Weldon Kees and the Midcentury Generation : Letters, 1935-1955

Before he vanished in the fog of San Francisco, Weldon Kees (1914-55) was a poet, storyteller, critic, painter, musician, and filmmaker.

What remains is a body of work and a large collection of letters that shed light on Kees's complex personality.

Robert E. Knoll traces the odyssey of a Nebraska boy who made his way in a fiercely competitive national scene, befriending the movers and shakers of the art worlds on both coasts.

Kees's letters - satirical, witty, poetic, gossipy, intensely individual - provide the feel of lives being lived, of a career going forth, and finally of the darkness that engulfed him when, in Knoll's phrase, he was "ten minutes from triumph".