“Last night, Don and I went to supper at Henri Coulette’s apartment in Pasadena. A disaster…. And, oh dear, the academic atmosphere with its prissy caution! One man said that very few people in America ‘had the background’ to be able to appreciate The Brothers Karamazov. WHY? If this were really true, it wouldn’t be a criticism of America but of Dostoevsky.”
 
Christopher Isherwood, May 13, 1962, Christopher Isherwood, The Sixties, Diaries 1960-1969

See also: Vreeland and Einstein: A Cosmic Connection

Image Credit: Allan Warren, via Wikimedia Commons

Gore Vidal's copy of Christopher Isherwood, The Sixties, Diaries 1960-1969, with his bookstamp is available via the Nick Harvill Libraries store. 

“The attempt to devote oneself to literature alone is a most deceptive thing, and often, paradoxically, it is the literature that suffers for it.”
 
Václav Havel, Disturbing the Peace

Image Credit: An Invitation to the White House

​A copy of An Invitation to the House signed by Hillary Clinton is available via the Nick Harvill Libraries store.