Sometimes I imagine the private conversations of the poet Robert Lowell and the critic and novelist Elizabeth Hardwick, who were married to each other for over twenty years.
Elizabeth: Should we have chicken or beef tonight?
Robert: Don't care.
Elizabeth: There's also leftover Chinese.
Robert: In the white box?
Elizabeth: You are a refrigerator sleuth.
Robert: Harriet is having trouble with word problems in algebra. How old is the Chinese? You think it's okay?
Elizabeth: Can't remember. What are you doing over there, anyway?
Robert: An exercise. Can you bring me a whiskey?
Elizabeth: An "exercise"?
Robert: Yeah. I'm trying to write an mproved version of "Lycidas." But I could really use a whiskey.
Elizabeth: You're crazy as a voter in Kentucky.
And so on. Actually, I've rarely wondered about the table talk of these two, but yesterday, dipping into John Updike's More Matter, I stumbled upon his review of the Writers at Work interviews, in which he quotes Hardwick replying to a question about her being "fortunate":
As I have grown older I see myself as fortunate in many ways. It is fortunate to have had all my life this passion for studying and enjoying literature and for trying to add a bit to it as interestingly as I can. This passion has given me much joy, it has given me friends who care for the same things, it has given me employment, escape from boredom, everything. The greatest gift is the passion for reading. It is cheap, it consoles, it distracts, it excites, it gives you knowledge of the world and experience of a wide kind. It is a moral illumination.
And I thought what an elevated life she led. Maybe. It must usually be a mistake to imagine that somewhere the fit and fair have found each other and are living in a way that would arouse the envy of all.