Frederic Raphael, the English novelist, screenwriter, and man of
letters, and Joseph Epstein, the American essayist, short-story
writer, and literary critic, exchanged e-mails sporadically over
the years, usually commenting on each other's various writings.
Then one day in 2009, Raphael wrote to Epstein to suggest that,
since they enjoyed a benevolence toward each other unusual among
literary men, they begin an exchange of e-mail correspondence on a
regular basis. His thought was that, at the end of a year or so,
the result might be an interesting book. Epstein, who had long
admired Raphael's writing, agreed. The two men had never met, nor
had they even spoken over the phone. Their friendship was conducted
entirely online. Each week they exchanged e-mails of roughly 2,000
words. They discovered a great many things about each other they
hadn't previously known. They shared, for example, a common
birthplace in Chicago, where Raphael was born, though his family
moved to England in 1938, and his education after that was
exclusively English. Each man belongs to that dolorous fraternity
of those who have buried a child. Their literary tastes vary,
though not widely, since both grew up admiring the great modernist
writers and both had an enduring love for Greek and Roman culture.
Both men share a fundamental agreement about what, in artistic and
intellectual realms, is serious. Raphael and Epstein are artists
who happen also to be intellectuals. The result is that few
subjects are off limits to them. They are of an age when they have
long ceased to worry about their reputations. Wherever else they
may look, it is not over their shoulders. Candor reinforced by
comedy is the reigning note of Where Were We? as it was of Distant
Intimacy, their earlier volume of e-mail correspondence. Writing
about other writers, actors, politics, the movies, intellectual
fashions, the writing life, and much else, both men say precisely
what they think, and say it in high style. Readers may or may not
agree with their strong views, but they will never find their
thoughts other than fascinating.
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