The joys of a long standing home are recognized. Gunn gazes at the lemon tree in his yard, mature and fruiting, and remembers a friend who first grew the seed 25 years earlier, in a pot on the kitchen table of an old apartment.
Other enthusiasm is entertained. Gunn loved all kinds of movies. “Drugstore Cowboy” is so excellent and so true to the experience of drug users, he wrote, that “you’re happy to be a member of the human race that spawned it.”
His infatuation with Keanu Reeves is a small, sunny theme in these letters. Gunn called him “a very sweetheart.” Later, after Reeves appeared in a string of mediocre films, Gunn wrote, “I’m starting to think Keanu doesn’t care about his career at all, he’s looking for someone like me, but can’t find him. Hey Keanu, I’m here! HERE! If you ring the bell, I’ll show you the whole house!”
He was devoted to music, high and low. “Eleanor Rigby” almost made him cry. He saw Hendrix live and went to Altamont. I had to laugh when I read in a 1975 letter: “Did I tell you about BRUCE SPRINGSTONE? 2 records, and the best new singer since – who can I say? Elton John maybe.”
Gunn didn’t have a particularly broad correspondence, at least as evidenced by this dense collection of more than 700 pages, which the editors tell us is about a tenth of the total. Most are for the same handful of friends. There are rocket-like cameos. The best one belongs to young Oliver Sacks, whose full name was Oliver Wolf Sacks. He was a fan of Gunn.
Here’s how he was introduced, in a 1961 letter: “There’s a strange, hulkingly large London Jew named Wolf, a medical student, and a friend of Jonathan Miller, who says my poetry changed his life – it made he got a bicycle and wears leather, and it tears about like a whirlwind.”
Sacks and Gunn were lovers for a short time and then lifelong friends. Gunn watched with a mixture of pleasure and awe as Sacks’ career as a neurologist, naturalist, and writer developed.
