If you'd like another intimate view of Martinelli
by a guy who knew her, see Lee Lady's netsite at:
 
http://www2.hawaii.edu/~lady/faq/reviews/broyard.html#Sheri
 
Very fascinating stuff! ... Yes, I read the Broyard book.
A delightful read.  I always wondered what was under that
veil.
 
==Dan Pearlman
 
At 04:01 PM 1/28/98 -0500, you wrote:
>Pursuant to ubi sunt ...
>
>About Sheri Martinelli, there is the engaging memoir by Anatole Broyard,
>_Kafka Was the Rage: a Greenwich Village Memoir_. 1st ed. New York: Carol
>Southern Books, an imprint of Crown Publishers, 1993, and now reprinted in
>paperback, New York: Vintage Books, 1997. Broyard includes a long
>description, about 90 pp., of his affair with one "Sheri Donatti," a
>bohemian painter, in New York during the late forties. It's Sheri
>Martinelli all right. Broyard's informative account makes for a funny, sad,
>sexy, and interesting story. At that same time a rival, William Gaddis, was
>also in love with Sheri, but Broyard prevailed. I believe Gaddis portrays
>them in his first novel _The Recognitions_ (New York: Harcourt, Brace,
>1955). I was alerted to all of this by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., in a Life &
>Letters piece about Broyard in _The New Yorker_ (17 June 1996).
>
>A much older Sheri (weirdly veiled and mysterious, as witnessed in Orono
>some years ago) is the model for a character in Larry McMurtry's _Dead
>Man's Walk_ (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1995). McMurtry's book is one of a
>quartet of novels about nineteenth century Texas, a Great Western, begun in
>1985 with the Pulitzer Prize winning _Lonesome Dove_. I once had the very
>good fortune to ride with McMurtry over that Jornada del Muerta from Los
>Angeles to Austin. I recognized him in the airport; we sat together on the
>flight and talked about the novels, the subsequent TV mini-series, and
>about the antiquarian book trade (McMurtry has been an antiquarian book
>dealer for many years, proprietor of the Washington D.C. shop Booked-Up). I
>must have mentioned Pound, because McMurtry then described to me how Sheri
>arrived at his shop in Washington one day, in a Winnebago camper, wanting
>to sell Pound manuscripts, letters, etc. Apparently she was rather
>eccentric, covered in black veils and such; and that apparition stayed with
>McMurtry until he reconstructed her in the character of Lady Carey, and
>English noblewoman in _Dead Man's Walk_.
>
>-Will Goodwin.
>
Dan Pearlman
Department of English
University of Rhode Island
Kingston, RI 02881
 
[Latest book: novel, BLACK FLAMES, White Pine Press, 1997]
 
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