For example, he loved theĮlf stories of Sylvia Townsend Warner and insisted that one after another be published in The New Yorker.
And his taste in literature could be very special. The voices so quiet and modest that they could hardly be heard. (Maxwell's wife, Emily, who died the week before heĭid, was a painter.) A lot about Tolstoy and two Elizabeths - Bowen and Bishop. The atmosphere at the dinner table in his apartment on East 86th Street could be so literary and artistic that it seemed to depart the hardscrabble world entirely. A few wiseacres at The New Yorker sometimes referred to him as ''Waterworks.'' That you had just taken your son to camp or that your wife had burned a roast the night before, his eyes might fill with tears. And he was - sometimes, in his writing and editorial sensibility and in his personal and social lives, almost to the point of preciousness. Maxwell, who died last month at the age of 91, was widely regarded as a sweet and gentle man. He probably suspects that some time ago someone wanted to rub him out, and he may even pause to wonder why you're there checking on him. 8, 1979, you will find the thinkingĭog there thinking away, to say nothing of taking note and imagining. If you look back at The New Yorker issues of Oct. Like to keep it.'' Roger Angell is not and never has been an easy editor to face down, but this was no contest. Maxwell is reported to have responded, in Bartlebyesque fashion, ''I'd
On several occasions Roger urged Maxwell to put the thinking dog to sleep. Others of us in the department thought that the dog was a mistake. Imagine what had gotten into them.'' This thinking dog caused a stir in the fiction department at The New Yorker when the novel was about to be serialized there in 1979. As in: ''The dog took note of the fact that he didn't do any of these things.'' And: ''The dog couldn't Invented - for the purpose of witnessing some crucial events - a thinking dog. N his novel ''So Long, See You Tomorrow,'' based on a true story about passion and murder on a farm in the Midwest, William Maxwell OctoBOOKEND / By DANIEL MENAKER The Gentle Realist
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