I struggle with making myself read non-fiction. I usually average 2 or 3 non-fiction books a year, which isn’t very much in proportion to all the fiction that I read.

Written by Rachel Cohen, A Chance Meeting: Intertwined Lives of American Writers and Artists 1854-1967 traces the connections between 30 writers and artists over a period of time. When I was an English major I was more interested in British literature than American literature. I took a couple of survey classes in American literature, but when I had the space in my schedule to choose electives I always picked creative writing or classes that focused on the 18th century British novel. This book filled in a few gaps in my knowledge of writers who I had only encountered before in one of those giant Norton Anthologies of American Literature.

Sometimes the connection between writers might be an artist engaged in portrait photography who was documenting the literary scene of a particular time. Many portraits are also included with the essays, the photographers featured include Mathew Brady, Edward Steichen, Carl Van Vechten, and Richard Avedon. Cohen also describes long-running friendships between Langston Hughes and Zora Neale Hurston, Elizabeth Bishop and Marianne Moore, and James Baldwin and Norman Mailer. Sometimes the connections between artists are brief, as two writers might meet at a party or be introduced to each other by a mutual friend. Cohen shows how friendships were formed and then broken.

I never knew before that Marianne Moore wrote the liner notes for Muhammed Ali’s record, I Am the Greatest!

Here’s an excerpt which shows Hart Crane and Charlie Chaplin meeting.