Books
Atlantic cross currents
A UK-US email correspondence between two fine writers contains enjoyably sharp literary gossip
March 8, 2013 11:00
By, Robert Low
2 min read
A UK-US email correspondence between two fine writers contains enjoyably sharp literary gossip
March 8, 2013 11:00By, Robert Low
Frederic Raphael and Joseph Epstein are both distinguished Jewish writers in their 70s, Raphael is a novelist and Oscar-winning screenwriter; Epstein a fine essayist, superb short-story writer and some-time academic and editor. They share a dislike of most of their better-known and better-selling contemporaries, believing poetry and much else took a wrong turn about half-a-century ago, and reserving a particular hatred for enemies of Jews and Israel.
These views, and much else, they pour out in lengthy, weekly emails to each other, which are collected in this delightful, stimulating book, every page of which crackles with wisdom, wit and bile, the last being the most enjoyable.
They’ve never actually met, or even spoken on the telephone. Epstein lives in Chicago; Raphael divides his time between London and the Dordogne. After Epstein congratulated Raphael on an essay, an occasional correspondence developed and Raphael suggested formalising it with a view to publication.
The gossip is wonderful. As Raphael admits, “the literary vocation is a call to malice and envy as well as, we like to think, Higher Things.” These pages contain malice, envy and Higher Things in about equal proportions. Raphael is a man for whom the word, broiges, might have been invented: he seems to have fallen out with just about everyone he has ever dealt with, and relates the ruptures with panache and style. Epstein seems calmer, more at ease with himself but is still capable of the magisterial put-down.
