The Letter Left to Me

The Letter Left to Me is Joseph McElroy's seventh novel. A letter from father to son is delivered to the son shortly after the father's death. The letter receives wider and wider circulation, and its continued effect on the son's life is described.

The Letter Left to Me
First edition cover
AuthorJoseph McElroy
Cover artistBarbara de Wilde
LanguageEnglish
GenrePost-modern fiction
Published1988 (Knopf)
Media typePrint (Hardback)
Pages152
ISBN978-0-394-57196-6

Plot summary

In January, 1946, the 15-year-old narrator (unnamed except for the "Junior" that distinguishes him from his father) receives an envelope addressed to him found amongst his late father's papers. The contents are a two-page letter of fatherly advice, identifying Senior's main regrets in life as words of warning. A few bits from the letter are quoted, they are "bland homilies"[1] and "banal twaddle".[2] Junior initially puzzles over the form of the letter, not really noticing the content: the fact that the letter was dated to three years previously, the fact that it was typed—which his father never did, the fact that he had no idea of its existence, the fact that the envelope itself, addressed to him, had last been seen in a safe-deposit box.

At his mother's suggestion, the letter is shared with the family. An older relative with a print shop prepares, without asking, a hundred copies, causing Junior some small embarrassment at school. And when he goes to college, the Dean gets a copy, and thinks so highly of it, he has copies prepared for and mailed to every student. Although Junior is not identified in these copies, he can't help but be obsessed by how his classmates respond to their copies. He is appalled that some of his friends think the letter is stupid or even fake. On the other hand, he is elated when others find it charming.

Autobiographical content

The Letter Left to Me closely mirrors several details in McElroy's own life. Like Senior, McElroy's father was a scholarship student to Harvard, majored in chemistry, played lacrosse, was rejected by the army, became a stockbroker, raised his family in Brooklyn Heights, and died when his only child, named for him, was 15.[Note 1] Junior's mother, like McElroy's, was extremely gifted musically.[3] And like McElroy, Junior attends Poly Prep.

More germane to the development of the novel itself, one finds a parallel to Junior's relationship with his late father extending beyond mere grief. In the years immediately following his father's death, friends of the senior McElroy often shared with the young McElroy comments about his father that McElroy found burdensome:

When I was seventeen or eighteen ... I was very much aware of being in my father's shadow. In the first couple of years after my father died, when I was fifteen, I had it up to here with his old friends saying to me, "Your father was the nicest man I ever knew. If you turn out like your father, that should be good enough for anybody."

— Tom LeClair, 1978 Interview[4]

Reception

McElroy seems to have released a private mystery into the realm of a universal quest...in the slow beauty of rendered detail, we watch as the boy steps into his early manhood with a new integrity of spirit....

— Sheila Ballantyne, The New York Times Book Review[1]

[It] may be his most accessible and easiest to read [novel], though no less elegant .... Really, really try it.[Note 2]

— Hilary Masters, The Washington Post Book World[2]

Notes
  1. But according to LeClair 1990, McElroy was never "Jr"
  2. An echo of this review of an earlier McElroy novel, mentioned by Masters, to "Really, try it."
gollark: Two letter ones are country codes.
gollark: I don't *think* so.
gollark: In some cases you would have to contort your speech weirdly to make it work.
gollark: I mean, my brain only has access to bounded memory and computing time.
gollark: Gibson said "they decide how they wanted to referred to", which seems excessively general since, again, the supreme overlord of all, master of all space and time, destroyer of worlds, devourer of souls/the supreme overlord of all, master of all space and time, destroyer of worlds, devourer of souls/the supreme overlord of all, master of all space and time, destroyer of worlds, devourer of souls's/the supreme overlord of all, master of all space and time, destroyer of worlds, devourer of souls's/the supreme overlord of all, master of all space and time, destroyer of worlds, devourer of souls.

References
  1. Ballantyne 1988.
  2. Masters 1988.
  3. Colby, Vineta (ed.). World Authors 1975-1980.
  4. LeClair, Tom; McCaffery, Larry, eds. (1983). "Joseph McElroy". Anything Can Happen. University of Illinois Press.

Further reading

Book reviews
  • Ballantyne, Sheila (October 9, 1988). "What Father Said". The New York Times Book Review. p. BR7.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Healey, Barth (October 9, 1988). "That Autobiographical Feeling". The New York Times Book Review. p. BR7.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Masters, Hilary (October 30, 1988). "The Postman Didn't Ring Twice". The Washington Post Book World. p. BW5.CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

Literary analysis

The following articles appeared in the Joseph McElroy issue of The Review of Contemporary Fiction. X. 1990:

  • LeClair, Tom. "Opening up Joseph McElroy's The Letter Left to Me": 258–67. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Schor, Sandra. "The Letter Left to Me": 268–71. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)
  • Moskowitz, Bette Ann. "The Letter Left to Me by The Letter Left to Me": 272–74. Cite journal requires |journal= (help)CS1 maint: ref=harv (link)

In addition, see these general works on McElroy's fiction.

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