This book is brilliant in its simplicity: letters from writers to others, reproduced both in their original form as well as in type you can actually read, with wonderful explanatory notes, all packaged in a beautiful volume. So here is Kurt Vonnegut writing to his family after months as a prisoner of war telling them he is, in fact, alive after many travails, including the bombing of Dresden, which he survived by hiding in an underground meat locker (an experience that would inspire his 1969 novel, Slaughterhouse Five); Samuel Beckett praising Harold Pinter for his play The Homecoming (“Affectionately, Sam”); and Henrik Ibsen asking Edvard Grieg to compose incidental music for Peer Gynt. (Thus Grieg’s masterpiece “In the Hall of the Mountain King” came to be.) And who knew George Eliot and Harriet Beecher Stowe were pen pals? Savor this book, since a more contemporary version called “Writers’ Tweets” is unlikely—and deservedly so.
Lord knows the Tour de France is arduous enough, but imagine embarking on the bike race in 1919, the day after the Treaty of Versailles was signed and straight through a deeply scarred countryside with many of the riders fresh out of the military. Dobkin does a masterful job of telling the story of the 13th Tour de France, vividly capturing the personalities and challenges of a race whose course wended past trenches and where “bird nests of barbed wire sat in irregular bundles, like rusted tumbleweeds.” No spoilers about the winner, but let’s just say one finished in first place in the hearts of the spectators and another won officially.
