Namedropping : mostly literary memoirs

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Namedropping : mostly literary memoirs

Richard Elman

State University of New York Press, 1998

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Description

In the course of the same old race I find myself writing about knowing some people—how fame seems to set some people apart from us, once known: I was astonished by Ernest Hemingway's small, weak handshake when we were introduced at Scribners by John Hall Wheelock and by the jolt of force with which Elie Wiesel squeezed my hand. How long ago seems knowing, too: when I first meet Isaac Singer he asks me, "Who is Mr. Saul Bellow?" We're on the Upper West Side in his apartment next to the funeral parlor. A yellow parakeet hops around on Singer's bald forehead. Singer's great comic story of faith, "Gimpel the Fool," has only recently been published from Yiddish into English in a translation by Saul Bellow. They're both still a long way from Stockholm. "Do you know him? Can you tell me who this Mr. Bellow is?" he asks. It was not always possible to guess Singer's motives in acting as though he was not impressed with worldly reputations. His features of a medieval Polish saint, even to a faint white-haired tonsure effect around the crown of his skull, were backlit by the glowing monitor from his mischievous incubus.—from the Preface These are Richard Elman's candid snapshots in prose of the various, mostly literary celebrities he encountered during his four decades as a working writer and journalist—among them Isaac Bashevis Singer, Tillie Olsen, Bernard Malamud, Faye Dunaway, Hunter S. Thompson, and other important artists and writers who were Elman's teachers and, occasionally, adversaries. Engagingly written and never superficial, these portraits and anecdotes in many cases strike to the center of each subject's art. To many readers, these persons are just "names"; Elman brings them to life while never simplifying or overdramatizing their work.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments Preface: Post Time Part I. In Addition to George Spelvin Motke Kaplan Alexander Kerensky Yvor Winters, Thom Gunn, and Others Aldous Huxley Tillie Olsen Dan Jacobson David Lamson Bashevis William Bronk Bernard Malamud Part II. New York, N.Y. Sy Krim Wally Markfield and Others Matthew Josephson Max Margulis John Hall Wheelock Walker Evans Randolf Wicker Willard Trask Herbert Biberman William Butler Morris Renek Alfred Kreymborg Doug Ward: Peers and Tears Robert Lowell: A Life Study Hunter S. Thompson Saul Newton: Newton's Laws Richard Price Fred Busch Joel Leiber Jules Olitski Lucinda Childs Allen Ginsberg and Others Lore Segal Elie Wiesel Charlie's Bird Part III. Relaxing at the Touro Elman: The Man and the Masks—A Night in Evanston Spooks Studs Terkel Nuruddin Farrar W. H. Auden Little Richard Penniman Grace Paley Gil Sorrentino C. P. Snow: The Name of the Game Stanley Edgar Hyman Faye Dunaway Louise Varese Pete Martin George William Booth Lyndon Johnson Bill Kennedy Roberto Sosa Susan Meiselas Ernesto Cardenal Tomas Borge: "Falta Nada!" Tears Afterword: Homage to Isaac Babel

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