So Long, See You Tomorrow, by William Maxwell, is a memoir written by the author late in his life of a pivotal episode during his childhood. How he reacted at the time has remained with him as a rumbling...
So Long, See You Tomorrow, by William Maxwell, is a memoir written by the author late in his life of a pivotal episode during his childhood. How he reacted at the time has remained with him as a rumbling guilt. He now takes steps to try to uncover what really happened, memory being so unreliable – changing with the landscape of lived experience. The story he tells here is wound around what was reported at the time – unreliable facts and informed speculation – another fiction perhaps but one that helps him process his boyhood reactions and their lasting impact.
The opening chapter, A Pistol Shot, introduces the reader to a murder. A tenant farmer in 1920s Illinois, Lloyd Wilson, has been shot dead while milking his cows. The suspect is his former neighbour and friend, Clarence Smith. Both men have recently suffered the breakdown of their marriages, caused by one starting an affair with the other’s wife.
The author provides some background to his own life at the time of this shocking event. His beloved mother had died following childbirth just a few years earlier, his father going on to remarry. Children were expected to accept such tragedy and disruption, to behave and not make a fuss. Likewise, the children affected by their parents’ marital separation, although now living radically altered lives through no fault of their own, were expected to show some understanding of how the parent they were required to live with had suffered due to the behaviour of the other, this despite the child being torn without consultation from everything that had provided the foundations on which they had developed.
Maxwell did not know the two farming families but he did form a brief friendship with Cletus Smith, after the slightly older boy had been forced to leave the farm by his mother but before his father shot their former neighbour. It is Maxwell’s behaviour towards Cletus some time after this latter event that has caused the guilt. Maxwell was a lonely boy, immersing himself in books, and welcomed the friendship, tenuous as it was. Neither boy had the emotional resilience or language to convey how they felt to parents caught up in their own challenging concerns.
Having established the setting and character background, and provided factual information – such as it is – surrounding the farmers and the murder, at about halfway through this short book the author uses what he can ascertain to speculate on what actually happened. The weaving together is skilfully rendered and heart-breaking. The destruction caused by a marital affair – on all parties, their children and wider families – is laid bare. Even the dog suffers, another innocent victim of two people who felt they deserved greater happiness whatever the cost.
An evocative reminder that children are not as resilient as some adults may like to think in order to assuage their own guilt at selfish behaviour. The murder was not the worst thing that happened to either farmer’s children. By the end of this story what lingers is the lasting damage caused by the breaking up of even unhappy families, and the subsequent choices parents make.
A story in two parts that, to my mind at least, did not quite segue fluidly, the focus changing. Nevertheless, both parts are engaging. The digging into this childhood history may not have put to rest the author’s guilt but it does provide an interesting if challenging portrayal of how family cuts as it shapes.
My copy of this book was kindly sent to me by Paul Cheney, who posts his reviews at Half Man, Half Book.
