"A Study Guide for William Keepers Maxwell Jr.'s ""So Long, See You Tomorrow"""

By Gale and Cengage

"A Study Guide for William Keepers Maxwell Jr.'s ""So Long, See You Tomorrow"", excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Novels for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Novels for Students for all of your research needs."

• Language: English
• Publisher: Cengage Learning - Gale
• Release date: Dec 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9780028665955

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A Study Guide for William Keepers Maxwell Jr.’s So Long, See You Tomorrow

William Keepers Maxwell Jr.

1979

Introduction

So Long, See You Tomorrow is an autobiographical novel by the American author William Keepers Maxwell Jr. The novel was first published in two parts in New Yorker magazine in 1979. The following year, it was published in book form.

The novel, a meditation on loss, guilt, and forgiveness, is set largely in the author's hometown of Lincoln, Illinois, and tells the story of a murder-suicide that occurred there in 1921. A half century later, the novel's narrator, a fictionalized persona of the author, is still guilt-ridden as he describes how the animus between two neighboring families led to the deaths and laments his own failure as a ten-year-old to support Cletus Smith, the son of the murderer. The last time he and Cletus play together, they part with the words so long and see you tomorrow, the source of the novel's title. The story of the murder is pieced together from old accounts published in the town's newspaper. At the same time, the narrator has to deal with the death of his mother, his father's remarriage, and the family's move to Chicago.

Author Biography

Maxwell was born in Lincoln, Illinois, on August 16, 1908. He was one of three sons born to William Keepers Maxwell, an agent with an insurance company, and Eva Blossom Blinn. Maxwell's mother died of the flu during the worldwide epidemic of 1918–1919, an event he dealt with in the second of his six novels, They Came like Swallows (1937). Maxwell later said that most of the material he needed as a writer came from the fourteen years he lived in Lincoln, which he often called Draperville or Logan in his fiction. After his mother's death, Maxwell lived with an aunt and uncle in Bloomington, Illinois, until his father remarried and the family