Distant Intimacy

Product Description

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