Distant Intimacy: A Friendship in the Age of the Internet

Epstein, Joseph,Raphael, Frederic

ISBN 10: 0300186940 / ISBN 13: 9780300186949

Published by Yale University Press, 2013

About this Item

Good - Bumped and creased book with tears to the extremities, but not affecting the text block, may have remainder mark or previous owner's name - GOOD Standard-sized.

Seller Inventory # M0300186940Z3

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Distant Intimacy: A Friendship in the Age of the Internet
• Publisher: Yale University Press
• Publication Date: 2013
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0300186940
• ISBN 13: 9780300186949
• Binding: Hardcover
• Condition: Good

About this title

Synopsis

This delightful book of writer-to-writer correspondence joins a full shelf of volumes in the genre, yet it is perhaps the first set of such letters ever transacted via the Internet. Also unusual, at least for correspondents in the twenty-first century, is that Frederic Raphael and Joseph Epstein have never met, nor even spoken to each other. But what is most rare about this book is the authors' abundant talent for entertaining their readers, as much when the topic is grave as when it is droll.

Raphael and Epstein agree to embark on a year-long correspondence, but other rules are few. As the weeks progress, their friendship grows, and each inspires the other. Almost any topic, large or small, is considered: they write of schooling, parents, wives, children, literary tastes, enmities, delights, and beliefs. They discuss their professional lives as writers, their skills or want of them, respective experiences with editors, producers, and actors, and, in priceless passages scattered throughout the letters, they assess such celebrated figures as Gore Vidal, Christopher Hitchens, Susan Sontag, Annie Leibowitz, Malcolm Gladwell, Harold Bloom, George Steiner, Harold Pinter, Isaiah Berlin, George Weidenfeld, and Robert Gottlieb, among many others. Epstein and Raphael capture a year in their letters, but more, they invite us into an intimate world where literature, cinema, and art are keys to self-discovery and friendship.

About the Author

Frederic Raphael has written twenty-two novels, including The Glittering Prizes, made into a BBC television series, and several works of nonfiction. He is also an Oscar-winning screenwriter. He divides his time between London and the Perigord. Joseph Epstein is the author of more than twenty books, including Fred Astaire, published by Yale University Press, and most recently Gossip: The Untrivial Pursuit. He lives in Chicago.