The UN has designated July 30 the International Day of Friendship. We thought we'd celebrate the idea by taking a look at famous authors who were friends.
Truman Capote and Harper Lee
It's a well-known relationship and one that is worth mentioning first because it started the earlier than any other on the list. Truman Capote and Harper Lee were childhood pals, playing together and growing up in Monroeville, Alabama. You can see their friendship portrayed as part of the stories told in two really great movies. Phillip Seymour Hoffman is Capote and Catherine Keener is Lee in 2006's Capote; while Toby Jones is Capote and Sandra Bullock is Lee in 2007's Infamous.
Toni Morrison and James Baldwin
Toni Morrison's latest book, God Help the Child, came out earlier this year. Although her first book was published when she was 39 years old, her career in the world of writing and publishing goes back farther than that—she was an editor at Random House. Through her work there, she met James Baldwin, and the two developed a deep friendship. Read what James Baldwin had to say about her in James Baldwin: The Last Interview and Other Conversations.
Ann Patchett and Lucy Grealy
I do my best to spread the word about the engaging and natural novels by Ann Patchett, but it was a nonfiction title that helped me discover the woman who would become one of my favorite writers. Truth & Beauty is an intimate and honest memoir of life with her close friend Lucy Grealy. Grealy's masterpiece is the stunning Autobiography of A Face, which examines her life after being disfigured by a childhood cancer.
e.e. cummings and John Cheever
he's known by lots of students as the poet who preferred to keep things lowercase, but e.e. cummings was a titan of modernism. He was also a mentor and personal friend to John Cheever, whose daughter, noted literary biographer Susan Cheever, drew on stories she heard growing up in last year's E.E. Cummings: A Life. John Cheever was the subject of a great biography, Cheever: A Life, in 2010.
There are certainly more great pairs than these. Who are your favorite author friends?
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