William Maxwell, who died in July 2000, was revered as one of the twentieth century’s great American writers and a longtime fiction editor at The New Yorker. Now writers who knew Maxwell and were inspired by him-both the man and his work-offer intimate essays, most specifically written for this volume, that
bring him back to life, right there in front of us.

Alec Wilkinson writes of Maxwell as mentor; Edward Hirsch remembers him in old age; Charles Baxter illuminates the magnificent novel So Long, See You Tomorrow; Ben Cheever recalls Maxwell and his own father; Donna Tartt vividly describes Maxwell’s kindness to herself as a first novelist; and Michael Collier admires him as a supreme literary correspondent. Other appreciations include insightful pieces by Alice Munro, Anthony Hecht, a poem by John Updike, and a brief tribute from Paula Fox. Ending this splendid collection is Maxwell himself, in the unpublished speech The Writer as Illusionist. Three generations of writers celebrate a master whose life and work continue to reverberate in contemporary letters.