Just the Thing

This fully
updated edition of James Schuyler's letters to three dozen intimates, published
on the 100th anniversary of the writer's birth, offers unparalleled insights
into the lives, friendships, and sensibilities that sprang from the influential
New York School. James
Schuyler's effervescent takes on people, nature, art, writing, and love are on
joyous display in his letters to John Ashbery, Ron Padgett, Barbara Guest, Alex
Katz, Joe Brainard, Kenneth Koch, and many more. They paint an indelible
picture of a charmingly self-deprecating gentleman with an expansive intellect
and a deliciously wicked tongue. "Jimmy wrote letters for the most civilized of
reasons," a friend of his once said, ?to inform and to entertain.?
And that
they do, in inimitable style. Peppering his aperçus with the occasional ?tout
de sweetie? and ?pet noire,? the Pulitzer
Prize-winning author of The Morning of the
Poem holds forth on everything from Dante and Delacroix to
travel and gardening to the delicate workings of his own poems and those of
others. While his
tone ranges from the lightly graceful to the racily profane, each letter is
exquisitely tuned to its recipient. Schuyler's voice changes over the years and
through periods of elation and struggle, including stays with friends and in
psychiatric wards. Reading these letters, one becomes intimately connected to
the man and to his words, which have only grown more savory and valuable with
time.