Notes from the Gate: A Remembrance of Mavis Gallant

By Walter Bruno

Walter Bruno met writer Mavis Gallant in 1983 and remained her friend and confidant until her death in 2014. During those years, more than 500 letters were exchanged, many featured for the first time in this book. As the friendship matured, Bruno discovered that he and Gallant shared much in politics, along with a common aesthetic. These were values being tested among the notables in writing and publishing with whom Gallant transacted. The book thus explores social consciousness in a great writer of fiction. That began with Gallant being a woman but did not end there. Although a doyenne of the female voice and a model of women's independence, Gallant kept formal distance from female identity and from militant literary feminism. Postwar geopolitics being omnipresent, Gallant and Bruno also react to racism and terrorism in Europe, the crisis of social-democracy, and the end of the Cold War. Finally, there's a thread that covers Gallant's alienation from the New Yorker magazine, as that publication is taken over by newcomers. On that matter some well-known names are mentioned, rarely for praise. The book is primarily Bruno's memory of the era and of what was, for him, life-changing dialogues. Much of the tone is sly; however, age and infirmity loomed for Gallant. Bruno worried about his friend's welfare in Paris and that emerges as a major motif of this memoir.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0968071864
• ISBN13: 9780968071861
• Release Date: January 1
• Publisher: Man's Word
• Length: 260 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.0" x 9.0"