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The Long Tomorrow Leigh Brackett 9780345242891 Books

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The Long Tomorrow Leigh Brackett 9780345242891 Books

This short 135-page novel by William Maxwell, "So Long See You Tomorrow", is densely packed, and deceptively simple. If it is read too quickly, much will be missed. Maxwell (1908-2000) was editor of the New Yorker for many years, but he also wrote six novels over the course of a long life. In his lifetime, Maxwell never enjoyed great popular success as a novelist. But his work was critically acclaimed. A two-volume set of Maxwell's novels was published by the Library of America in 2008. Thus, his works will remain accessible to readers.

Published in 1980 when the author was 72, "So Long, See you Tomorrow" is Maxwell's last and probably best novel. The book has strong autobiographical elements, as much of the story takes place in the small town of Lincoln in central Illinois in the early 1920s where Maxwell grew up. The book is a coming-of-age story for two adolescent boys which addresses in its short compass themes of loss, guilt. memory, and making peace with one's life. The book is told in a simple, understated tone in which not a word is wasted or out of place.

Two stories are interthreaded in the book. The first is related in the first person by a narrator then in his 70s who lives in New York City. He recounts events from his boyhood in Lincoln which have remained with him. The narrator has carried with him the death of his mother from influenza in 1918 when he was 10 and his mother 38. His businessman father was distant and did not fully approve of his introverted, bookish middle son. When, after a period of mourning, the father remarried, his lonely young son became friends with a boy of the same age, Cletus Smith, who lived on a farm.

Cletus's father Clarence, we learn at the outset of the novel, has brutally murdered a neighboring farmer, Lloyd Wilson, who had been cuckolding him. Clarence Smith then kills himself, and his body is found in a gravel pit. As the novel progresses, the narrator's family moves the Chicago when the father receives a promotion. Unbeknownst to him, Cletus also moves to Chicago, presumably to escape the stigma associated with the events in Lincoln. The two boys pass in the hallway in the Rogers Park High School in Chicago. The narrator snubs and refuses to speak to Cletus. This small act of insensitivity haunts the narrator for the remainder of his life.

In the midst of recounting his own story, the narrator pivots in a carefully-written transitional section to recount the story of Cletus and of the affair between Cletus's mother,Fern Smith, and Lloyd Wilson which led to Clarence Smith's murder of Wilson and to Smith's suicide. The narrator has gone to the trouble of retrieving old newspaper accounts of the Smith divorce following the affair and of the subsequent murder and suicide. But much of the narrator's account is the work of memory and imagination which, as the narrator repeats many times in the book, is inherently unreliable and deceitful. The story of the Smiths and the Wilsons is told in the third person. The narrator gets inside the hearts and thoughts of each of the characters to try to understand them as he thought they affected his friend, the young Cletus Smith. The author shows the friendship between Smith and Wilson, and of the slow growth of the affair, as both couples involved were plagued by incompatibility and unhappiness. The book also explores themes of class, in the relationship between poor tenant farmers who leased their land, as were both the Smiths and the Wilsons, and the well-to-do people in the towns who owned the land and who took much of the profits.

The style and substance of this book closely intertwine as Maxwell shifts between the murder, the narrator's own story, and the story of Cletus. Especially in the latter part of the book, perspective shifts frequently as the narrator imagines the various reactions of Wilson and his wife, Clarence and Fern Smith and their kin, Cletus, and even the family dog. The writing is spare and deeply philosophical in the manner in which the narrator, in particular, tries to understand his experiences. Late in his life, he undergoes psychotherapy over his continuing feelings about the early death of his mother. Memory and trauma have made his life, but they have also trapped him. He thinks incessantly about the life of Cletus, even though he has neither seen nor heard about him since the incident in the Chicago High School. The narrator reflects on who people are forced to mature when they are buffeted by events in life over which they have no control. His final wish in the book is for Cletus, as the narrator hopes that his old friend has been able to live his life and find happiness "undestroyed" by what was not his doing in the events of his youth.

This is a difficult novel about memory, hanging on to the past, trying to see with dispassion and kindess, and moving on with life. Maxwell deserves to be recognized as a major American writer.


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The Long Tomorrow Leigh Brackett 9780345242891 Books Reviews

A mature work that develops a new world different from what many of us have always assumed about the post apocalyptic world. It causes the reader to ask some important questions about our values - emphasis on stability versus progress, security vs freedom, faith vs inquiry.
Amazing given the time it was written.
It’s a generally accepted axiom of science fiction writing (and other media) that much of it reflects the fears of the times in which it is written. That said, I found it was thought-provoking to read “The Long Tomorrow” and “Legend,” by Marie Wu, within a few days of each other.

“The Long Tomorrow” is considered a classic of early science fiction writing and, admittedly, some of the writing seems dated. Published in 1955 and written by one of the vanishingly few female SF writers, it’s the story of a young man’s growth to adulthood in a post-nuclear world where U.S. society has suffered great loss and recovered slowly into a quite different place. The Constitution now bans towns of more than 200 buildings, and society considers all technology to be evil, punishable by death. Some elderly people tell what sound like tall tales about enormous buildings and vehicles that fly and lights that burn without candle or oil lamp, but they are adamantly hushed by the new world. The average person fears the science that created such horror. They fear the unknown long-term consequences of the nuclear world. Part of the plot of the last half of the book is coming to grips with that fear.

Clearly “The Long Tomorrow” was written fewer than ten years after the world-changing events of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, when Jane Q. Public had no idea how this horrifying power could be contained, or what effect it would have long-term. It reflects a grinding fear of the nuclear world.

Marie Lu’s “Legend” is a relatively recent young adult science fiction novel about a young man and a young woman coming of age in a world of brutal income inequality and ongoing military surveillance and suppression.

So many recent novels (the past ten years, say) have carried this theme. Dystopian. Society has failed. Income equality has destroyed the lives of the average person. The police and military are feared. In some, potable water has begun to run out. In some, lost cities are underwater.

If science fiction truly does reflect the fears of the times, it’s clear to see what we’re afraid of now. We don’t worry much any more about nuclear annihilation, although that’s still a possibility. We worry about the police state, about irreparable environmental damage, about the 1% pulling themselves away behind walls and onto space stations and leaving the rest of us to fend for ourselves in a collapsed society.

It’s enlightening to read science fiction, if for no other reason than to be faced with our deepest fears … and our greatest dreams and wildest hopes for the future.
This is a worthwhile, if slow, post-apocalypse novel. Two boys growing up in a repressively religious country village, in what was the southern US, rebel against the restrictions on knowledge and use of any technology beyond the steam engine. They flee down river in search of freedom and a rumored enclave where science is still known.

One of he best aspects of the novel is the world building- the presentations of the different religious sects, and the set piece descriptions of a stoning at revivalist prayer meeting, and an attack by one village community on another where the building of a warehouse becomes a religious flashpoint. There is also a wonderful portrait of the grandmother of one of the boys, whose wistful regrets of the world she knew as a child are one of the motivations for their rebellion.

Also a strength is Leigh Brackett's willingness to avoid pat answers and easy resolutions- but this also contributes to the slowness of the book, and makes the ending somewhat flat.

There are a number of other books with similar settings- Davy by Edgar Pangborn, or A Canticle for Liebowitz, for example. While this book isn't as effective as these, it is still worth reading.
This short 135-page novel by William Maxwell, "So Long See You Tomorrow", is densely packed, and deceptively simple. If it is read too quickly, much will be missed. Maxwell (1908-2000) was editor of the New Yorker for many years, but he also wrote six novels over the course of a long life. In his lifetime, Maxwell never enjoyed great popular success as a novelist. But his work was critically acclaimed. A two-volume set of Maxwell's novels was published by the Library of America in 2008. Thus, his works will remain accessible to readers.

Published in 1980 when the author was 72, "So Long, See you Tomorrow" is Maxwell's last and probably best novel. The book has strong autobiographical elements, as much of the story takes place in the small town of Lincoln in central Illinois in the early 1920s where Maxwell grew up. The book is a coming-of-age story for two adolescent boys which addresses in its short compass themes of loss, guilt. memory, and making peace with one's life. The book is told in a simple, understated tone in which not a word is wasted or out of place.

Two stories are interthreaded in the book. The first is related in the first person by a narrator then in his 70s who lives in New York City. He recounts events from his boyhood in Lincoln which have remained with him. The narrator has carried with him the death of his mother from influenza in 1918 when he was 10 and his mother 38. His businessman father was distant and did not fully approve of his introverted, bookish middle son. When, after a period of mourning, the father remarried, his lonely young son became friends with a boy of the same age, Cletus Smith, who lived on a farm.

Cletus's father Clarence, we learn at the outset of the novel, has brutally murdered a neighboring farmer, Lloyd Wilson, who had been cuckolding him. Clarence Smith then kills himself, and his body is found in a gravel pit. As the novel progresses, the narrator's family moves the Chicago when the father receives a promotion. Unbeknownst to him, Cletus also moves to Chicago, presumably to escape the stigma associated with the events in Lincoln. The two boys pass in the hallway in the Rogers Park High School in Chicago. The narrator snubs and refuses to speak to Cletus. This small act of insensitivity haunts the narrator for the remainder of his life.

In the midst of recounting his own story, the narrator pivots in a carefully-written transitional section to recount the story of Cletus and of the affair between Cletus's mother,Fern Smith, and Lloyd Wilson which led to Clarence Smith's murder of Wilson and to Smith's suicide. The narrator has gone to the trouble of retrieving old newspaper accounts of the Smith divorce following the affair and of the subsequent murder and suicide. But much of the narrator's account is the work of memory and imagination which, as the narrator repeats many times in the book, is inherently unreliable and deceitful. The story of the Smiths and the Wilsons is told in the third person. The narrator gets inside the hearts and thoughts of each of the characters to try to understand them as he thought they affected his friend, the young Cletus Smith. The author shows the friendship between Smith and Wilson, and of the slow growth of the affair, as both couples involved were plagued by incompatibility and unhappiness. The book also explores themes of class, in the relationship between poor tenant farmers who leased their land, as were both the Smiths and the Wilsons, and the well-to-do people in the towns who owned the land and who took much of the profits.

The style and substance of this book closely intertwine as Maxwell shifts between the murder, the narrator's own story, and the story of Cletus. Especially in the latter part of the book, perspective shifts frequently as the narrator imagines the various reactions of Wilson and his wife, Clarence and Fern Smith and their kin, Cletus, and even the family dog. The writing is spare and deeply philosophical in the manner in which the narrator, in particular, tries to understand his experiences. Late in his life, he undergoes psychotherapy over his continuing feelings about the early death of his mother. Memory and trauma have made his life, but they have also trapped him. He thinks incessantly about the life of Cletus, even though he has neither seen nor heard about him since the incident in the Chicago High School. The narrator reflects on who people are forced to mature when they are buffeted by events in life over which they have no control. His final wish in the book is for Cletus, as the narrator hopes that his old friend has been able to live his life and find happiness "undestroyed" by what was not his doing in the events of his youth.

This is a difficult novel about memory, hanging on to the past, trying to see with dispassion and kindess, and moving on with life. Maxwell deserves to be recognized as a major American writer.