Folded Leaf

Edmund Wilson in praise of William Maxwell: 'Reading The Folded Leaf (a quite unconventional study of adolescent relationships... in Chicago and in a Middle Western collet), one is reminded of certain American novelists who were working [1890-1920], against the popular taste, in the field of serious social realism... in his effort to deal with young boys on a plane of detached observation as fas as possible from the mere sentimentality and humour with which the subject has usually been treated in America, Mr. Maxwell is sometimes quite close to the Whilomville Stories of Stephen Crane: he approaches such matters as fraternity initiations and gratuitous schoolboy fights, the traditional customs of childhood, from an anthropological point of view which was also to some extent developed by Crane... With careful, unobtrusive art, Mr. Maxwell has made us feel all the coldness and hardness and darkness of Chicago, the prosaic surface of existence which seems to stretch about one like asphalt or ice. But there are moments when the author breaks away into a kind of poetic reverie that shows he is able to find a way out.'That reverie and the solid social context in which it is embedded added The Folded Leaf to the select company of the few classic novels about adolescent life. To make it available again is not only an act of homage but an acknowledgement of its permanent value.