A Common Life: Four Generations of American Literary Friendships and Influence [Paperback]

David Laskin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: September 6, 2007

A unique blend of biography and literary criticism casts a fascinating light on American letters through an examination of four influential friendships: Melville and Hawthorne, James and Wharton, Porter and Welty, and Bishop and Lowell.

--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Laskin, a fluent writer, here assembles an impressive amount of anecdotal material on four literary friendships: Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne; Edith Wharton and Henry James; Katherine Anne Porter and Eudora Welty; and Elizabeth Bishop and Robert Lowell. But the ingenuity of his construct with its endless interweavings between these writers ultimately gives the impression of constant straining for parallels. Laskin claims that Melville's meeting Hawthorne early in his work on Moby Dick "altered the course of this masterpiece"; that Henry James spurred Edith Wharton to write The House of Mirth ; that Porter launched Welty's literary career, etc. Despite Laskin's preoccupation with his initial thesis, there is a great deal of information about all eight writers here. Most of it can be found elsewhere, but in the end Laskin ( Eastern Islands ) succeeds in making his point that great artists irritate and inspire one another. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Library Journal

Journalist Laskin presents a stylish biographical account of four American literary friendships. His pairs of writers range across the literary decades: Hawthorne and Melville, James and Wharton, Katherine Anne Porter and Welty, Bishop and Lowell-all of whom "bored deep into the core of what it means to be American." Laskin doesn't aspire to revise our understanding of any of his writers, but his focus on the four friendships provides an illuminating, appealing angle of vision. His easy command of the fiction and poetry of his subjects is a plus. His attempt to isolate "parallels in the 'structures' of the friendships" strikes this reader as factitious, but it doesn't prevent his work from being an engaging work of literary biography. For informed readers as well as specialists.
Keith Cushman, Univ. of North Carolina, Greensboro
Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 464 pages
• Publisher: Simon & Schuster (September 6, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1416576061
• ISBN-13: 978-1416576068
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 6 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.5 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #4,504,052 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

David Laskin was born in New York in 1953 and educated at Harvard College and New College, Oxford. For the past twenty-five years, Laskin has written books and articles on a wide range of subjects including history, weather, travel, gardens and the natural world. His most recent book, The Children's Blizzard, won the Washington State Book Award and the Midwest Booksellers' Choice Award for Nonfiction. Laskin's other titles include Braving the Elements: The Stormy History of American Weather, Partisans: Marriage, Politics and Betrayal Among the New York Intellectuals, A Common Life: Four Generations of American Literary Friendship and Influence, and Artists in their Gardens (co-authored with Valerie Easton). A frequent contributor to The New York Times Travel Section, Laskin also writes for the Washington Post, the Seattle Times, and Seattle Metropolitan. He and his wife Kate O'Neill, the parents of three grown daughters, live in Seattle with their two sweet old dogs.