A chance meeting : American encounters / by Rachel Cohen.

Title :

A chance meeting : American encounters

Author:

Cohen, Rachel, 1973-

Format:

Books

Summary:

"Each chapter in this remarkable consideration of American culture evokes an actual meeting between two historical figures. In 1854, as a boy, Henry James has his daguerreotype made by Mathew Brady. We encounter Brady again as he photographs Walt Whitman and then Ulysses Grant. Meanwhile, Henry James begins a lasting friendship with William Dean Howells, and also meets Sarah Orne Jewett, who in turn is a mentor to Willa Cather... Cohen brilliantly reanimates these unforgettable pairings and those of Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz; Carl Van Vechten and Gertrude Stein; Hart Crane and Charlie Chaplin; Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston; Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore; Richard Avedon and James Baldwin; and John Cage and Marcel Duchamp; Norman Mailer and Robert Lowell. Ultimately, Cohen reveals and long chain of friendship, rebellion and influence stretching from the moment before the Civil War through a century that had a profound effect on our own time. A Chance Meeting is an intimate and original act of biography and cultural history that makes its own contribution to the tradition about which Cohen writes."--

Language:

English

ISBN - ISSN:

9781681378107

1681378108

Physical Description:

pages cm.

Subject:

Authors, American -- 20th century -- Biography.

Artists -- United States -- Biography.

Authors and artists -- Biography.

Friendship -- United States -- History -- 20th century.

Arts, American -- 20th century.

United States -- Intellectual life -- 20th century.

Series:

New York Review Books classics.

First Title value, for Searching:

A chance meeting : American encounters / by Rachel Cohen.

Holds: Copies:

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Library	Audience	Home Location	Material Type	Shelf Number	Status
Searching... Bracewell	Adult	Non-fiction	New books	928 C678	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Central	Adult	Non-fiction	New books	928 C678	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Looscan	Adult	Non-fiction	New books	928 C678	Searching... Unknown
Searching... Ring	Adult	Non-fiction	New books	928 C678	Searching... Unknown

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Summary

Weaving a tapestry of creativity and circumstance, this lauded chronicle of the many links and serendipitous meetings between giants of American culture-from Henry James to Gertrude Stein to Zora Neale Hurston to Marcel Duchamp-now includes a new afterword by the author.

Rachel Cohen's A Chance Meeting is a dazzling group portrait that offers a striking new vision of the making and remaking of the American mind and imagination from the Civil War to the Vietnam War. How does the happenstance of daily life become history? Cohen shows us, describing a series of, now boldly, now subtly, transformative encounters between a wide and surprising range of Americans. A young Henry James has his portrait taken by the photographer Mathew Brady-Brady, who will receive Walt Whitman in his studio and depict General Grant on the battlefield. Later, W.E.B. Du Bois and his professor William James visit Helen Keller; Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz argue about photography; and Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston write a play together. Throughout, Cohen's narrative loops back and leaps forward with supreme agility, connecting, among others, Willa Cather, Elizabeth Bishop, Marianne Moore, Beauford Delaney, James Baldwin, and Richard Avedon. In A Chance Meeting , Rachel Cohen offers an abiding account of the continuing challenges and the astonishing achievements of American life.

Author Notes

Rachel Cohen is the author of three books of nonfiction, most recently Austen Years- A Memoir in Five Novels , which was published by FSG in 2020 to critical acclaim. Her essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Guardian, The London Review of Books, and The New York Times, among other publications, and her work has been included in Best American Essays and Pushcart Prize anthologies. She is Professor of Practice in the Arts in the Creative Writing Program at the University of Chicago.

Vijay Seshadri is the author of five books of poetry, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning 3 Sections and, most recently, the collection That Was Now, This is Then .

Illustrations	vii
Foreword	ix
Introduction to the First Edition	xv
1 Henry James and Mathew Brady	7
2 William Dean Howells and Annie Adams Fields and Walt Whitman	15
3 Mathew Brady and Ulysses S. Grant	28
4 William Dean Howells and Henry James	37
5 Walt Whitman and Mathew Brady	46
6 Mark Twain and William Dean Howells	52
7 Mark Twain and Ulysses S. Grant	62
8 W. E. B. Du Bois and William James	70
9 Gertrude Scein and William James	76
10 Henry James and Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett	85
11 Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz	96
12 Willa Cather and Mark Twain	106
13 Willa Cather and Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett	113
14 Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz and Gertrude Stein	121
15 Carl Van Vechten and Gertrude Stein	127
16 Marcel Duchamp and Alfred Stieglitz	139
17 Willa Cather and Edward Steichen and Katherine Anne Porter	145
18 Alfred Stieglitz and Hart Crane	154
19 Hart Crane and Charlie Chaplin	163
20 Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston	172
21 Beauford Delaney and W. E. B. Du Bois	186
22 Hart Crane and Katherine Anne Porter	193
23 Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore	200
24 Zora Neale Hurston and Carl Van Vechten	208
25 Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp	217
26 Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin	224
27 Joseph Cornell and Marianne Moore	233
28 James Baldwin and Norman Mailer	240
29 Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop	249
30 John Cage and Richard Avedon	260
31 W. E. B. Du Bois and Charlie Chaplin	268
32 Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechren and Richard Avedon	276
33 Richard Avedon and James Baldwin	285
34 Marianne Moore and Norman Mailer	294
35 John Cage and Marcel Duchamp	301
36 Norman Mailer and Robert Lowell	308
Author's Afterword	315
Acknowledgments	325
Notes	329
Bibliography	347
Index	367
Credits and Permissions	389

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