Here is the selected correspondence of the brilliant poet James Merrill, one of the twentieth century’s last great letter writers.
A vivacious correspondent, whether abroad, where avid curiosity and fond memory frequently took him, or at home, James Merrill wrote eagerly and often, to family and lifelong friends, American and Greek lovers, confidants in literature and art about everything that mattered—aesthetics, opera and painting, housekeeping and cooking, the comedy of social life, the mysteries of the Ouija board and the spirit world, and psychological and moral dilemmas—in funny, dashing, unrevised missives, composed to entertain himself as well as his recipients.
On a personal nemesis: “the ambivalence I live with. It worries me less and less. It becomes the very stuff of my art”; on a lunch for Wallace Stevens given by Blanche Knopf: “It had been decided by one and all that nothing but small talk would be allowed”; on romance in his late fifties: “I must stop acting like an orphan gobbling cookies in fear of the plate’s being taken away”; on great books: “they burn us like radium, with their decisiveness, their terrible understanding of what happens.”
Merrill’s daily chronicle of love and loss is unfettered, self-critical, full of good gossip, and attuned to the wicked irony, the poignant detail—a natural extension of the great poet’s voice.
“A workshop and a stage for the poet’s wit. . . . A cosmopolitan, bejeweled and philosophical chronicle of friendship, love, sex and work. . . . [Merrill] was generous with his advice and his money, and the letters he sent, whether or not they enclosed a check, were carefully crafted presents. Their entertainment never feels like a performance for posterity, but rather something directed at the living, individual recipient, who seems to be sitting directly across from the sender. . . . These letters went into the mail fully formed and polished, but this new collection of them, arriving a quarter-century into letter-writing’s death spiral, assures their monumentality.” —Thomas Mallon, The New York Times
“The art, the music, the reading in esoteric subjects, the daily life of shopping and cooking—and, most important, the friendships. . . . This book, which takes us from age 6 (a letter to Santa Claus) all the way to his final days in Tucson, Ariz., where he died from AIDS-related complications in 1995, immerses us in that world and enriches our understanding of the poetry that came out of it. . . . [A Whole World] shows us that the term ‘man of letters’ has never been more appropriately applied to a writer.” —Gregory Dowling, The Wall Street Journal
“I had impossibly high expectations for A Whole World. Somehow, the epistolary collection is better than I’d hoped for . . . Merrill’s correspondents comprise a Who’s Who of twentieth-century American literary culture. . . . His love letters are tender and self-revealing. . . . He includes flashes of critical insight and Proustian social portraiture. . . . The Merrill that emerges is tactful, gracious, witty, and whole.” —Anthony Domestico, Commonweal
