Hello Goodbye Hello: Rudyard Kipling Meets Mark Twain Meets Helen Keller. By Maria Popova Given my Circles of Influence collaboration and my fascination with first-hand accounts of famous encounters, it’s of little surprise I find myself mesmerized by Hello Goodbye Hello: A Circle of 101 Remarkable Meetings (public library) — an enchanting daisy chain of true encounters spanning more than a century of cultural heroes (and some villains) — from Freud to Tchaikovsky to Hitchcock to Hitchens — spanning science, literature, art, music, film, politics, and more, culled by British writer Craig Brown from diaries, personal correspondence, and various other historical ephemera. Martha Graham strikes fear and awe in a young Madonna. Marilyn Monroe asks Frank Lloyd Wright to design “an elaborate house with which to impress the world.”
Walt Disney edits Igor Stravinsky and sparks his creative indignation. But my favorite intersections revolve around the inimitable Mark Twain. In 1889, a 23-year-old Rudyard Kipling sets out to meet and interview his hero, Mark Twain. Sailing to Byzantium: 13 Songs Based on the Poetry of W. B. Yeats. Donating = loving Brain Pickings remains ad-free and takes hundreds of hours a month to research and write, and thousands of dollars to sustain.
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