We’re all familiar with the “If you like X then you’ll love Y!” line on the back of books. Indeed, the first time I appeared quoted on the back of a book was with the pithy line “If you like Maggie O’Farrell, you’ll love Angela Young!” – which is something I stand by, even if not quite what I originally said. Then there are books and press releases that describe books as a cross between two other books/authors – often so disparate that you can’t conceive of what a middle point could be. “Little Women meets American Psycho.” “The Da Vinci Code meets Roald Dahl.” “Agatha Christie meets Das Kapital.” I made those up, but I wouldn’t be entirely surprised to see them.
Even those of us who spot a marketing ploy at a hundred paces can fall into these traps in our mind. (Incidentally, I work in marketing so I should say that these ploys serve noble purposes ;)) When I’m browsing my shelves for what to read next, I tend to have a certain mood in mind. That might mean picking a book by an author I already love, but sometimes it means turning to a period or a topic that suits my fancy – and hoping that a new author will meet the requirements I currently have, even if I’m not quite sure what they are.
Recently, I’ve been attempting to recreate the magic of The Element of Lavishness. If you’ve been around here for a while, you’ve probably heard me talk about it – it’s the collected letters between Sylvia Townsend Warner and William Maxwell, and it is completely wonderful. Profound, beautiful, warm, funny – if you can cope with the slightly odd formatting that came when I migrated blog posts, then my thoughts about it are in this post.
I’ve tried to recreate that joy with other collections of Warner’s letters (yes, I own five, what of it) but have never reached those peaks. And I’ve tried to do the same when it comes to the New Yorker – because an awful lot of this collection is about Maxwell’s professional role as a New Yorker editor. Even at their most familiar and friendly, he was also reading, editing, accepting or rejecting Warner’s short stories for the New Yorker – with the sort of detail and nuance that can only come from a true literary appreciator.
And so I turned to two different books about the New Yorker recently. One was Harold Ross’s letters – Harold Ross was a founder of the New Yorker in 1925 and its editor-in-chief until his death in 1951. All I can say about this book is that he wrote a lot of very dull letters to very interesting people. Rebecca West, Dorothy Parker, Noel Coward, E.B. White… all sorts of great people, but his letters are chiefly prosaic. I suppose the difference is that he’s not writing about the minutaie of their writing – he’s more interested in the business side of things. This collection is going straight to a charity shop, but at least it ticked off 2000 in my Century of Books.
The second was Janet Groth’s The Receptionist (2012) – about being a receptionist at the New Yorker for more than twenty years, despite having initial aspirations to join the writing staff (and eventually becoming a university professor and an expert in Edmund Wilson). I did enjoy some sections of this book – her chapter about getting to know Muriel Spark is worth the cover price alone – but I wanted it to be a lot more about day-to-day life in her job. Instead, the structure is a bit all over the place, and there’s a lot more about her personal (and sexual) life than I particularly wanted to know. As a cluster of interesting (and less interesting) recollections, it is good – but it’s not what I was hoping for. But this one is staying on the shelves.
So… what’s the moral of the story? Predictably, there isn’t one really – except perhaps be careful what you wish for. Or lightning doesn’t strike twice. Or something along those lines. (Or, alternatively, does anybody know anything that lives up to the wonder of The Element of Lavishness?)
Those “If you like . . . ” comments usually are so far off base for me that I sometimes avoid reading books that are supposedly “like” the ones I’ve enjoyed.
“Agatha Christie meets Das Kapital.” HA! That’s hysterical!
Nothing quite compares to ‘Lavishness” but I had a similar experience with “One Art: Elizabeth Bishop’s Letters.”
You might enjoy E.B. White’s letters from his days at the New Yorker. He submitted stories to that magazine for fifty years.
Watch for Brendan Gill’s New Yorker memoir. He was a lavish, literary gossip.
Not quite on topic, but I’d love to know some of the marketing ploys to watch out for…
It’s tricky, I find – and you can be absolutely bowled over by a particular book by a particular author but never get that magic again from them. I think it’s worth *not* looking and just wait for when the magic hits – it can come from the most unlikely and unexpected books!
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There is often the same problem with a series of books – once you’re a few volumes in, they become so familiar that they lose their way – or is it that I don’t have the staying power to remain with a series/set of characters? Not all series lose steam though, luckily Mick Herron’s Slough House series are holding up wonderfully so far.
Correspondences are so individual. Have you tried any of the other collections with William Maxwell’s letters? — very different personalities but writerly bookish chat and some New Yorker references in the very enjoyable What There Is to Say We Have Said with Maxwell and Eudora Welty and The Happiness of Getting It Down Right with Maxwell and Frank O’Connor. Robertson Davies writes entertaining letters, too: “I would be doubtful if a home for elderly writers would be a good idea. Writers are an extremely contentious group and old age does not make them any more peaceful. I think that they are better spread around among the rest of the population.”
If your preference is correspondence between two writers, there’s also Words In Air, letters between poets Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. And there’s also a book of Elizabeth Bishop’s correspondence with the New Yorker, Elizabeth Bishop and The New Yorker—although there is a lot about contracts and editing, there are some bits like “Every poem of yours brightens the day for me. Like Beethoven’s father, I’d simply put you in a room and make you work all the time if I could. Of course, I wouldn’t be that strict. A little gin, a few sandwiches…” H. Moss, 5/26/72”. And the correspondence I wish was one volume longer is: The Lyttelton Hart-Davies Letters.
Thanks for the recommendation! I have read Maxwell’s letters with Welty, which I enjoyed a lot (but not as much), and I have Bishop’s letters with the New Yorker on my shelves. Lots of things to look out!
“…He wrote a lot of very dull letters to very interesting people.”
An amusing quotation, but not one I expect to see used on a cover any time soon.
I am *HERE* for a Little Women/American Psycho mash-up, goodness gracious. If someone hasn’t already written that, I’m going to (with full credit to you for the idea, of course). 😉❤️