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The Company They Kept: Writers on Unforgettable Friendships
Edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein
#UC2852
Hardcover, 298; 2006
$24.95
 Members' Price: $21.21
Derek Walcott, in his essay on poet Robert Lowell included in this collection, writes that "the inarticulate wisdom of really knowing another person is not in the broad sweep of that other person's life, but in its gestures." This sentiment eloquently captures the approach taken in all twenty-seven of these revelatory profiles of novelists, playwrights, scientists, musicians, and more. Each of the essays, originally published in the venerable New York Review of Books, is written by an accomplished author with a strong personal and intellectual connection to the subject. Larry McMurtry, for instance, fondly recalls a chaotic visit from his former classmate, Ken Kesey; Robert Craft muses upon his close personal and professional relationship with Igor Stravinsky; and Saul Bellow discusses the immediate connection he felt upon meeting John Cheever. All of these tributes to "unforgettable friendships" offer intimate, firsthand insights into people whose creative or intellectual achievements have propelled them toward mythological status. As Robert Oppenheimer, in his humanizing portrait of Albert Einstein, contends, "the myth has its charms; but the truth is far more beautiful."
(AG)
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