At the Morgan

If you are a bib­lio­phile, and I am noth­ing if not that, one of great places to vis­it in New York City is the Mor­gan Library on Madi­son Avenue and 36^th Street. It was built by bank­ing mag­nate J.P. Mor­gan (1837–1913) who was also a book col­lec­tor of vast resources. In this beau­ti­ful renais­sance style library you may look upon Baby­lon­ian clay tablets, a Guten­berg Bible, or a Mozart man­u­script, and more, much more. The Mor­gan (as it is called) also does superb book-relat­ed muse­um exhibits.

When I was there last week they were pro­vid­ing side-by-side exhibits of two writ­ers who are as impor­tant as they were dif­fer­ent: Lewis Car­roll (Alice in Won­der­land) and Ernest Hem­ing­way (The Sun Also Ris­es). It’s hard to imag­ine two more con­trast­ing peo­ple and/or writ­ers. Both writ­ers have been absolute­ly vital to my life, and as a read­er and a writer.

Let­ters, man­u­scripts, rewrites, scrib­bles, notes, first edi­tions, pho­tographs, and a lot more from both, a fab­u­lous feast for my lit­er­ary taste.

What also came across is this: Every writer is dif­fer­ent. Yet every writer, in essence works the same way; end­less­ly rewrit­ing.  Get­ting it right for the reader.To write well is always hard.

On dis­play is a let­ter that Hem­ing­way wrote. It reads, in part this way: “Writ­ing well is impos­si­bly dif­fi­cult. The time to work is short­er all the time. And if you waste it, there is no forgiveness.”

That day in NYC, I also saw Pope Fran­cis go by. Quite a day for heroes.

[If you are not trav­el­ing to New York City any time soon, you can explore The Mor­gan on Google Art Project.]