This is on my bedside table, and I dip in and out depending on my mood. Lovely writing -- I mean, Eudora Welty and William Maxwell, come on. Lots of writing about writing, the weather, growing roses. Not very gripping, but I like it a lot. ( )

This is one of those wonderful books that will increase your “simply have to read” list exponentially. Eudora Welty and William Maxwell wrote to each other about the stories, articles and books they had written and read, causing my copy of this collection of their correspondence to be marked up with arrows, pointing to the books and old magazine pieces I want to find and read for myself. Both were writers, but Bill Maxwell was also Eudora Welty’s editor at the New Yorker, and the letters they wrote during the editing of her stories are a fascinating glimpse into that polishing aspect of the creative process. Maxwell was gentle and supportive, making suggestions but always allowing Welty to have the final say.

They were such close friends that they appeared in each other’s dreams. They used a lot of typewriter ribbon comparing notes on garden flowers, especially roses, and they wrote graceful prose descriptions of their lives and their impressions of some of the memorable events of the time, including presidential elections from Eisenhower to Clinton, the civil rights era of the 60’s, the Comet Kohoutek, the Mt. Saint Helens eruption, and the happenings in the literary world. The end notes are a treasure, with lots of interesting additional information. As I read I used two bookmarks so I could easily reference them. With letters written between 1942 and 1996, this book should be a delight to anyone interested in the literature of that not so long ago era. ( )