Letters from Max

July 23, 2018
In this moving and erudite collection of letters spanning several years, playwright Ruhl (100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write) and poet Ritvo (Four Reincarnations) meditate on aesthetics and literature, death and the afterlife, and faith and knowledge, before Ritvo’s death from cancer at age 25. Theirs began as a student-teacher relationship in 2012 when Ritvo signed up for Ruhl’s class at Yale, but quickly moved into one of mutual admiration and understanding. Ritvo’s reflections on mortality are devastating and lyrical; he wrote in a poem, “The jungle of my short life is one row of white straight naked trees.” His willingness to grapple with his fear of death is brave; his argument in favor of the soul’s existence trenchant. The two conduct spirited exchanges on postmodernism, Tibetan Buddhism, and vegetarianism. Ritvo transforms the quotidian into the profound, explaining his appreciation for soup, “the food that most allows your mouth to approximate silence.” The letters, and Ruhl’s guiding editorial commentary, trace Ritvo’s biography, from his graduation from Columbia to his wedding and the publication of his first book, along with endless medical ordeals. Ruhl draws a comparison between their correspondence and that between poets Robert Lowell and Elizabeth Bishop, and indeed, with the depth and intelligence displayed, one feels in the presence of literary titans.

Starred review from July 1, 2018
A Yale professor and her playwriting student forge an extraordinary friendship.In a tender, intimate memoir, award-winning playwright Ruhl (100 Essays I Don't Have Time to Write, 2014, etc.) honors the life and remarkable mind of Max Ritvo (Four Reincarnations: Poems, 2016, etc.), a poet of exceptional grace and insight who died in 2016 at the age of 25. When Ritvo walked into Ruhl's classroom in 2012, he seemed markedly more mature than her other students: "Some rarefied combination of a young Mike Nichols and an old John Keats, he seemed eighty years old and not of this century." In remission from a rare cancer that had been diagnosed when he was in high school, Ritvo soon wrote to Ruhl that the cancer had returned. In the next four years, he underwent multiple surgeries, chemotherapy, experimental treatments, and radiation, all the while graduating from Yale, completing an MFA program at Columbia, marrying, giving exuberant poetry readings, and publishing his work to great acclaim. Wracked by suffering, facing death, and immersed in writing, Ritvo deepened his friendship with Ruhl, reflected in the letters, emails, and poems that they shared and which Ruhl has selected for this deeply moving, often heartbreaking volume. It is both testimony to the evolution of their friendship and to a wise and passionate young man. "Max," writes the author, "had a wild gift of eloquence; he married this gift with his singular gift for listening." A year into their relationship, the two decided to write letters "in a more self-conscious way," hoping to collect them into a book. Thoughts about spirit, God, identity, the meaning of an afterlife, and, especially, grief, recur as Max moved closer to death. "I do believe consciousness persists," Ruhl wrote to Max; something of the soul "travels and arrives somewhere." Suffering from "overwhelming bodily discomfort," Max admits, he could use a God who would "maybe start to care enough to intervene." Maybe, he adds later, "my grief and your inspired calm are part of a greater consciousness."A captivating celebration of life and love.

COPYRIGHT(2018) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Starred review from September 1, 2018
This companion volume to The Final Voicemails (2018), a moving compilation of the late Ritvo's incandescent poems, takes readers behind the curtain of his writing to expose his hard-won, well-lived, if sadly brief life, including his painful struggle with cancer, evolving love and marriage, and the tree-bud-to-redwood maturation of an intimate friendship with award-winning playwright Ruhl. Although the two had planned to publish a book of their emails before his death, Ritvo feared it would represent the mere narrative of talented poet dead too soon. But no reader encountering the agile, luminous minds and tender, perceptive hearts of these two writers, who danced, challenged, entangled, pulled down and lifted up one another, could ever reduce this book to a simple tragic story. Their correspondence charts the rare and complex process of two artists coming to truly see and know one another. Whether exchanging poems or discussing soup, the afterlife, or life as a play, their letters are thought-provoking, heart-wrenching, and transcendent. Both Ritvo and Ruhl hoped their correspondence would bring solace to those facing death or losing loved ones; this intimate gift also rekindles hope in the bright possibility of profound human connections.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)