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A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, 1854-1967 BY Rachel Cohen Random House, $25.95 What's most impressive about Cohen's assemblage of first impressions, friendships, and fallings-out is the coherence of the conversation she orchestrates around American art and literature. Links are made where we might think links unlikely, so that Henry James is only one step removed from Walt Whitman (through photographer Matthew Brady), and Gertrude Stein is connected to Langston Hughes and Norman Mailer through Carl Van Vechten. While Cohen is assiduous about getting to the aesthetics behind the personalities, she is not above a bit of good gossip, as when she speculates on an unconsummated—though not uninteresting— affair du coeur between Marianne Moore and Joseph Cornell, the surrealist box-maker. There are a few instances in which description of the life overwhelms description of the work (Hart Crane) but, for the most part, Cohen vigilantly returns to the subject of an American artistic-literary heritage. Her book is an informal, though passionate, argument that one indeed exists. Buy this book Amazon Barnes and Noble Book Sense |
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