The greatest prose writer of twentieth-century Polish letters, Witold Gombrowicz is also recognized as a figure whose literary standing is comparable to Proust, Joyce, Kafka, Musil, or Beckett.
Yet his reputation in the United States and the English-speaking world has never been equal to his renown in continental Europe or in Latin America. In a letter to an American publisher
preserved in his archive at the Beinecke Library, he writes that he hoped to be read in America someday, at least by the elite. Yet Gombrowicz is no elitist writer.
Celebrating the 100th anniversary of Gombrowicz's birth, the Yale commemoration is part of the "Gombrowicz Autumn" in the United States, featuring performances of his plays, screenings of film
adaptations of his works, photographic exhibitions, and publications by and about him.
