Many of the illustrious contributors to The New York Review of Books have had deep and abiding relationships-both personal and intellectual-with other poets, writers, artists, composers, and scientists of equal stature. The Company They Kept is a collection of twenty-seven accounts of these varied friendships-most of them undeniably fraught with "idiosyncratic complexities." One of the sweetest and funniest is Prudence Crowther's memoir of her romance, at age thirty, with the seventy-four-year-old S. J. Perelman ("As a friend of mine put it, 'Yeah, too bad you couldn't have met when you were twenty-six and he was seventy -or when he was thirty, and your parents hadn't met yet'"). Darryl Pinckney recalls his unsettling stint as Djuna Barnes's handyman. Susan Sontag's piece on Paul Goodman is more about how they never hit it off; Seamus Heaney's remembrance of Tom Flanagan has all the melancholy affection of a bereft and beloved son.Larry McMurtry and Ken Kesey were graduate students together-for years afterward, McMurtry recalls, the Merry Pranksters would show up unannounced, and throw his family and neighbors into hilarious chaos.
Derek Walcott recalls his parting of the ways with Robert Lowell, and of their bittersweet reconciliation. And Robert Oppenheimer writes that he wants to dispel the clouds of myth surrounding Albert Einstein: "As always, the myth has its charms; but the truth is far more beautiful." From Anna Akhmatova's dreamlike description of wandering through Paris with the impoverished Modigliani to Joseph Brodsky's account of his first meeting with Isaiah Berlin (from which he returned to report, around the kitchen table, to Stephen Spender and W.H. Auden), these pieces are tantalizing glimpses into the lives of those who have made The New York Review of Books into what Esquire magazine calls "the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language."
The many contributors include: Stanley Kunitz on Theodore Roethke Robert Lowell on Randall Jarrell Susan Sontag on Paul Goodman Jason Epstein on Edmund Wilson Saul Bellow on John Cheever Robert Craft on Igor Stravinsky Darryl Pinckney on Djuna Barnes Derek Walcott on Robert Lowell Enrique Krauze on Octavio Paz Elizabeth Hardwick on Mary McCarthy Larry McMurtry on Ken Kesey Seamus Heaney on Thomas Flanagan Robert Oppenheimer on Albert Einstein Maurice Grosser on Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas
Many of the illustrious contributors to The New York Review of Books have had deep and abiding relationships-both personal and intellectual-with other poets, writers, artists, composers, and scientists of equal stature. The Company They Kept is a collection of twenty-seven accounts of these varied friendships-most of them undeniably fraught with "idiosyncratic complexities." One of the sweetest and funniest is Prudence Crowther's memoir of her romance, at age thirty, with the seventy-four-year-old S. J. Perelman ("As a friend of mine put it, 'Yeah, too bad you couldn't have met when you were twenty-six and he was seventy -or when he was thirty, and your parents hadn't met yet'"). Darryl Pinckney recalls his unsettling stint as Djuna Barnes's handyman. Susan Sontag's piece on Paul Goodman is more about how they never hit it off; Seamus Heaney's remembrance of Tom Flanagan has all the melancholy affection of a bereft and beloved son.Larry McMurtry and Ken Kesey were graduate students together-for years afterward, McMurtry recalls, the Merry Pranksters would show up unannounced, and throw his family and neighbors into hilarious chaos.
Derek Walcott recalls his parting of the ways with Robert Lowell, and of their bittersweet reconciliation. And Robert Oppenheimer writes that he wants to dispel the clouds of myth surrounding Albert Einstein: "As always, the myth has its charms; but the truth is far more beautiful." From Anna Akhmatova's dreamlike description of wandering through Paris with the impoverished Modigliani to Joseph Brodsky's account of his first meeting with Isaiah Berlin (from which he returned to report, around the kitchen table, to Stephen Spender and W.H. Auden), these pieces are tantalizing glimpses into the lives of those who have made The New York Review of Books into what Esquire magazine calls "the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language."
The many contributors include: Stanley Kunitz on Theodore Roethke Robert Lowell on Randall Jarrell Susan Sontag on Paul Goodman Jason Epstein on Edmund Wilson Saul Bellow on John Cheever Robert Craft on Igor Stravinsky Darryl Pinckney on Djuna Barnes Derek Walcott on Robert Lowell Enrique Krauze on Octavio Paz Elizabeth Hardwick on Mary McCarthy Larry McMurtry on Ken Kesey Seamus Heaney on Thomas Flanagan Robert Oppenheimer on Albert Einstein Maurice Grosser on Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas
Robert B. Silvers is co-editor of The New York Review of Books. Prior to joining the Review, Mr. Silvers was, from 1959 to 1963, associate editor of Harper's magazine, editor of the book Writing in America and translator of La Gangrene. Before that, Mr. Silvers lived in Paris for six years (1952 to 1958), where he served with the U.S. Army at SHAPE Headquarters and attended the Sorbonne and Ecole des Sciences Politiques. He joined the editorial board of The Paris Review in 1954 and became Paris editor in 1956. He also worked as press secretary to Governor Chester Bowles in 1950. Mr. Silvers, who graduated from the University of Chicago in 1947, was born in Mineola, New York. Barbara Epstein (1928-2006) worked in publishing and at The Partisan Review before becoming editor of The New York Review of Books in 1963. She began her publishing career at Doubleday & Co., where she served as junior editor after graduating from Radcliffe College in 1949. She was born Barbara Zimmerman in Boston, Massachusetts.
Beautifully produced, and rich in revealing vignettes, this gathering of friends would make a perfect girft for a literary friend, especially one who agrees with EM Cioran that the two most interesting things in the world are gossip and metaphysics. Irish Times This enticing collection brings together "the best 27 memoirs" published since the New York Review of Books was launched in the 1960s. Guardian Memories wrapped in tender prose, yet are unflinching in their portrayal of these talented friends, failings and all... These vignettes steer away from hero worship to give us something more moving. Independent Writing is a lonely and uneventful business, and this collection is a useful reminder that literary life involves friendship, admiration and affection as well as envy, malice and the other qualities so well assembled in 'Poisoned Pens'. Literary Review An immensely enjoyable and varied celebration of both the pleasures and pain of friendship. Good Book Guide
|
Ask a Question About this Product More... |
|
