I confess to have been completely seduced by The Age of Innocence—its presentation in Edith Wharton’s novel and in Martin Scorsese’s award-winning film version. While it’s true that the only article of clothing that actually comes off is a glove, the erotic charge of that moment is unforgettable. I also admit to being fascinated by stories of hopeless love and mute renunciation that conceal its agonies below the surface, where alluring characters collude in their own unhappiness by refusing to follow their heart even when they are free from social restraints to do so. The title of an article in The Guardian, “The Age of Innocence is a master class in sexual tension,” is spot on. Winner of the 1921 Pulitzer Prize, The Age of Innocence portrays desire and betrayal in high-society New York.
According to Scorsese, The Age of Innocence is a brutal gang story governed by its own strict codes of tribal loyalty and honor. Threats of punishment are ever present. He likens New York society in the 1870s to his own subculture of Little Italy where when somebody was killed, there was a finality to it. But Wharton’s milieu was perhaps even more cold-blooded.
In my books, I write letters to the male and female writers who have marked me. In preparation for the one I wrote to Wharton, I was extremely excited to handle her own letters recently at Yale’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library. I loved seeing her words in her own handwriting, and like many authors, she reveals herself differently in her letters. She is full of surprises!
Edith Wharton's novel reworks the eternal triangle of two women and a man in a strikingly original manner. When about to marry the beautiful and conventional May Welland, Newland Archer falls in love with her very unconventional cousin, the Countess Olenska. The consequent drama, set in New York during the 1870s, reveals terrifying chasms under the polished surface of upper-class society as the increasingly fraught Archer struggles with conflicting obligations and desires. The first woman to do so, Edith Wharton won the Pulitzer Prize for this dark comedy of manners which was immediately recognized as one of her greatest achievements.
Even though I can read Margaret Renkl’s New York Times column every Monday, I counted the minutes until I could get her newest book, The Comfort of Crows: A Backyard Year, which I will likely want to be rereading for many years to come. Here, as she takes us through the seasons, we take heart from the ways she shows us “how it feels to be part of something larger, something timeless, a world that reaches beyond me, and includes me, too.”
I have a new category inspired by Renkl: “Writers that make me weep, but always in a very good way.” I don’t give up my reading heart easily, but I feel forever bonded to Margaret Renkl.
From New York Times opinion writer and bestselling author Margaret Renkl comes a “howling love letter to the world” (Ann Patchett): a luminous book tracing the passing of seasons, personal and natural.
In The Comfort of Crows, Margaret Renkl presents a devotional of sorts: fifty-two essays that follow the creatures and plants in her backyard over the course of a year. As we move through the seasons—from a crow spied on New Year’s Day, its resourcefulness and sense of community setting a theme for the year—what develops is a portrait of joy and grief. Joy at the ongoing pleasures of…
Is there a current writer with better psychological instincts into what makes people tick? Strout understands that everyone has a story, and she makes even the saddest matter. In her hands what’s heartbreaking can become heart mending. I love seeing characters from Strout’s former books pop up in subsequent ones. This happens in Tell Me Everything. Will you feel left out if you have not encountered them before? I have read all of her books, but not necessarily in the order they were written, which was not a problem. I think that’s especially true of this latest one—a brilliant tour de force that can stand on its own. Regardless of the order in which you read Strout’s books, she has the art of making you feel like a member of the community of Crosby, Maine, as well as of the human race.
NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • OPRAH’S BOOK CLUB PICK • From Pulitzer Prize–winning author Elizabeth Strout comes a “stunner” (People) of a novel about new friendships, old loves, and the very human desire to leave a mark on the world.
“Tell Me Everything hits like a bucolic fable. . . . A novel of moods, how they govern our personal lives and public spaces, reflected in Strout’s shimmering technique.”—The Washington Post
With her remarkable insight into the human condition and silences that contain multitudes, Elizabeth Strout returns to the town of Crosby, Maine, and to her beloved cast of characters—Lucy…
In her new book, Letters to Men and Women of Letters, Diane Joy Charney writes to the authors she admires, both living and dead, who continue to keep her company. Her letters reflect what these writers have taught Charney about herself, but also what they can offer the reader.
Each letter—part literary love affair, part entertaining memoir—shows Charney’s reaction to having studied and taught the work of these timeless writers. She was a latecomer to many of them, but it’s never too late to fall in love with great writers. Among these are Franz Kafka, George Eliot, Proust, Nabokov, Camus, Colette, Flaubert, Edith Wharton, Balzac, Leonard Cohen, Christo, and her father. Her letters have been described as quirky (“Dear Jean-Paul Sartre, There have been many Jean-Pauls in my life, but you’re the only one in whose bedroom I have slept”), warm, accessible, and funny.
