultural events in a small town. At an art show opening: “The inner rooms of the gallery were less crowded; here there were people actually looking at the pictures —- the women earnestly, the men casually and as it were over the shoulders, so that nobody could accuse them of giving art more than its due.” Wickenden’s dissection of the crowd at an orchestral concert is also memorable.
The author’s own experience as a newspaper editor informs his portrayal of newspaper editor Norris. Wickenden eventually became a senior editor for the book publishing firm of Harcourt Brace and worked with authors such as Eudora Welty, Wendell Berry and James Gould Cozzens. Occasionally his prose would have benefited from another editor’s scrutiny, particularly when he overdresses descriptions of weather and natural phenomena.
I am not unaware that the book occasionally lapses into raw melodrama, but mightn’t this also be said of Faulkner if his prose were as clear and direct as Wickenden’s?
I will definitely be reading other novels by Dan Wickenden. I had to obtain this one through an interlibrary loan. I’m looking for a first edition for my home library but so far can find on the secondary market only copies of the British edition. (My library loan is in remarkable condition for a 78-year-old book. Acid-free paper was unheard of in 1945, but the pages show no foxing. The book, published by William Morrow and Company, was sewn in signatures with a protective headband.)
After writing the above, I located a copy on Ebay at a favorable price. It turned out to be a book club edition, alas, but it’s from 1945 and in good condition. A newspaper review by one James Gray pasted on the rear endpapers begins with this, with which I can concur: “The lady novelist who writes as though she were the mother of all the world is a familiar type. The male novelist who writes as though he were the equally benevolent father of a whole community is a rarer specimen. But I think one might call Dan Wickenden the universal pater familias.”
At a time when many other writers were striking out in new directions, Wickenden was content with conventional narrative. If I had to cite a probable early influence on his work, I would point to Jane Austen.
The novel traces three generations of a Midwestern American family during the era of the Great Depression in the fictional town of Biadfield. The central father figure, Norris Bryant, is trying to spring back from a drinking problem following the death of his wife. At one point he sees his grandson of seven months as having “dark eyes that look surprised most of the time as if he wasn’t used to the idea of being alive yet.” Norris’s abject love for the grandchild is rendered by Wickenden with perfect restraint.
The author speaks thematically through Norris when the father says to one of his sons: “ “Things don’t happen by accident, Charley; what happens has roots.” Or through the frustrated, theatrical widow Carola, who is described as not really belonging in Broadfield: “The Broadfield closets are crammed with skeletons, and somehow we hear about them all sooner or later.”
Wickenden is adept at showing the resentments and discord that can lie beneath the facade of togetherness at a family Christmas dinner, or the social nuances in gatherings for cultural events in a small town. At an art show opening: “The inner rooms of the gallery were less crowded; here there were people actually looking at the pictures —- the women earnestly, the men casually and as it were over the shoulders, so that nobody could accuse them of giving art more than its due.” Wickenden’s dissection of the crowd at an orchestral concert is also memorable.
The author’s own experience as a newspaper editor informs his portrayal of newspaper editor Norris. Wickenden eventually became a senior editor for the book publishing firm of Harcourt Brace and worked with authors such as Eudora Welty, Wendell Berry and James Gould Cozzens. Occasionally his prose would have benefited from another editor’s scrutiny, particularly when he overdresses descriptions of weather and natural phenomena.
I am not unaware that the book occasionally lapses into raw melodrama, but mightn’t this also be said of Faulkner if his prose were as clear and direct as Wickenden’s?
I will definitely be reading other novels by Dan Wickenden. I had to obtain this one through an interlibrary loan. I’m looking for a first edition for my home library but so far can find on the secondary market only copies of the British edition. (My library loan is in remarkable condition for a 78-year-old book. Acid-free paper was unheard of in 1945, but the pages show no foxing. The book, published by William Morrow and Company, was sewn in signatures with a protective headband.)
After writing the above, I located a copy on Ebay at a favorable price. It turned out to be a book club edition, alas, but it’s from 1945 and in good condition. A newspaper review by one James Gray pasted on the rear endpapers begins with this, with which I can concur: “The lady novelist who writes as though she were the mother of all the world is a familiar type. The male novelist who writes as though he were the equally benevolent father of a whole community is a rarer specimen. But I think one might call Dan Wickenden the universal pater familias.”
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