The Company They Kept: Writers on Unforgettable Friendships [Paperback]

Now in paperback

Many of the illustrious contributors to The New York Review of Books have had deep and abiding relationships–both personal and intellectual–with other poets, writers, artists, composers, and scientists of equal stature. The Company They Kept is a collection of twenty-seven accounts of these varied friendships–most of them undeniably fraught with “idiosyncratic complexities.” From Anna Akhmatova’s dreamlike description of wandering through Paris with the impoverished Modigliani to Joseph Brodsky’s account of his first meeting with Isaiah Berlin (from which he returned to report, around the kitchen table, to Stephen Spender and W. H. Auden), these pieces are tantalizing glimpses into the lives of those who have made The New York Review of Books into what Esquire magazine calls “the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language.”"Whether fond or surprisingly frank, these essays are soothing in their intimacy, their acceptance of fallible fellow humans. 'As always,' writes Robert Oppenheimer of Albert Einstein, 'the myth has its charms; but the truth is far more beautiful.'" –O Magazine

“A charming addition to a friend’s bookshelf would be The Company They Kept: Writers on Unforgettable Friendships.” –Vogue

"An extraordinarily striking, moving and delicious collection of short essays...The writing in most of these essays is dazzling, the anecdotes and insights even more so. It is a superb collection of vignettes, and their variety throws more light on the diversity and possibilities than a treatise could." –The Financial Times

"Robert B. SilCY