It needs to be said upfront that this can be a not possible book. For one thing, it’s a correspondence between two friends who’re notable in their very own fields while not being exactly household names. Jack Miles might be the better-known to readers of America, mainly for his best-selling God: A Biography. Mark C. Taylor is a big figure in philosophical and theological discourse, but not widely known beyond these academic specialties.
Their exchange, which took place over a mere nine months but stretches to well over 400 pages of text, has been edited down from an original 1,400 or so manuscript pages. And while it tells a well-recognized story about how all of us reacted to the primary months of the pandemic, the immediacy of the letter format is challenged by the incontrovertible fact that, two years later, quite a bit has modified; in consequence, most of the comments each authors make understandably seem quite dated. What was it, then, that made the case for publication?
This is admittedly a book about friendship, not in regards to the pandemic.
Actually, it will not be unreasonable to expect from these two distinguished authors and thinkers a full of life and difficult set of reflections on living through the early months of the pandemic. Here, I actually have to admit to a bit disappointment. After all, their thoughts are sensitive and accurate; crammed with the foreboding that was rightly current within the months before there was any vaccine, once we were all roughly locked down and each day seeing frightening tallies of the hospitalized and the dead. Surprisingly, there are few or no comments on the pandemic itself at which this reader not less than stopped to think, “Wow, that was an incredible insight!” But there have been many where I believed, “Yes indeed, exactly what I used to be considering.”
Which only goes to point out, I suppose, that great intellects with good pens can still be fairly pedestrian about matters that usually are not their specialty. To their credit, or that of the publisher, the title of the book points the reader in a unique direction: A Friendship in Twilight. The pandemic’s early stages were real enough, sufficiently sobering for there to be conversations on death and life, particularly when the writers were well into their 70s. And if the reference to “twilight” seems only a tad maudlin, if not impossibly romantic, the give attention to friendship hits the editorial nail on the top. This is admittedly a book about friendship, not in regards to the pandemic.
The true great thing about the book, then, is that while the early months of the pandemic are the background and occasion for the letters, the friendship they display is vastly more interesting. And while there are moments when the pandemic and the writers’ own health issues and age appear to steer the book toward the frankly morbid, there may be an amazing deal to relish and cherish too. Look after each other and their respective families, exchange of ideas and reading recommendations, philosophical gossip and teetering across the transcendental together: All of those and more testify to the heat of the connection and, frankly, to the posh of time to jot down at such length, an unintended consequence of the lockdown.
Amongst my very own favorites is Miles’s letter filled with thoughts on Eastern religion, ending with Protagoras and pork chops.
As for us readers, dipping in here and there appears to be best. 4 hundred pages could be very long, but a five-page bite through which the 2 of them exchange opinions about Niall Williams’s wonderful book, This Is Happiness, or an exchange on their respective tolerance level for country music is barely enough to gnaw on for someday. Amongst my very own favorites is Miles’s letter filled with thoughts on Eastern religion, ending with Protagoras and pork chops.
The writers’ growing recognition of the interrelationships between the pandemic and the efforts of American political leadership to disclaim after which obfuscate its impact becomes a secondary theme of the letter exchange. Little by little, the run-up to the presidential election begins to play a bigger role of their reflections, picking up speed with the electoral defeat of Donald J. Trump and all that followed. There are, the authors think, two problems, different in setting but related in form. As they are saying of their introduction, “Our world is ablaze with a virus that’s each biological and political.”
Having recognized this complicated situation, they appear to have seen the necessity to pay slightly more attention to the political toward the tip of the book. The ultimate section, entitled “Epiphany,” caps reflections on the November 2020 elections with a page or two, each elegiac and hopeful, occasioned by the events of Jan. 6, 2021. Here once more they offer voice to thoughts that usually are not unusual, but higher expressed than most of us could do, and, most significantly, salted by 50 years of friendship.
Miles’s last words suggest the perils of the pandemic “will grow worse before they grow higher.” He ends in hope, nonetheless, based “on the facility of truth.” Taylor’s conclusions mix Johnny Money and Samuel Beckett—surely a rare pairing. Like Beckett, Taylor thinks, he’ll “go on.” For his students and his children and grandchildren, of course, but additionally for his friend.
We have now written this together, Taylor writes: “I wager our conversation will proceed to alter us after one among us, perhaps each of us dies.” Miles is the more overtly religious in outlook, but Taylor’s last words stand out: “Though ghosts usually are not holy, they’re, I think, real.” Comfortable are the buddies who’re so different and yet can so evidently hear each other. And perhaps the book needed to be this long to do justice to a 50-year friendship.
