Henry Thoreau had a favourite pet mouse which nibbled his ankles and ran up his legs each day while the writer ate lunch. One night at a Hollywood party, Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald collected all the women’s purses – and boiled them. After the extraordinary success of Gone With the Wind, Margaret Mitchell became so uncomfortable in her fame that she never wrote another novel.

          The book covers the entire range of American literature, from Anne Bradstreet (died 1612) to Sylvia Plath (died 1963). Taken from biographies, letters, memoirs, and table-talk, the stories form an irreverent history of American literature. Numerous anecdotes illuminate the lives of the Transcendetalists of Concord – with those about Emerson commanding centerstage. Henry James alone could be the focus of a book of anecdotes, while the antics of Fitzgerald, John O’Hara, and Hemingway could fill many a barroom wall.

          The anecdotes are not all antics, nor are they all disgraceful or even humorous. Many are poignant, others, merely curious. Taken together, these stories form a history of literature which is eccentric, light, and yet revealing – for in these stories, America’s writers expose their innermost selves as surely as in their written works.