The San Francisco Chronicle reviews Rachel Cohen's A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists, 1854-1967 , an excerpt of which appears in the prototype issue of Omnivore which arrived in my mailbox last week (a detailed review of which is coming).
A collection of 36 interrelated vignettes from the Civil War to the civil rights movement, the book starts with Matthew Brady photographing the young Henry James and his father, and ends with Norman Mailer and Robert Lowell trying to levitate the Pentagon.In between, American cultural titans and near-titans rise and fall -- some as friends, some as rivals (not nearly enough of those, for my taste), but all as shared influences who wound up enriching the work that followed. Together it adds up to a book that's as addictive as popcorn, as guiltless as cruciferous vegetables.
The book does indeed sound like fun, and the excerpt has added it to my wish list.
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