Just the Thing: Selected Letters of James Schuyler, 1951-1991, Revised Anniversary Edition

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.