Scene @ Library of American 25th Anniversary

By Neal 

library-of-america.jpg“It’s amazing how many people still think we’re the Library of Congress,” quipped Library of America president Cheryl Hurley near the end of the all-star string of mini-lectures in the Morgan Library auditorium celebrating the Library’s 25th anniversary (E.L. Doctorow on Moby Dick, for example). The joke was a tangent to some good news; out of the 173 volumes of classic American literature published by the Library, 80 have been endowed by “guardians” who will guarantee the funds to keep them in print perpetually. The room was packed, and I had to abandon the seat I thought I’d plucked from a no-show when screenwriter/novelist David Benioff (right) did, in fact, arrive just before the show started (but then he and Amanda Peet very kindly gave up their seats to two elderly ladies, so we all ended up in the auxiliary video room). Afterwards, as we made our way to the reception, he told me how A. Scott Berg had given them a 30-volume Library sampler as a wedding gift. Did he have a favorite, I asked? He finally settled on the first batch of Saul Bellow novels.

And now, for no particular reason other than sheer coincidence, a batch of photographs from the reception in which women who talk with their hands converse with Berg, Tom Wolfe, and Garrison Keillor.

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