“Youthfulness persists, alas, long after one has ceased to be young.” – p. 23
I found a copy of The Pilgrim Hawk by Glenway Wescott (one of our May picks) on the thrift shelf at the library. The book was thin and in excellent condition. I was intrigued by the title and read the description on the back:
This powerful short novel describes the events of a single afternoon. Alwyn Tower, an American expatriate and sometimes novelist, is staying with a friend outside of Paris, when a well-heeled, itinerant Irish couple drops in – with Lucy, their trained hawk, a restless, sullen, disturbingly totemic presence. Lunch is prepared, drink flows. A masquerade, at once 
harrowing and farcical, begins.
My curiosity was piqued and I added The Pilgrim Hawk to the stack of books I purchased from the thrift shelf.
I finished this short novel almost two weeks ago and I still do not know what to make of it. The description promised a “harrowing and farcical masquerade.” Although there were farcical moments, the story was not a farce and the circumstances were not harrowing. In fact, I thought the pace was slow and the story sad.
Every page of Wescott’s short novel was filled with despair. His prose is stunning – the man could certainly construct a sentence. However, the worldview that informed the prose was one of hopelessness.
Here are a few examples of passages of despair:
“There is not as much sweet safety in marriage as one hopes. Hunger and its twin, disgust, are in it too; need and greed; and passage of time, the punishment. Of course true love and lust are not the same, neither are they inseparable, nor indistinguishable. Only they reflect and imitate and elucidate each other.” – p. 23
“But there are circumstances in which it may be obvious that at least one human being requires freedom; and you bitterly regret that it is so: because you need to keep that one captive.” – p. 30
“The lovers to be pitied perhaps are those who have no one to hate – what they long to kill, and that the killing would be for, incorporated in one and the same person, the one they love – whose rough shooting therefore can take place only in imagination, and never ends.” – p. 35
“Then, I lamented to myself, if your judgment is poor you fall in love with those who could not possibly love you. If romance of the past has done you any harm, you will not be able to hold on to love when you do attain it; your grasp of it will be out of alignment. Or pity or self-pity may have blunted your and so that it makes no mark. Back you fly to your perch, ashamed as well as frustrated. Life is almost all perch. There is no nest; and no one is with you, on exactly the same rock or out on the same limb. The circumstances of passion are all too petty to be companionable. So there you sit, and you try to sit still, and doze and dream to save trouble. It is the kind of thing you have to keep quiet about for others’ sake, politeness’s sake: itching palm and ugly tongue and unsighted eye and empty flatulent physiology as a whole; and your cry of desire, ache, ache, ringing in your own ears. No one else hears it; and you get so tired of it yourself that you can’t wait to grow old . . . “ – p. 43-44
“When love has given satisfaction, then you discover how a large part of the rest of life is only payment for it, installment after installment . . .” – p. 90
It is difficult for me to recommend this book whole-heartedly as I am still digesting it. I found the story to be depressing and the characters unlikeable. I can recommend this as an interesting read for those who appreciate beautiful prose. However, if you are looking for a delightful little short story, The Pilgrim Hawk may not be for you.
Did you get a chance to read it? What did you think?
Live, Love, Learn,