A Common Life: Four Generations of American Literary Friendships & Influence

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.

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.

The author of The Little Girl Book (not reviewed) attempts in his adoring study to view eight American authors' lives and works in the context of their major literary friendships. Stating that his object is to explore ``epiphanic moments'' in the friendships of four pairs of writers, Laskin begins with Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne, ``primordial gods, titans'' who shared a relationship that is, in this book, no less than archetypal. Beneath the cloying hero worship it's possible to discern a pair of talented but very human beings, with Hawthorne shrinking somewhat from the emotional heartiness of Melville's high regard. Similarly Edith Wharton, possessed of considerable wealth and commercial success, bowled over a somewhat jealous Henry James emotionally just as she swept him up in her fast, newfangled motorcars. Before their professional relationship blossomed into a personal one, Katherine Anne Porter promoted Eudora Welty's career but was not above feeling a twinge of jealousy at Welty's success with Delta Wedding while she struggled to produce Ship of Fools. Restrained Elizabeth Bishop and explosive Robert Lowell are depicted finding an uneasy common ground that is reflected in their poetry. Although these writers and their friendships are inherently interesting, Laskin treats his subjects as little more than celebrities, reading their works like tabloids to find clues to their lives (a technique that James pokes fun at in his story ``The Figure in the Carpet''). The worst moments are such random leaps into the bizarre as the author's speculation that Lowell, who died suddenly, might have ``interceded for Bishop from beyond the grave'' (because she died the same way) or his observation that Lowell's ongoing struggle with mental illness somehow marked him as a poet--Laskin's naivet‚ is cringe-inducing. A pedestrian effort that says little new or enlightening about these literary lives or the nature of friendship. -- Copyright ©1994, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

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.