The Pleasure of Their Company Author:Doris Grumbach An eightieth-birthday party is cause for reflection on an extraordinary life of letters from one of our most prized writers "This was the summer of my unexpected content," writes Doris Grumbach of the months in which she plans a "shindig," gets a pet, and buys a new car, "the height of foolish optimism" for a woman of eighty. As a writer known... more » for her meditations on solitude, Grumbach delivers a surprising and enchanting memoir of the writers, friends, and loves who have accompanied her in mind and body throughout her life. From her days as a proofreader at Mademoiselle in the 1940s, she recalls a parade of celebrity from Gypsy Rose Lee to Carson McCullers. She shocks with a story of a sexual encounter with Bertrand Russell, explains the meaning of the recent loss of May Sarton, and names a new cat after her acquaintance and Washington journalist Kitty Kelley. For the first time, she writes openly about her lesbian partnership and her marriage to a man she loved. With guides such as Malcolm Cowley, Samuel Beckett, Thomas Merton, and Virginia Woolf, Grumbach's revelling in the company of writers and friends shows us what it means to keep the living and the dead in our lives. "[Grumbach's] prose shines with a serene grace." The New York Times« less