Vanished Act: The Life and Art of Weldon Kees

Acritic, novelist, filmmaker, jazz musician, painter, and, above all, poet, Weldon Kees (1914-55) performed, practiced, and published with the best of his generation of artists-the Middle Generation of twentieth-century American letters, which included Robert Lowell, Elizabeth Bishop, Delmore Schwartz, John Berryman, and a select number of others. His disappearance at the age of forty-one, which still places a question mark on his suicide, along with his movie-star good looks, role in the culture of his day, and shifting relationships with key figures have made him one of the more intriguing and elusive artists of the 1940s and pre-Beat '50s. Going beyond the cult status that has grown up around Kees over the years, James Reidel presents the first full account of Kees's troubled yet remarkably accomplished life.