THE COMPANY THEY KEPT: WRITERS ON

"The Company They Kept "is a collection of twenty-seven accounts of these varied
friendships most of them undeniably fraught with idiosyncratic complexities. Fr
om Anna Akhmatova s dreamlike description of wandering through Paris with the im
poverished Modigliani to Joseph Brodsky s account of his first meeting with Isai
ah Berlin (from which he returned to report, around the kitchen table, to Stephe
n Spender and W. H. Auden), these pieces are tantalizing glimpses into the lives
of those who have made "The New York Review of Books "into what "Esquire "magaz
ine calls the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language. "