Books, Arts & Manners: The Absence of Greatness

close Connections; Caroline Gordon and the Southern Renaissance, by Ann Waldron (Putnam’s, 416 pp., $22.95)

The title of this biography impliesat least three kinds of “close connections.” First would be the “close connexion of bliss and bale” we know from Henry James’s preface to what Maisie Knew, which phrase may be taken to stand for Caroline Gordon’s relationship to her husband, Allen Tate—to her love for him and jealousy of him, and to “their torture of equilibrium,” their two divorces, their lives together and apart. This is the most important close connection, the heart of the matter.

JT

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J. O. Tate

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close Connections; Caroline Gordon and the Southern Renaissance, by Ann Waldron (Putnam’s, 416 pp., $22.95)

The title of this biography impliesat least three kinds of “close connections.” First would be the “close connexion of bliss and bale” we know from Henry James’s preface to what Maisie Knew, which phrase may be taken to stand for Caroline Gordon’s relationship to her husband, Allen Tate—to her love for him and jealousy of him, and to “their torture of equilibrium,” their two divorces, their lives together and apart. This is the most important close connection, the heart of the matter.