William Goyen - Writing

Writing

Goyen began writing what would become his first book, The House of Breath, when he served on an aircraft carrier during World War II. After the war he continued work on the novel and began writing short stories. His first published short story, “The White Rooster,” appeared in Mademoiselle in April 1947. Other stories included “The Fallen Splendid House” in Southwest Review, in Spring 1949, and “A Bridge of Breath” in Partisan Review, in June 1949.

In 1948 he received a Literary Fellowship from Southwest Review. During this time he was also working on a translation from French of Albert Cossery’s Les fainéants dans la vallée fertile (The Lazy Ones), which would be published in 1952. In 1950, his first book, The House of Breath, was received with critical acclaim and led to support through fellowships and awards.

In 1950-51, he lived in New York, Chicago, Houston, Texas, and New Mexico, while completing stories for what would be his first collection, Ghost and Flesh: Stories and Tales. About this time his work was being translated into German and French by Ernst Robert Curtius and Maurice Coindreau in Europe, where it remains in print in several languages and where he is highly regarded.

In the early 1950s he began to write plays and adaptations of his own works for the stage, and he eventually had several of his plays produced over many years: The Diamond Rattler (1960), Christy (1964), House of Breath Black/White (1971), and Aimee (1973). In 1954 the stage version of his first novel was produced off Broadway, and 1955 saw publication of his second novel, In a Farther Country, which had a hostile reception.

During this time he was becoming more involved in the theatre world and traveled back and forth between New York and New Mexico. In 1958 he revised the screenplay and wrote song lyrics for the Paul Newman film, The Left-Handed Gun. A comic novel, The Fair Sister, about two African-American families, was published in 1963, but it was pulled by the publisher after a reviewer in The New York Times Book Review called Goyen “insensitive”.

He continued to have difficulty finding publishers and audiences for his work in America. He gave up his own writing when he was an editor with McGraw-Hill, from 1966-71. He would later say about this time in his life: “There was no question of my own writing. I was relieved not to have to worry about my own writing.” Following a conversion experience in 1971, he published the non-fiction work, A Book of Jesus, in 1973. A biographer later noted: “Jesus cost Goyen his editorial job.”

His fourth novel, Come the Restorer, was published in 1974. This tale about a community’s search for a savior Goyen called his “biggest accomplishment”. His limited readership made commercial publishers wary, and even for Arcadio, his final novel, he had to search widely for an interested firm. By this time “no one would touch his writing.”

Arcadio was published two months after his death in 1983. The book concerns a hermaphrodite who, in general terms, is seeking a way to reconcile the warring halves of his/her self. A posthumous publication included Half a Look of Cain: A Fantastical Narrative, which was written in the 1950s and early 1960s and was published in 1998.