A Chance Meeting American Encounters

by Cohen, Rachel; Cohen, Rachel; Seshadri, Vijay

• ISBN13: 9781681378107
• ISBN10: 1681378108
• eBook ISBN(s): 9781681378114
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2024-03-19
• Publisher: NYRB Classics
• More Book Details

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 Biography

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.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Henry James and Mathew Brady
Chapter 2: William Dean Howells and Annie Adams Fields and Walt Whitman
Chapter 3: Mathew Brady and Ulysses S. Grant
Chapter 4: William Dean Howells and Henry James
Chapter 5: Walt Whitman and Matthew Brady
Chapter 6: Mark Twain and William Dean Howells
Chapter 7: Mark Twain and Ulysses S. Grant
Chapter 8: W.E.B. Du Bois and William James
Chapter 9: Gertrude Stein and William James
Chapter 10: Henry James and Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett
Chapter 11: Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz
Chapter 12: Willa Cather and Mark Twain
Chapter 13: Willa Cather and Annie Adams Fields and Sarah Orne Jewett
Chapter 14: Edward Steichen and Alfred Stieglitz and Gertrude Stein
Chapter 15: Carl Van Vechten and Gertrude Stein
Chapter 16: Marcel Duchamp and Alfred Stieglitz
Chapter 17: Willa Cather and Edward Steichen and Katherine Anne Porter
Chapter 18: Alfred Stieglitz and Hart Crane
Chapter 19: Hart Crane and Charlie Chaplin
Chapter 20: Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston
Chapter 21: Beauford Delaney and W.E.B. Du Bois
Chapter 22: Hart Crane and Katherine Anne Porter
Chapter 23: Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore
Chapter 24: Zora Neale Hurston and Carl Van Vechten
Chapter 25: Joseph Cornell and Marcel Duchamp
Chapter 26: Beauford Delaney and James Baldwin
Chapter 27: Joseph Cornell and Marianne Moore
Chapter 28: James Baldwin and Norman Mailer
Chapter 29: Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop
Chapter 30: John Cage and Richard Avedon
Chapter 31: W.E.B. Du Bois and Charlie Chaplin
Chapter 32: Langston Hughes and Carl Van Vechten and Richard Avedon
Chapter 33: Richard Avedon and James Baldwin
Chapter 34: Marianne Moore and Norman Mailer
Chapter 35: John Cage and Marcel Duchamp
Chapter 36: Norman Mailer and Robert Lowell