@jabel I do think it’s time I finally get to some of the fiction, I’ve mostly read nonfiction and poetry.
@isaacgreene @jabel Same here. I mentioned last night when I saw the news that I’ve really only read his nonfiction and poetry, and it’s time to fix that.
@jabel Amid all the WB reminiscences I found the great tidbit that he was once in a writers’ seminar with Ken Kesey! I wonder if they interacted much, and if there’s any record of it.
@JohnBrady It appears they did. Here’s a letter from Kesey to Wendell and others from Letters of Note. Given the subject matter, it’s safe to say they considered each other friends.
@jabel @jaheppler I had this memory of my parents listening to Hannah Coulter on a roadtrip when I was a teenager and thinking it was the most boring thing. At some point I realized they were both crying in the front seats and I didn’t get it. I probably have enough years behind me to get it now.
@jabel What a letter. Intense. It seems that The Memory of Old Jack was known to Kesey in some form when he wrote this. Bonus mentions of Mountain Girl & Owsley: I’m not used to thinking of WB having any connection to that hippie universe, but I’m not surprised somehow.
@JohnBrady PS the seminar they shared was in the late 1950s, so it seems to have been a long-lasting friendship, at least by correspondence.
@JohnBrady @jabel I stumbled across that Berry connection earlier this summer, on a rabbit trail from this article on the fate of Kesey’s bus. What an interesting long-term friendship—I couldn’t believe that the “Wendell” the letter was addressed to was Berry!