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William Humphrey Selected Letters Published

“Far from Home” Selected Letters of William Humphrey, edited by Ashy Bland Crowder and published by Louisiana State University Press, Baton Rogue, La. 70808 (ISBN 978-0-8071-3272-2) has just been made available for many of us particularly interested in this writer.

The book flyleaf conveys, “Often compared to William Faulkner, renowned American writer William Humphrey (1924-1997) sought to shatter myths about the South in such acclaimed novels as Home from the Hill, The Ordways, and Proud Flesh, and in his voluminous short stories, critical essays, and memoirs.  This collection of Humphrey’s best letters deserves space on the bookshelf alongside these earlier works.  Beginning in the 1940s when, as a true starving artist, he wore borrowed clothes and could afford only one meal a day, the letters move to his time as a goatherd, his stint as a teacher at Bard College, his middle years in Europe, and the letters decrease in number as he returns to America with his health declining in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

Humphrey corresponded with some of the central figures in the literary and intellectual life of the twentieth century, including writers such as Katherine Anne Porter and Leonard Woolf, and the publisher Alfred Knopf.  These letters present a vivid picture of Humphrey as he provides commentary on his contemporaries through personal observations combined with sharp critical judgments.

The letters also provide remarkable insights into Humphrey’s own works, showing him to be a man happiest when he forgot about himself also prone to plunging into despondency.  The correspondence unforgettably reveals his troubled soul and his life as a quintessential artist; a man with the unswerving drive to make a lasting contribution to American literature.”

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