On Wed, 28 Jan 1998 16:01:33 -0500 wrote... > thanks very much. a stunningly original and memorable character, it seems. 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. > > Robert E. Kibler Department of English University of Minnesota [log in to unmask] fortunatus et ille, deos qui novit agrestis, Panaque Silvanumque senem Nymphasque sorores.