Darryl Pinckney on Elizabeth Hardwick. Virgil Thomson on Gertrude Stein -- Jonathan Miller on Lenny Bruce -- Robert Lowell on John Berryman -- Stephen Spender on W.H. Auden -- Mary McCarthy on Hannah Arendt -- John Thompson on Robert Lowell -- James Merrill on Elizabeth Bishop -- Isaiah Berlin on Boris Pasternak and Anna Akhmatova -- Joseph Brodsky on Nadezhda Mandelstam -- Arthur Gold and Robert Fizdale on George Balanchine -- John Richardson on Douglas Cooper -- Hector Bianciotti on Jorge Luis Borges -- Gore Vidal on Dawn Powell -- Bruce Chatwin on George Ortiz -- Philip Roth on Ivan Klima -- Elena Bonner on Andrei Sakharov -- Elizabeth Hardwick on Murray Kempton -- Aileen Kelly on Isaiah Berlin -- Murray Kempton on Frank Sinatra -- Adam Michnik on Zbigniew Herbert -- John Updike on Saul Steinberg -- Jonathan Mirsky on Noel Annan -- Alison Lurie on Edward Gorey -- Ian Buruma on John Schlesinger -- Darryl Pinckney on Elizabeth Hardwick.
Summary:
"A companion volume to The company they kept, in this book more of our most remarkable writers share what has influenced them the most: each other.Praise for The company they kept: an extraordinarily striking, moving and delicious collection of short essays...The writing in most more...of these essays is dazzling, the anecdotes and insights even more so. It is a superb collection of vignettes, and their variety throws more light on the diversity and possibilities than a treatise could. -The Financial Times contributors to the review have written about their personal relationships, and this volume brings together 27 memoirs of friendship. This volume should be read piece by marvelous piece. -The Chicago Tribune Whether found or surprisingly frank, these essays are soothing in their intimacy, their acceptance of fallible fellow humans. 'As always,' writes Robert Oppenheimer of Albert Einstein, 'the myth has its charms; but the truth is far more beautiful.' -O Magazine Silvers and Epstein have assembled a remarkable set of essays by friends of prominent musicians, scientists, poets, and novelists...These wonderful reminiscences will renew readers' appreciation for those unpredictable joys shared between all close friends." --Publisher description.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.