Famous Men

Famous Men is narrated by Wilhelmina “Will” Miles, a working-class woman from northern Michigan whose desire to become a writer draws her into a long, exploitative relationship with Nathaniel Fellow, a celebrated novelist and poet more than forty years her senior. The novel opens near the end of the chronology. Will is temporarily teaching creative writing at Rosendale Academy, the elite arts school where her mother has worked in the cafeteria for most of Will’s life. Nathaniel is about to return to Rosendale for a reading that Will unsuccessfully tried to have cancelled. At the same time, a biographer preparing an authorised life of Nathaniel emails her, apparently forgetting that they met years earlier, when twenty-four-year-old Will was living in Nathaniel’s spare room and accompanying him to literary parties as his assistant and secret companion. Will realises that any official biography will present Nathaniel’s version of events, so she begins telling their story herself.

Will grows up in Greening, a poor, declining Michigan town near Rosendale. Her mother, Mary, became pregnant at twenty-two and took the cafeteria job because it offered security, maternity leave and a pension. Will’s birth certificate lists her father as “Unknown,” and Mary becomes angry or evasive whenever Will asks about him. Their small household is emotionally restrained but not loveless. Mary works constantly and expresses care through food, clean clothes and practical assistance rather than intimate conversation.

As a child, Will spends her summers at Rosendale because Mary cannot afford childcare. She wanders through empty dormitories, theatres and rehearsal rooms, imagining herself among the gifted students who study there during the academic year. Although Rosendale becomes the most important place in her imagination, she is always conscious that she is the cafeteria worker’s daughter rather than one of its artists.