Rating
The Pequod Review:
Edited by Michael Steinman, The Element of Lavishness is a collection of more than 1,300 letters exchanged between Sylvia Townsend Warner and New Yorker editor William Maxwell over their forty-year friendship. The pieces are intelligent and substantive, often focused on their own literary enthusiasms:
You remember the woman in Isak Dinesen’s story who sailed the seas looking for the perfect blue? In somewhat the same way I search for an interesting fact for you that you do not already know. When I find one that looks likely (viz: in Grove last night that as a small child Mozart had an ear so delicate and susceptible that he fainted away at the sound of a trumpet) and then shake my head; a musical fact that you are not conversant with? most unlikely. And about Mozart, more unlikely still. But someday I shall astonish you, as you astonish me every time I get a letter from you. [Maxwell to Warner, March 23, 1977]
[...]
How very kind of you to send me your book. Sometimes book-sending is a miscarrying kindness, for it is very painful to receive the gift of some one's spiritual child and then to be forced to say one doesn't think much of it; but your present is an unqualified kindness, for I like the book very much indeed.
I do admire you so much for being able to write as a grown-up person about children. Too many people jump that problem by writing about children childishly; sometimes it's not too bad but it's never satisfying, one smells the expedient all the time like an oniony knife. At first I thought: Well, this Bunny is the achievement; but Robert is even better, especially Robert on the roof. And the slightly abrupt perspective of the grown-up characters, seen as one used to see grown-ups, is admirable. [Warner to Maxwell, April 3, 1940]
[...]
The other day I said to a clergyman I met that though I always read in my bath, as all sensible people do, I disliked the moment when one has to decide whether to wash one’s hands or go on reading and respecting the binding. He said that if I were to content myself with the burial and baptismal service, this problem would be overcome, as both of them are issued by some Church of England publishing house with waterproof bindings. Did you know this? [Warner to Maxwell, April 11, 1951]
Recommended.