Customer Reviews

Summer Doorways: A Memoir

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

W.S.Merwin has written an elegant memoir of the passing of an age of manners and aristocracy that makes the near past seem far distant. Mr. Merwin states his intention early in the book, and delivers with consumate skill, and unfailing grace. There's nothing shocking here except that such a genteel time existed in the rubble of post-WW II Europe. The milieu and the prose are almost other-worldly, and I think the best way to define it is as a "civilized read."

Merwin relates, with charming lexis, his background and the circumstances leading up to the summer of his 21st birthday, in 1948, when he was contracted to tutor the nephews of the well heeled and well connected Stuyvesant family. The languid prose floats us across the Atlantic with him and his students. Taking up residence in the a Stuyvesant villa on the Riviera, Merwin meets an amazing group of the literati of Europe and America hobnobbing and living off each other in post War II ravaged Europe.

By summer's end he moves on to his next tutoring stint in a very backward Portugal where he meets kings and queens in exile, peasants, ex-patriots and pretenders to thrones. It is a summer worthy of a Fitzgerald novel, a summer of unexpected adventure and reward, a summer that could not possibly be duplicated. It is a memoir written against the backdrop of the final days of the old European aristocracy. A new order had come to power and the lights were rapidly dimming on the Old Guard.

Merwin imbues his tale, not with nostalgia, but with a sense of tenderness and wonder. His beguiling prose sits on the page as if it were kissed by a butterfly.

Will be appreciated by most readers possessing a sensitivity to the often-agonizingly-beautiful moments in the passage of time.

This book addresses a time that is lost to us... when post-war Europe was a third world realm. But it coincides with activities of the author (Pulitzer winning poet) who was becoming an adult.

Yeah, it is something of a prose Bolero (the sweet, evenly paced orchestral piece that drives some people crazy), but I loved it. Merwin has an unbelieveably detailed memory, keen appreciation of culture, and delightfully soft touch with syntax.

Really wonderful gift for your favorite nostalgic.

In my experience, memoir written by writers/poets is among the very best reading out there. Summer Doorways was dull. Far too much description of the places without enough said about the people involved.

I did not see the value of this bland memoir. W.S. Merwin is a capable writer but the story he tells here will have little interest to any but close family friends and those particularily keen on this minor author's early career. "Without direction or prospect.." Words taken from the book that seem apt.

(I do rank the book's jacket design by David Bullen as first rate.)