My Mentor: A Young Writer’s Friendship with William Maxwell by Alec Wilkinson is a birthday gift, fittingly enough, from my own mentor. “I don’t share the worldview,” she explained, “but I liked the insight into writing.”

I liked it too. William Maxwell was a well-known figure at the New Yorker for many years, and a respected writer in his own right. Yet I confess this book was my first introduction to him. Like my own mentor, I found little common ground with the book’s atheistic worldview, but much that intrigued me about the writing process, the story of a writer’s development, friendship, and family. This book is a reflective and very poignant portrait of a writer by a writer. It’s a book that seeps quietly into the mind and waters soil I didn’t know was there.

As often as possible, Wilkinson uses Maxwell’s own words to tell this story. Through journals, letters and stories, Maxwell emerges as an elegant, unfailingly gracious figure with the endearing trait of modesty and lack of affectation. The narrative is discursive, a loosely arranged series of recollections that sketch out Maxwell’s character. My only complaint is that I find the title misleading; this is far less about the friendship between the author and his mentor than it is about his mentor. It reads more like a eulogy. I liked it, but I was left with lots of unanswered questions about how the friendship developed.

I said I liked its treatment of writing, friendship and family. Although this is a fairly short book (179 pages), it took me some time to get through because I kept putting it down to think about Maxwell’s reflections. His intellect has a quiet sophistication that turns up rocks I might not have looked under on my own, and Wilkinson’s narrative voice has an unforced eloquence that never distracts. Although Maxwell is quoted often, I liked this excerpt from Wilkinson, who says,

I realize now that I became a writer partly from a love of music, partly from a sense of deprivation and the impulse to recover things I felt I had lost or never had, partly because it seemed to offer a means of finding order in the world, partly because a solitary childhood had accustomed me to the habit of work, and partly because I had something to write about.

It’s a hodge-podge of reasons, but some of them strike a chord with me. Later, Maxwell himself weighs in, making notes for a speech he was to give during a period when he was considering giving up writing altogether and becoming an editor:

What, seriously, was accomplished by these writers? Not life, of course; not the real thing; not children and roses; but only a facsimile that is called literature… What’s in it for him? The hope of immortality? The chances are not good enough to interest a sensible person. Money? Well, money is not money anymore. Fame? For the young, who are in danger always of being ignored, of being overlooked at the party, perhaps, but no one over the age of forty who is in his right mind would want to be famous. It would interfere with his work, with his family life. Why then should the successful manipulation of illusions be everything to a writer? Why does he bother to make up stories and novels? If you ask him, you will probably get any number of answers, none of them straightforward. You might as well ask a sailor why it is that he has chosen to spend his life at sea.

I find the expressionist-compulsion an interesting subject. There was a time when the piano was “it” for me, but somehow all that energy has landslid into writing now, and I don’t know why. This book helped me to feel okay with that.

This “review” is quite long already, but I’ll mention one or two more things. First, the book amounts to a celebration of mentors, going all the way back to the story of Odysseus’ son Telemachus left in the care of Mentor in the absence of his father. The book makes the point that mentors become necessary to help fill the voids. It takes the painful reality that all parents are imperfect, and shows this redemptive phenomenon of the mentor. I’ve been blessed with mentors myself, and somehow it alleviates some stress as a parent to realize that my children probably will too. I know (some of) my imperfections as a parent so well, and it never occurred to me to hope that my children find wise and loving mentors in life. Instead I always assume my job is to perfect my imperfections. It encouraged me to be reminded that there’s a safety net in others who will come alongside them in their lives when needed. I can only pray that they will find such willing and generous friends as Wilkinson found in William Maxwell.