writerly conversation

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I've been reading the biography of Virginia Woolf written by her nephew, Quentin Bell. I highly highly recommend it to those fond of Ms. Woolf, or to those who simply enjoy reading about the lives of artists and writers as I do. Whenever I pick up the lovingly detailed story, I am immediately swept away into 1910's, 1920's...The friendly Thursday night gatherings of the Bloomsbury group stir within me yearnings for stimulating conversations about literature, art, and music...complete with cigarettes, pipe smoke, and apartifs...and a gramophone! A time long past? Alas.


Several other books take my imagination to this same vivid place...A Movable Feast, and more recently, The February House. I get on these kicks...Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Fitzgerald...and then Carson McCullers, W.H. Auden, Gyspy Rose Lee! (She wrote a murder mystery novel about Burlesque dancers!). Oh remarkable. Will our culture maintain these pivotal groups of writerly conversation and revolutionary ideas?? I hope so..I do. And sad to think that we will never read collections of letter correspondences...collections of emails? Maybe.


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