"The Company They Kept"

In, of all places, the store Anthropologie, I stumbled across a lovely book called “The Company They Kept: Writers on Unforgettable Friendships” (New York Review Books, 2006), edited by Robert B. Silvers and Barbara Epstein. On the back book cover, a sort of extended subtitle calls the book’s contents “Twenty-seven memoirs of transforming personal and intellectual relationships among writers, poets, composers, and scientists from the pages of the New York Review of Books.” Just a few of these essays are “Stanley Kunitz on Theodore Roethke,” “Susan Sontag on Paul Goodman,” “Anna Akhmatova on Amedeo Modigliani,” “Saul Bellow on John Cheever,” “Maurice Grosser on Gertrude Stein and Alice Toklas,” “Caroline Blackwood on Francis Bacon,” “Enrique Krauze on Octavio Paz,” “Larry McMurty on Ken Kesey,” and “Oliver Sacks on Francis Crick.” Three of the essay writers – Robert Lowell, Joseph Brodsky, and Mary McCarthy -- are also subjects of other writers’ essays; this “doubling” adds an intriguing perspective. The essays are short and personal, giving readers behind-the-scenes anecdotes and insights that in a few pages shed real light on these brilliant writers, artists, and scientists. They do not attempt to be comprehensive, but offer individual perspectives on their fellow intellectuals and artists. Also of great interest are the insights on the various friendships between the writers of these essays and their subjects; some of them knew each other for decades, and all had a special connection with each other. The essays are mostly warm and appreciative, but they don’t shy away from acknowledging weaknesses and difficulties as well. Reading these miniature memoirs feels like being privileged to be part of an intimate conversation among some of the greatest creative minds of the second half of the twentieth century.