"Foster is perhaps the last personal friend of Lawrence to write a book about him. He has given us not only an unforgettable picture of Lawrence himself - but also vivid portraits of Frieda Lawrence, Mabel and Tony Luhan, Dorothy Brett, Witter Bynner, and Spud Johnson, as well as a score of others who were a part of Lawrence's circle in Taos." Dust jacket. "Includes many rare photographs."
"Lorenzo in Taos," is written loosely in the form of letters to and from D.H. Lawrence, Frieda Lawrence, Robinson Jeffers, and Luhan. The book is a highly personal and most informative account of an intense relationship with a great writer.
Udall's lively account of the quirky editor, poet, journalist, diarist, and printer Walter Willard "Spud" Johnson focuses especially on brilliant and diverse artists he befriended and published. Together they helped to create a new voice for the Southwest.
"Winter in Taos" starkly contrasts Luhan's memoirs, published in four volumes and inspired by Marcel Proust's "Remembrances of Things Past." They follow her life through three failed marriages, numerous affairs, and ultimately a feeling of "being nobody in myself," despite years of psychoanalysis and a luxurious lifestyle on two continents among the leading literary, art and intellectual personalities of the day. "Winter in Taos" unfolds in an entirely different pattern, uncluttered with noteworthy names and ornate details. With no chapters dividing the narrative, Luhan describes her simple life in Taos, New Mexico, this "new world" she called it, from season to season, following a thread that spools out from her consciousness as if she's recording her thoughts in a journal. "My pleasure is in being very still and sensing things," she writes, sharing that pleasure with the reader by describing the joys of adobe rooms warmed in winter by aromatic cedar fires; fragrant in spring with flowers; and scented with homegrown fruits and vegetables being preserved and pickled in summer. Having wandered the world, Luhan found her home at last in Taos. "Winter in Taos" celebrates the spiritual connection she established with the "deep living earth" as well as the bonds she forged with Tony Luhan, her "mountain." This moving tribute to a land and the people who eked a life from it reminds readers that in northern New Mexico, where the seasons can be harshly beautiful, one can bathe in the sunshine until "'untied are the knots in the heart,' for there is nothing like the sun for smoothing out all difficulties." Born in 1879 to a wealthy Buffalo family, Mabel Dodge Luhan earned fame for her friendships with American and European artists, writers and intellectuals and for her influential salons held in her Italian villa and Greenwich Village apartments. In 1917, weary of society and wary of a world steeped in war, she set down roots in remote Taos, New Mexico, then publicized the tiny town's inspirational beauty to the world, drawing a steady stream of significant guests to her adobe estate, including artist Georgia O'Keeffe, poet Robinson Jeffers, and authors D.H. Lawrence and Willa Cather. Luhan could be difficult, complex and often cruel, yet she was also generous and supportive, establishing a solid reputation as a patron of the arts and as an author of widely read autobiographies. She died in Taos in 1962.
In March of 1924, D. H. Lawrence, Frieda Lawrence and the Honorable Dorothy Brett went to Taos, New Mexico, to absorb the color and romance of what was to them a mysterious and compelling land. Dorothy Brett recreated those days in this fascinating first-hand account, and also writes of when she was the close friend of Aldous Huxley, Lytton Strachey, Katherine Mansfield, and other important literary and artistic figures. But more importantly, she focused on her relationship with Lawrence and the book was specifically addressed to him as if he were to read it, reminding him personally of her long-standing devotion. Such devotion was not rebuffed by Lawrence, it seems, but it was met differently by the two other women orbiting the famous writer: his wife, Frieda Lawrence, and Mabel Dodge Luhan. They were in turn cross and conciliatory to her. But it seems that she just accepted them as other intense admirers of Lawrence, took it all simply and wrote it all down with a minimum of comment. Dorothy Brett was well-known in her own right. The daughter of Viscount Esher Brett, confidant of Queen Victoria, she spent six years studying at the Slade School of Art in London and was a member of the Bloomsbury set in England, among whose many luminaries Brett moved when a young woman. She was also gaining recognition as an artist even before she arrived in the American Southwest. But it was there that her true artistic talents emerged and her works now hang in major museums as well as in private collections. When this book was first published in 1933, it was praised by critics as well as the general public. Alfred Stieglitz said: "It was a rare spiritual experience--no student of Lawrence can afford to miss this book.. There is an integrity in the book--a sense of the eternal--a sense of Light--which raises it above all the other books I have read about Lawrence." And, interestingly, Mabel Dodge Luhan called it "clearly and explicitly drawn." Here it all is again with additional material added by Dorothy Brett herself when the 1974 edition was first published by Sunstone Press.
In 1917 Mabel Sterne, patron of the arts and spokeswoman for the New York avant-garde, came to the Southwest seeking a new life. This autobiographical account, long out-of-print, of her first few months in New Mexico is a remarkable description of an Easterner's journey to the American West. It is also a great story of personal and philosophical transformation. The geography of New Mexico and the culture of the Pueblo Indians opened a new world for Mabel. She settled in Taos immediately and lived there the rest of her life. Much of this book describes her growing fascination with Antonio Luhan of Taos Pueblo, whom she subsequently married. Her descriptions of the appeal of primitive New Mexico to a world-weary New Yorker are still fresh and moving. "I finished it in a state of amazed revelation . . . it is so beautifully compact and consistent. . . . It is going to help many another woman and man to 'take life with the talons' and carry it high."--Ansel Adams
Illuminates both the well- and lesser-known literary figures of New Mexico, whose collaborative efforts created enduring literary colonies. This book also discusses fifteen writers and concludes with walking and driving tours of Santa Fe and Taos.
