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Billie Dyer and Other Stories
Book by Maxwell, William
- GenresShort StoriesFiction
182 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1992
About the author
William Maxwell
98 books313 followersLibrarian Note: There is more than one author by this name in the Goodreads database.
William Keepers Maxwell Jr. was an American novelist, and fiction editor at the New Yorker. He studied at the University of Illinois and Harvard University. Maxwell wrote six highly acclaimed novels, a number of short stories and essays, children's stories, and a memoir, Ancestors (1972). His award-winning fiction, which is increasingly seen as some of the most important of the 20th Century, has recurring themes of childhood, family, loss and lives changed quietly and irreparably. Much of his work is autobiographical, particularly concerning the loss of his mother when he was 10 years old growing up in the rural Midwest of America and the house where he lived at the time, which he referred to as the "Wunderkammer" or "Chamber of Wonders". He wrote of his loss "It happened too suddenly, with no warning, and we none of us could believe it or bear it... the beautiful, imaginative, protected world of my childhood swept away." Since his death in 2000 several works of biography have appeared, including A William Maxwell Portrait: Memories and Appreciations (W. W. Norton & Co., 2004), My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell by Alec Wilkinson (Houghton-Mifflin, 2002), and William Maxwell: A Literary Life by Barbara Burkhardt (University of Illinois Press, 2005). In 2008 the Library of America published the first of two collections of William Maxwell, Early Novels and Stories, Christopher Carduff editor. His collected edition of William Maxwell's fiction, published to mark the writer's centenary, was completed by a second volume, Later Novels and Stories in the fall of 2008.'
William Keepers Maxwell Jr. was an American novelist, and fiction editor at the New Yorker. He studied at the University of Illinois and Harvard University. Maxwell wrote six highly acclaimed novels, a number of short stories and essays, children's stories, and a memoir, Ancestors (1972). His award-winning fiction, which is increasingly seen as some of the most important of the 20th Century, has recurring themes of childhood, family, loss and lives changed quietly and irreparably. Much of his work is autobiographical, particularly concerning the loss of his mother when he was 10 years old growing up in the rural Midwest of America and the house where he lived at the time, which he referred to as the "Wunderkammer" or "Chamber of Wonders". He wrote of his loss "It happened too suddenly, with no warning, and we none of us could believe it or bear it... the beautiful, imaginative, protected world of my childhood swept away." Since his death in 2000 several works of biography have appeared, including A William Maxwell Portrait: Memories and Appreciations (W. W. Norton & Co., 2004), My Mentor: A Young Man's Friendship with William Maxwell by Alec Wilkinson (Houghton-Mifflin, 2002), and William Maxwell: A Literary Life by Barbara Burkhardt (University of Illinois Press, 2005). In 2008 the Library of America published the first of two collections of William Maxwell, Early Novels and Stories, Christopher Carduff editor. His collected edition of William Maxwell's fiction, published to mark the writer's centenary, was completed by a second volume, Later Novels and Stories in the fall of 2008.'
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Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews
July 17, 2017
4 and 1/2 stars
Though these stories are classified as fiction, they are all based in some aspect of Maxwell's childhood in Lincoln, Illinois, specifically on incidents that seem to have haunted him since childhood. As I wrote about his So Long, See You Tomorrow, these stories are an example of why some writers write: "a memory has lingered through the years and in the need to work out why, they put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, as the case may be."
Except for the first story and parts of the penultimate one, this collection could be classified as creative nonfiction. But the genre doesn't matter. His writing is quietly flawless, each story leading us to a small, though devastating, epiphany. (May 26, 2012)
*
Finished a re-read, during a 'buddy read' with Sue on July 15, 2017:
Any of my Goodreads friends who knows me well knows that Maxwell is my guy, as Tony once said. Simply put, there is something about Maxwell's empathetic writing that soothes my soul. In every one of his short stories, I am struck and stopped in my tracks by at least one sentence, even if I’ve already read the story.
It was interesting to read this collection both before and after reading the rest of his oeuvre, including his nonfictional Ancestors: A Family History. So many things for him never went away: perhaps that is the source of his empathy.
Though these stories are classified as fiction, they are all based in some aspect of Maxwell's childhood in Lincoln, Illinois, specifically on incidents that seem to have haunted him since childhood. As I wrote about his So Long, See You Tomorrow, these stories are an example of why some writers write: "a memory has lingered through the years and in the need to work out why, they put pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard, as the case may be."
Except for the first story and parts of the penultimate one, this collection could be classified as creative nonfiction. But the genre doesn't matter. His writing is quietly flawless, each story leading us to a small, though devastating, epiphany. (May 26, 2012)
*
Finished a re-read, during a 'buddy read' with Sue on July 15, 2017:
Any of my Goodreads friends who knows me well knows that Maxwell is my guy, as Tony once said. Simply put, there is something about Maxwell's empathetic writing that soothes my soul. In every one of his short stories, I am struck and stopped in my tracks by at least one sentence, even if I’ve already read the story.
It was interesting to read this collection both before and after reading the rest of his oeuvre, including his nonfictional Ancestors: A Family History. So many things for him never went away: perhaps that is the source of his empathy.
July 24, 2017
This is the second work of William Maxwell that I have been fortunate enough to read and Maxwell has already entered my favorite authors shelf. There is a genuine-ness present in his work and his characters, be they considered in the right or the wrong. There is also a gentleness in the way he presents his stories whether the news or actions are good or truly awful; Maxweill cares for those he creates on the page and it can be felt by the reader.
Billie Dyer and Other Stories is a collection of stories which all appear to have at least some basis in the facts of Maxwell's life in Lincoln, his family and the townspeople around him. Through this assortment of "people," we learn details (or possible/plausible details) of his youth, relationship with his parents and brothers. But this is always through the narrator's voice, at a remove. The stories are uniformly beautifully done.
I feel the presence of a lost age in this book. The stories seen through his eyes as a child are almost heartbreaking at times even when they aren't necessarily sad. They are just so much of a long lost era. A time that was gone when I was a child but there were perhaps still slight vestiges left.
I do recommend William Maxwell to those who haven't yet discovered him if you enjoy the numerous qualities of his work that I have mentioned above. Start here of perhaps with So Long, See You Tomorrow. Enjoy!
While I have read this book as part of William Maxwell: Later Novels and Stories, in the interest of preventing added review confusion, I am choosing to review this book here.
Billie Dyer and Other Stories is a collection of stories which all appear to have at least some basis in the facts of Maxwell's life in Lincoln, his family and the townspeople around him. Through this assortment of "people," we learn details (or possible/plausible details) of his youth, relationship with his parents and brothers. But this is always through the narrator's voice, at a remove. The stories are uniformly beautifully done.
I feel the presence of a lost age in this book. The stories seen through his eyes as a child are almost heartbreaking at times even when they aren't necessarily sad. They are just so much of a long lost era. A time that was gone when I was a child but there were perhaps still slight vestiges left.
I do recommend William Maxwell to those who haven't yet discovered him if you enjoy the numerous qualities of his work that I have mentioned above. Start here of perhaps with So Long, See You Tomorrow. Enjoy!
While I have read this book as part of William Maxwell: Later Novels and Stories, in the interest of preventing added review confusion, I am choosing to review this book here.
November 14, 2009
William Maxwell. Billie Dyer. New York: Penguin Books, 1992.
Maxwell was born in 1908 and died at the turn of this century, 2000. His first book was published in 1934, which is remarkable because this book was published in 1992. That is a long writing career.
Page 39: from “Love”
The boy goes to see his twenty-three-year-old beloved fifth grade teacher who suddenly disappeared from class. He goes to her house to wish her well, but she takes little notice of him and doesn’t seem glad to see him. “Her arms were like sticks, and all the life in her seemed concentrated in her eyes, which had dark circles around them and were enormous…She didn’t belong to us anymore. She belonged to her illness.”
Page 40: Maxwell just has the right cadence and a simple beauty to his sentences. The boy `knows that his teacher’s mother will go to the cemetery every week to take flowers for her daughter’s grave. And with each visit she’ll pour “… the rancid water out of the tin receptacle that was sunk below the level of the grass at the foot of her grave, and filled it with fresh water from a nearby faucet and arranged the flowers she had brought in such a way as to please the eye of the living and the closed eyes of the dead.”
Page 57: from “The Man in the Moon”
“The view after seventy is breathtaking. What is lacking is someone, anyone, of the older generation to whom you can turn when you want to satisfy your curiosity about some detail of the landscape of the past. There is no longer any older generation. You have become it, while your mind was mostly on other matters.”
Page 58: At times he is so good that he catches me by surprise. He calls up a school friend he hasn’t seen in many years (remember he is in his seventies) to ask her about someone from their past and refers to her answers over the phone as “the voice said.” And isn’t that true about long distance relationship where it is conducted over the phone and infrequently? The person becomes only a voice. As he questions her about this person and the childhood experience, he realizes they have completely different views of what happened. “Oral history is a tangle of the truth and alterations on it.”
Pages 68 and 69, from “With Reference to an Incident at a Bridge”
In Cub Scouts the boys decide they will initiate the new ones and proceed to do something fairly cruel but not horrible. “Considering the multitude of things that happen in any one person’s life, it seems fairly unlikely that those little boys remembered the incident for very long. It was an introduction to what was to come. And cruelty could never again take them totally by surprise. But I have remembered it. I have remembered it because it was the moment I learned that I was not to be trusted.” This reminds me of the Spanish story, “El Ciego.” The cruelty of the blind man taught me to see.
Page 77, from “My Father’s Friend”
In this story it is a favorite aunt who is dying. He goes to the hospital to see her when he is about fourteen or fifteen years old. “She saw me, but it was as if she were looking at somebody she had never seen before. Since then, I have watched beloved animals dying. The withdrawal, into some part of themselves that only they know about. It is, I think not unknown to any kind of living creature…I had acquired an important item of knowledge – dying is something people have to live through, and while they are doing it, unless you are much closer to them than I was to her, you have little or no claim on them.”
Maxwell was born in 1908 and died at the turn of this century, 2000. His first book was published in 1934, which is remarkable because this book was published in 1992. That is a long writing career.
Page 39: from “Love”
The boy goes to see his twenty-three-year-old beloved fifth grade teacher who suddenly disappeared from class. He goes to her house to wish her well, but she takes little notice of him and doesn’t seem glad to see him. “Her arms were like sticks, and all the life in her seemed concentrated in her eyes, which had dark circles around them and were enormous…She didn’t belong to us anymore. She belonged to her illness.”
Page 40: Maxwell just has the right cadence and a simple beauty to his sentences. The boy `knows that his teacher’s mother will go to the cemetery every week to take flowers for her daughter’s grave. And with each visit she’ll pour “… the rancid water out of the tin receptacle that was sunk below the level of the grass at the foot of her grave, and filled it with fresh water from a nearby faucet and arranged the flowers she had brought in such a way as to please the eye of the living and the closed eyes of the dead.”
Page 57: from “The Man in the Moon”
“The view after seventy is breathtaking. What is lacking is someone, anyone, of the older generation to whom you can turn when you want to satisfy your curiosity about some detail of the landscape of the past. There is no longer any older generation. You have become it, while your mind was mostly on other matters.”
Page 58: At times he is so good that he catches me by surprise. He calls up a school friend he hasn’t seen in many years (remember he is in his seventies) to ask her about someone from their past and refers to her answers over the phone as “the voice said.” And isn’t that true about long distance relationship where it is conducted over the phone and infrequently? The person becomes only a voice. As he questions her about this person and the childhood experience, he realizes they have completely different views of what happened. “Oral history is a tangle of the truth and alterations on it.”
Pages 68 and 69, from “With Reference to an Incident at a Bridge”
In Cub Scouts the boys decide they will initiate the new ones and proceed to do something fairly cruel but not horrible. “Considering the multitude of things that happen in any one person’s life, it seems fairly unlikely that those little boys remembered the incident for very long. It was an introduction to what was to come. And cruelty could never again take them totally by surprise. But I have remembered it. I have remembered it because it was the moment I learned that I was not to be trusted.” This reminds me of the Spanish story, “El Ciego.” The cruelty of the blind man taught me to see.
Page 77, from “My Father’s Friend”
In this story it is a favorite aunt who is dying. He goes to the hospital to see her when he is about fourteen or fifteen years old. “She saw me, but it was as if she were looking at somebody she had never seen before. Since then, I have watched beloved animals dying. The withdrawal, into some part of themselves that only they know about. It is, I think not unknown to any kind of living creature…I had acquired an important item of knowledge – dying is something people have to live through, and while they are doing it, unless you are much closer to them than I was to her, you have little or no claim on them.”
June 27, 2010
Beautifully written collection of semi-autobiographical stories. Throughout the book, Maxwell emphasizes the power of personal narrative over history and other, supposedly objective, accounts of human activity. "The past is always being plowed under," he reminds us, arguing that without stories, our lives are subject to the random, unreliable, and incomplete records of dry history. Maxwell's stories, appropriately enough, do not follow a straightforward narrative path, but wander engagingly through the perspective of their narrators (who seem to be, in most cases, thinly disguised versions of Maxwell himself). Maxwell's collection resonates far beyond the length of this slim, but thoroughly engaging, volume.
September 30, 2021
William Maxwell has become one of my very favorite writers. The brilliant simplicity of his language and his empathy toward his characters speak to me. He usually wrote from his life though he fictionalized it to some extent. This collection of stories was published later in his life and there is less effort toward fiction. He names the town he grew up in as well as his family members and people who lived in the town. The title story, "Billy Dyer" is about a black men who grew up there and, against all odds, became a doctor. Maxwell put a lot of effort into researching his life. By the end, my heart was aching for this man who worked so hard toward his own dignity and was repeatedly denied it.
September 7, 2011
4 stars until the last 2 stories, which were amazing and bumped up my whole rating. This seemed like it was much more memoirish than fictional, but excellent either way.
June 29, 2011
I think William Maxwell writes beautifully.
Periodically, Maxwell will drop a pearl of wisdom into his stories. Thinking about the current controversy about the novels of Mark Twain be released in "sanitized" versions, I reflect on what Maxwell writes in the title story: "I am aware the 'blacks' is now the acceptable form but when I was a little boy the polite form was 'colored people'; it was how they spoke of themselves. In speaking of things that happened long ago, to be insensitive to the language of the period is to be, in effect, an unreliable witness."
Periodically, Maxwell will drop a pearl of wisdom into his stories. Thinking about the current controversy about the novels of Mark Twain be released in "sanitized" versions, I reflect on what Maxwell writes in the title story: "I am aware the 'blacks' is now the acceptable form but when I was a little boy the polite form was 'colored people'; it was how they spoke of themselves. In speaking of things that happened long ago, to be insensitive to the language of the period is to be, in effect, an unreliable witness."
June 12, 2022
This is a lovely book, very short but it has real impact. It reminds me of "Winesburg Ohio" or "Olive Kitteredge," but it is better written and more sensitive than either one. The stories all take place in Lincoln, IL, where Maxwell was raised, a town of something over 10,000 people. Most, if I remember correctly, occur in the first decades of the Twentieth Century.
If one were having a bad day, this is a book which would offer some peace. Maxwell writes with a contagious calmness, humanity and decency and he is a meticulous stylist. These stories are about the small and large things in life, and how people keep going on when difficult situations arise. I gather that this is fiction, but these stories are utterly believable, and it is hard to imagine that these events did not actually happen.
Maxwell has unusual sensitivity to individuals, and describes even the difficulty ones without apparent judgment. I was moved by the clarity and and concern that he describes life for Lincoln's Black population. While all seven of the stories concern Maxwell's extended family, at least three describe the lives of the Dyer family, who are African American. William ("Billie") Dyer has a noteworthy and unusual career as a surgeon, while his sister works all her life as hired help. How white people treat their Black neighbors comes through very clearly, and made me wince, which has to have been Maxwell's intention.
I can't quite get to five stars here. The last two stories are exceptional. The first and longest one is the title story, and much of it is very good, but the excessive focus on World War I undercuts its impact.
Maxwell is a terrific writer, and well worth experiencing.
If one were having a bad day, this is a book which would offer some peace. Maxwell writes with a contagious calmness, humanity and decency and he is a meticulous stylist. These stories are about the small and large things in life, and how people keep going on when difficult situations arise. I gather that this is fiction, but these stories are utterly believable, and it is hard to imagine that these events did not actually happen.
Maxwell has unusual sensitivity to individuals, and describes even the difficulty ones without apparent judgment. I was moved by the clarity and and concern that he describes life for Lincoln's Black population. While all seven of the stories concern Maxwell's extended family, at least three describe the lives of the Dyer family, who are African American. William ("Billie") Dyer has a noteworthy and unusual career as a surgeon, while his sister works all her life as hired help. How white people treat their Black neighbors comes through very clearly, and made me wince, which has to have been Maxwell's intention.
I can't quite get to five stars here. The last two stories are exceptional. The first and longest one is the title story, and much of it is very good, but the excessive focus on World War I undercuts its impact.
Maxwell is a terrific writer, and well worth experiencing.
October 5, 2021
William Maxwell has shared an interconnected collection of stories, memories of his childhood in Lincoln, Illinois in the early 20th century. He remembers some injustices that were common at the time, but in hindsight are glaringly wrong. His honest stories of his family and people he knew shed light on many of our memories and history, with a soft gentle touch and beautiful language. Here is my favorite paragraph, from the Man in the Moon, “The view after seventy is breathtaking. What is lacking is someone, anyone, of the older generation to whom you can turn when you want to satisfy your curiosity about some detail of the landscape of the past. There is no longer any older generation. You have become it, while your mind was mostly on other matters.”
The stories include Billie Dyer, a Black man who grew up to become a doctor, stories of his Uncle Ted, who lost his arm and family fortunes through entitled foolishness, Aunt Annette, his mother’s death in childbirth during the flu epidemic, his older brother’s accident causing the loss of his leg, and recognizing the true worlds of the front and back of the house. I treasure this book, remembering my own childhood, 50 years later, with some changes, but always the injustices and selfishness more visible now.
The stories include Billie Dyer, a Black man who grew up to become a doctor, stories of his Uncle Ted, who lost his arm and family fortunes through entitled foolishness, Aunt Annette, his mother’s death in childbirth during the flu epidemic, his older brother’s accident causing the loss of his leg, and recognizing the true worlds of the front and back of the house. I treasure this book, remembering my own childhood, 50 years later, with some changes, but always the injustices and selfishness more visible now.
November 17, 2022
This moving collection of short stories is labeled as fiction, but it reads so autobiographical in nature that I feel it is only the names of people that are changed. The prose of William Maxwell is subtle, yet impactful. He paints a vivid portrait of a small midwestern town in the early part of the 20th century, one that I could relate to as someone who grew up in a small southern town in the latter part of the 20th century.
Professional book reviewers are so much better at writing reviews than I am and they often echo, more eloquently, my sentiments.
"You read along, enjoying this visit to a small town in the early 1900's, and all of a sudden you stumble on something beautiful, or profoundly wise, or terribly sad." --- Josephine Humphreys, The New York Times Book Review
Professional book reviewers are so much better at writing reviews than I am and they often echo, more eloquently, my sentiments.
"You read along, enjoying this visit to a small town in the early 1900's, and all of a sudden you stumble on something beautiful, or profoundly wise, or terribly sad." --- Josephine Humphreys, The New York Times Book Review
July 9, 2020
A slight collection of short stories, published late in the author's life. Should be titled, "....and Other Stories From My Life". Very autobiographic, even more so than his other work. The "fiction" of the stories is him merely filling in a story by providing what he though might have happened. Lots of reminiscing on his life in Lincoln, IL.
The strongest for me was "The Front and the Back Parts of the House", where he realizes the effect of his autobiographical fiction on the life of a former servant. That what he writes is read, or at least talked about, by people still living back in that small "everybody knows your business" town in Central Illinois.
The strongest for me was "The Front and the Back Parts of the House", where he realizes the effect of his autobiographical fiction on the life of a former servant. That what he writes is read, or at least talked about, by people still living back in that small "everybody knows your business" town in Central Illinois.
September 3, 2017
What a disappointment, in view of the high praise this little collection of remembrances received from Goodreads friends whose opinions I trust. All I can say is that the book is mercifully short. I found the vignettes to be rambling, disjointed; I found myself skipping over a few phrases here and there, then whole paragraphs, hoping to get to the point of it all but failing to do so. Clearly, others saw something precious in these sketches that I did not, in which case the failing is mine. Too bad.
September 4, 2018
Wonderful read - enjoy an occasional novella and few short stories! Touching remembrances by Maxwell.
March 14, 2013
William Maxwell shows the reader America, by way of Lincoln, Illinois, in the early 1900s. It's the American Downton Abbey: birth, death, Spanish influenza, the servers and the served, the pain and beauty of family and life and the quiet that gets left behind -- what gets left behind, in general.
Maxwell shares stories of youth, the ignorance of and the revelations that come after. He also presents the color lines of America at that particular time. It's a really thoughtful indictment of the barriers we attempt to keep around ourselves, our children, our family, etc. It's also just a really impressive collection of stories, it feels like a blueprint for how to mourn your past/learn from it, how to store your memories/share them, how to love your hometown so much that it takes pages and pages to write out those three words.
Also, this is the collection where "With Reference to an Incident at a Bridge (for Eudora Welty)" appears and man oh man oh man --- "I believe in the forgiveness of sins. Some sins. I also believe that what's done is done and cannot be undone."
Maxwell shares stories of youth, the ignorance of and the revelations that come after. He also presents the color lines of America at that particular time. It's a really thoughtful indictment of the barriers we attempt to keep around ourselves, our children, our family, etc. It's also just a really impressive collection of stories, it feels like a blueprint for how to mourn your past/learn from it, how to store your memories/share them, how to love your hometown so much that it takes pages and pages to write out those three words.
Also, this is the collection where "With Reference to an Incident at a Bridge (for Eudora Welty)" appears and man oh man oh man --- "I believe in the forgiveness of sins. Some sins. I also believe that what's done is done and cannot be undone."
May 25, 2008
These are interlinked stories that take place in Lincoln, Illinois, during the early 1900s. Clean, structured writing and superb sentence craft, but lacking in emotion at times. I liked, though, how Maxwell sometimes writes from a younger perspective, and at other times, writes as an older man reflecting on his youth.
Displaying 1 - 15 of 15 reviews