Customer Reviews

So Long, See You Tomorrow

5 star:		(39)
4 star:		(19)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is my favorite book, by my favorite author. I could read it again and again have! It is his most cleanly drawn and tightly written work. Not a word more or less would perfect it. The story continues the exploration begun in "They Came Like Swallows", following the life of a sensitive middle child after the death of his mother during the great influenza epidemic of 1918. It questions the meaning of friendship, of love and consequences of passion. The child, who certainly seems to possess something of Maxwell himself, traces even into old age, the true meaning of relationships he formed at this period of his life. The end of the book is truly haunting and will stay with you for years. It speaks volumes about how the words that are unspoken in life are sometimes much more important than those that are spoken. How as we grow old, we remember all the things that we could have, should have said....Maxwell is truly one of our finest writers, underappreciated due in large part to his elegant restraint. His prose is as austere as it is powerful. It is truly an unforgettable novel.

Maxwell has always been known as a very pure writer - honest sentiments in concrete images. Take this line from 'So Long, See You Tomorrow' about children sleeping in a quiet winter night as an example: 'sleeping the sleep of stone'.
Same for the book on the whole: a straight-forward and concise record of a painful childhood + a convincing and sympathetic account of what could have happened in the tragic murder/suicide that took place in the book. In the pages depicting Maxwell's childhood, you see images of the child agonizing over the death of his mother, the loss of a normal childhood, the bitterness against his father and a mixture of all these unresolved feelings which the grown up narrator narrates with great immediacy. The pictures are particularly heart-breaking as the writing is very subdued - everything is described for what it is and the author, while expressing his feelings directly, simply state what he feels without exaggeration. It is the kind of autobiographical writing that makes you understand why one writes autobiography and why all of us grieve over certain things that we think we've let go, or constantly hope we'll let go: some things will always be there, down deep, once they happen.
The fictional account of the murder/tragedy echoes Maxwell's story: how everyone has a heart and a right to their feelings; how we all get trapped in situations we cant control and break someone's heart or gets heart-broken. In a way, writing this story seems to be a way of coming to terms with things for Maxwell- to get over the bitterness against things gone wrong by understanding the complexities and inevitability of some situations. One striking thing about this piece of writing is that it's highly dialogic: like in the universe in Anna Karenina, everyone in this fictional world has a right to be understood. There's a reason why someone becomes the person s/he's become and why s/he's done what s/he's done. Even the most unsympathetic story (on the surface) has his story that may be sadder than everyone else's.
In the end it's an extremely well-written work - a very good example for students of creative writing in particular. The last thing I'll say about this book is its title. A line from the dialogue in the book itself, it symbolizes that line between childhood and adolescence/adulthood (when one's forced to drastically grow up in an extreme circumstance). One crosses this line and enters the world of traumatic loss, in which we have no choice but to accept and endure pain. As wound souls we forever look back at that other carefree world with nostaglia - a brilliant title and immensely geniune emotions.

This is an excellent and engrossing novel that will captivate and draw you right into the story. On an early winter morning just before daybreak, three men hear a loud noise similar to a car backfiring. At first they dismiss it as just that, but it turns out to be a fatal shot that kills a farmer named Lloyd Wilson. The protagonist in the story was friends with the deceased man's son, Cletus. Using newspaper clippings, memories, and imagination, he tries to reconstruct the dramatic events that led to the shooting. Through the use of imagery, William Maxwell creates a story that is vivid in its depictions of rural life and the excruciating emotions people endure as a result of choices they make. This book takes the reader on a journey where one feels like a part of the world these people inhabit. The descriptive and evocative writing helps us to understand their pain and anxiety as we watch them live their lives. This is a terrific book and a great introduction to the literary talents of William Maxwell. Highly recommended!

In this short book, the narrator reconstructs a tragedy from his childhood, and the events that lead up to it, 50 years after it happened. It is a masterful reflection on the hazy and unreliable filter of memory.

The book's pace is often slow, and I sometimes found myself confused about which character the story was discussing. Nevertheless, it is beautifully written. Some of the passages are truly amazing. The story itself builds gradually, but by the time it is over, the effect is heartbreaking. It is a sad tale with no winners. But for the patient and thoughtful reader, it offers the kind of wisdom that only a master writer in his autumn years can offer.

In reading William Maxwell's So Long, See You Tomorrow, I realized a few things. First of all, in my limited experience, I have yet to see a book which fulfills both its role as a novel as well as a vehicle for some conveyance by the author better than this one. Second, I realized that my review of this novel will be glowing and perhaps superfluously positive. Take this only as an extremely strong recommendation to read this book and not as an indication that I am a little crazy. The novel is an apology from the narrator to a boy from his childhood. The two were friends in the early 20th century Midwest, only to have this friendship shattered by the murder of one boy's father. The story of what happens to the boys after this event, and the feelings that the narrator must carry with him, are the basis for his need to apologize to his childhood friend, as well as the basis for a superbly written novel. William Maxwell uses narrative effortlessly. His flashbacks, flash forwards, and imaginations blend so seamlessly into the rest of the story that the reader is able to weave them into the plot with no difficulty. He wastes no words, and spends little time on description. Now I have heard people rave about novels because the author describes rural Montana so well, of gives such an accurate description of the ocean, but let me tell you that a novel like Maxwell's awards itself a much higher place in my literary hall of fame for not needing such description, which is often beautiful but seldom integral to the plot or theme. Instead he uses his words to describe the actions of the characters in the story, which in turn reveals much about them, which illuminates the different themes of the novel excellently. Maxwell uses his novel to a degree that most writers don't. That is to say that it was written almost entirely for one person. As I said, I have a relatively small catalogue from which to reference, but it seems to be the most specifically intended novel that I have seen. Some may view this as a negative, but it my mind, it draws the reader along the narrative, if for no other reason than to see how the narrator will form the finale of his apology. You want to see how he leaves it with this person who he admittedly knows will probably never see the novel. It is not my place to say how this takes place, but I will say that, in a novel of only about 130 pages, William Maxwell has ample room to fulfill his purpose, as well as the novel's literary purpose. I feel this is a great testament to the author, and his writing. I have always been of the school that if Moby Dick could be written in ten pages, it should be. Extraneous material in a novel, no matter how beautifully written, does little more than offer the reader that which he does not need. Maxwell's book avoids this, and in the process becomes one of the finest novels I have ever read.

This is an almost perfect short novel: concise, well written, and immensely touching. The adult situation it recounts could have become melodramatic, but the book makes it genuinely tragic by showing its effects on the two boys on the periphery. The narrator's adult regret for the effects of his childhood thoughtlessness is very true to life too -- we've all been there! -- and I found that the book echoed in my mind long after I put it down. I feel that this is an underappreciated masterpiece that deserves to be much better known.

So Long, See You Tomorrow is probably the most perfect rendering of the tragic and embarrassing moments in childhood that I have ever read. William Maxwell's concise but beautifully written accounts of the losses and tragedies of a young boy growing up in the early 1900's are well-captured and elegant. The character relationships that he weaves througout the book are classic: the struggle between father and son, the uncertainty and fear between siblings, and the making and breaking of friendships. The narrator, who may be based on Maxwell himself, leads us through his own lonely childhood and then through the childhood of another boy who crossed his path by conjuring up such poignant images that if the reader can not recall living them himself, he can certainly feel the pain and embarrassment and see that little ten year old boy standing in front of the closet of his dead mother just to see her clothes and remember her. When discussing the book with my classmates, many of them thought that some characters were not as well developed as they should be, but the author did not write the book to show detailed characters from the narrator's past; the book is not only the story of a young boy, it is also an interesting examination of memory and stories. The fragments of memories and rumors, while leaving some characters with little development, construct a complicated and well developed main character in the narrator as well as tell the tragic and unsolved story to a murder. Amazingly enough, Maxwell accomplishes all of this in less than one hundred and fifty pages, a feat is refreshing and to be admired. The style is easy and concise, almost conversational, making So Long See You Tomorrow a very easy read while still being stimulating and thought provoking. So Long See You Tomorrow is an imaginative book that lets the reader step into the minds of young children, old men, young women, and even a dog without losing any of the keen perspective of the narrator. I've already read it numerous times, and I'm sure that I'll read it again.

William Maxwell, in So Long, See You Tomorrow, performs one of the prime directives of literature, reconstructing a lost world. And Maxwell is patient and rigorous. We get the feeling, when reading this novel, that Maxwell is writing his work more to assuage his sense of loss than to inform or entertain us. This gives this novel almost the feel of a diary or memoir not meant for public review, or to be kept in a drawer until after the death of the novelist. And then pain of the loss is there, exposed, without mitigation; the young narrator walking with his hand around the hip of his father, who is pacing around the parlor in grief over his dead wife. The middle age narrator emerging from his psychiatrist's office overflowing with tears at the memory, secure in his knowledge that he can cry on a street in New York City with the greatest of anonymity. These are emotions men and women never surmount. This is raw stuff, but presented with the deft artistry, with the most patient care, and all in 135 pages.

Hasn't everyone, at one time or another, done something that they regret later? I believe that everyone has a moment in their past, big or small that they would go back and change if they could. The main character in this novel has this problem. He has spent his whole life remembering one instant in a school hallway and wishing that he could change what he did. The narrator had been a bit of a lonely child with no real friends from day to day to hang around with. His mother died having his brother and she was never really discussed in the household after that. The narrator felt that there was a bridge between him and his brother because they never talked about their grief over their mother dying. His father remarries a woman very different from his mother, and it just seems to create a greater bridge between the narrator and his father. They just can't seem to connect with one another. But then the narrator meets Cletus, a boy about his own age, and they strike up a unique friendship. They play together everyday, and Cletus never really says much, except to stick up for the narrator to the other schoolboys. Every evening they say "So long" and "See you tomorrow" and plan to see each other the next day. But one day that changes forever. Lloyd Wilson has been killed, and Cletus's father, Clarence, is the only one anyone thinks did it. He had suspected that his wife and Lloyd Wilson were having an affair. From this point on, Cletus's life changes for good. He has to testify in court, and he must move out of his house and live with his mom in town. The narrator's friendship with Cletus has been broken. And some years later, in the school halls, the narrator believes he sees Cletus and doesn't say anything. This is what he regrets for so many years. That he did nothing. I think that the author makes dramatic choices such as the murder of Lloyd Wilson, all the exposition about the narrator and his father, and the moment in the school hallway to get specific thematic themes across to the reader. All the exposition we are given serves to show the reader the wall that sort of seems to be built between the narrator and his father. They just don't really understand one another and the narrator is not close with his brother, either. This helps the reader see how important Cletus's friendship is to him and why it disturbs him so much to lose the friendship. Also, there is a theme of substitution that runs through the novel,too. The murderer takes Lloyd Wilson's ear as a substitute for something else. The book never does come out and say what that is, so you can come to your own conclusions. Perhaps Clarence really wanted to take something else, but an ear was what he chose to represent the betrayal of a friend. Some choices we make we must live with all our lives.

With the use of simple words, phrase, and the charming use of "flashbacks", the book describes a murder, the lives that were impacted by it, the events that led to the murder, and one man's guilt in not offering solace. What is profound is that the title is so ironic, filled with shame, with fate's mysterious ways in parting friends. But the reader will ultimately ask, were the two boys at the heart of the story friends, and why exactly did the narrator's guilt haunt him into old age. A lot is left unsaid in this story, but the images provoked and the symbols suggested lend a simple power to the story that, if allowed, might touch the reader. "So Long, See You Tomorrow" is a book that should be read slowly to enjoy its simplicity, and it should be allowed to impact how the reader views the whole concept of "memory." For the ultimate question still remains: Is memory and one's past reality or fiction?