Kindred spiritis …

… The Epistolary Friendship of Guy Davenport and Hugh Kenner. (Hat tip, Dave Lull.)

Though the form itself is vanishing, the pleasures afforded by reading literary correspondence have, if anything, intensified. Given the brittleness of the text message and the anxious sterility of email, there is a luxury to the epistolary rhythm: write—and wait. The fecundity of such a record has obvious appeal for scholars, who set out like lepidopterists, netting scandals, idées fixes, house guests, marital strife, disease, inspiration, signs of madness. The publication of a collection of letters pays the writer the compliment of such scrutiny. Questioning Minds, a gem of the form, was published this October by Counterpoint Press. It collects the voluminous correspondence—more than one thousand letters—between Hugh Kenner, modernist advocate and critic-savant, and Guy Davenport, literary collagist, essayist, and uncanny illustrator. It amounts to something like an intellectual love affair, replete with moments of courtship, seduction, devotion, and, eventually, betrayal. Given the polymathic depth of the correspondents, their associative flair and plasticity, and the sheer duration of their passionate exchange—nearly five decades, all told—we are unlikely to find a document of its like again.