The Element of Lavishness: Letters of William Maxwell and Sylvia Townsend Warner, 1938-1978

Sylvia Townsend Warner counted herself very lucky to have William Maxwell as her New Yorker editor and readers of this volume of their correspondence would agree Warner wrote 153 stories between 1936 and 1977 and found a devoted and discering fan in Maxwell. Many of the letters deal with both Warner's and Maxwell's writing. On occasion Maxwell has to gracefully reject one of Warner's stories (usually with the reassurance that the story is wonderful "but not for The New Yorker"). But what the reader comes to appreciate are the writers' accounts of momentous occasions and everyday life. Maxwell gives us wonderful accounts of an Adlai Stevenson rally and the Vietnam Moratorium. His account of the NYC blackout (in a letter dated November 17, 1965)is one of the best things I've ever read and worth the price of the book. It's such a seamless piece of writing, with each detail depending on what came before, that to quote bits of it would be to trivialize it. Maxwell, who lived with his wife and two daughters in NYC, is also good with domestic detail and affecting and funny observations. He relates a conversation in which his small daughter laments that he is bald."'Would you trade me in for a daddy with more hair?'" 'Yes," she says, teaching me a lesson."And on his resuming piano lessons in middle age: ". . .And Mozart is sustaining though I cannot do it. I would rather not be able to do Mozart than any composer I can think of."Townsend who lived in England with her companion, Valentine Ackland offers a number of home remedies for illness, my favorite being champagne for any ailment above the waist, brandy for anything below. And she writes with droll humor of her life in an English village: "Poor Niou (a Siamese cat) has just had her first affair of the heart, and of course it was a tragedy. As a rule he flies from strange men, cursing under his breath, and keeping very low to the ground. Yesterday an electrician came; a grave mackintoshed man, but to Niou all that was romantic and lovely. He gazed at him, he rubbed against him, he lay in an ecstasy on the tool-bag. The electrician felt much the same, and gave him little washers to play with. He said he would come again today to to finish off properly. Niou understands everything awaited him in dreamy transports and practising his best and most amorous squint. The electrician came, Niou was waiting him on the windowsill. A paroxysm of stage-fright came over him, and he rushed into the garden and disappeared.He'll get over it in time; but just now he's terribly downcast."The volume is filled with fine writing and the reader wants very much to know these two people personally.