Love Without Wings - Louis Auchincloss
This book of short readable essays describes the friendships of 16 pairs famous in literature and politics. As we’d expect in a close observer of people, an avid reader, and a figure in society who has hob-knobbed with people who knew the subjects, Auchincloss passes on interesting tidbits about Hawthorne & Melville (exuberant Herm exhausted private and reticent Nat) and Fitzgerald & Hemingway (Zelda pained Scott when she described his new friend Ernest as “a pansy with hair on his chest”).
Also interesting are Boswell & Johnson, Henry Adams & John Hay (great for readers who like Vidal’s Empire), Byron & Shelley, Tennyson & Arthur “In Memoriam” Hallam, Roosevelt & Hopkins, Emerson & Thoreau. Less interesting, because the subjects feel grey and faraway to me, are Edith Wharton & Margaret Chanler and Woodrow Wilson & Colonel House.
Light bedside reading or for when a reader is not up to more substantial challenging fare.
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