News from old friends

Annie  Proulx just got an award, the Medal for Distinguished Contirbution to American Letters, by the National Book Foundation. The award, which recognizes a a lifetime of literary achievment, cites her " deep reverence for the beauties and complexities of rural America." The photo , from the Grauniad (Guardian) is nice too:

She remains unimpressed. House hunting in the Pacific Northwest, she writes to  Libby "Nice hat":

... and to me: "You look more like Sam Shepherd than yourself"

 She says: "I am in [a small town] trying to get moved in...Place is a weird invisible oligarchy with a red hot center of crazies. A very odd place. I like it.  of ocean, plenty of birds with orange legs and a chance to learn to differentiate some of the gulls from some of the other gulls. Ha. Lots of Cascadian Fault, sleeping volcanoes, stuff enough for a tsunami, landslides every week, and of course the chance for a bomb from Kim Jing Inn."

The ability to write letters in prose as good as their finished work is not the thing I least enjoy about my friends. Tom McGuane has often written me vivid descriptions of birds of prey. ("Cutting horses are my falcons.") Right now he has other things on his mind, and I have not heard from him. His ranch above McLeod, Montana, was almost entirely burned out. Miraculously, ("the luck of the Irish" as he has often cited in his shotgun trading), the fire stopped just short of the headquarters house, leaving his dogs, his paintings, and his shotguns intact. Even his entire grazing stock miraculously escaped through an open gate . But his expression as he looks down from the valley above reminds you that it is not easy to begin again at 80.

Peter Bowen has written what he intends to be the penultimate DuPre book, Solus, and.. dedicated it to me and Libby. It has Kazakhs.

 I asked how on earth he did them (and their dogs ) so well. He claims he got them from me..I am more than touched.

More TK.. tired.