In ‘The Letters of Thom Gunn’, an Unusual Mixture of Pleasure


The joys of a long-standing home are welcome. Gunn looks at the fully grown and fruiting lemon tree in his garden and remembers when a friend first grew the seed in a pot on the kitchen table of an old apartment 25 years ago.

Other enthusiasms are entertained. Gunn loved all kinds of movies. “Pharmacy Cowboy” is so excellent and so loyal to the drug users’ experience that “you are happy to be a member of the human race that produced it,” he wrote.

Her love for Keanu Reeves is a minor, sunny theme in these letters. Gunn called her “a real sweetheart.” Later, after Reeves starred in a number of mediocre movies, Gunn wrote: “I’m starting to think Keanu isn’t really interested in his career, he’s looking for someone like me but can’t find him. Hey Keanu, I’m here! HERE! If you ring my doorbell, I’ll show you all over the house!”

He was committed to the music, highs and lows. “Eleanor Rigby” almost made him cry. He saw Hendrix live and joined Altamont. I had to laugh when I read a 1975 letter: “Did I tell you about BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN? 2 records and the best new singer since – who shall I say? Elton John maybe.”

Gunn did not have a particularly extensive correspondence, as illustrated by this dense collection of more than 700 pages, which the editors tell us is about a tenth of the total. Most belong to the same handful of friends. It has rocket-like cameos. Best of all, it belongs to the young Oliver Sacks, whose full name is Oliver Wolf Sacks. He was a fan of Gunn.

He is introduced in a 1961 letter: “There is a strange, gigantic London Jew named Wolf, a medical student and a friend of Jonathan Miller’s, who says my poem has changed his life. If you wear leather, it will tear like a whirlwind.”

Sacks and Gunn were briefly lovers, then lifelong friends. Gunn watched with delight and awe as Sacks’ career as a neurologist, naturalist, and writer unfolded.



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