He is helped by Lynes, who wrote extensively about both men in his letters and diaries, often in code. Ellenzweig is an empathetic biographer here, and he beautifully captures the perspectives of all three men over the course of their relationship. In many ways, the Lynes-Wheeler-Wescott saga is the emotional core of The Daring Eye.
As one might expect, negotiating such a triangle was complicated, not only because Wheeler and Wescott had already been together for several years but also because Lynes was much more sexually attracted to Wheeler than to Wescott. The twenty-year-old Lynes let out a whistle and said: “That’s the man for me.” Thus began a romantic, and frequently tumultuous, three-way relationship that lasted for the next sixteen years.
Fittingly, his first impression of Wheeler was from a photograph that he stumbled upon when meeting Wescott for the first time in the writer’s New York hotel room. The two most important people that Lynes met through his Stein connections were Wheeler and Wescott.