My "Friendship" with Helene Hanff

     For the life of me, I can't remember if I first met Helene by reading her book 84, Charing Cross Road, or watching the film based on it starring Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins. Whichever it was, we became instant "friends."
     Her little book, a cult classic, introduced me to an author whose writing made me feel as if she were sitting across from me, drinking coffee and chatting. It made me want to read all her books, which I have, many times, always with the homiest pleasure. In them all I could hear her, with a voice throaty from too many cigarettes and martinis, talking to me of her old apartment in a New York brownstone, her actress friend Maxine with the flaming red hair, and her 20-year epistolary friendship with a prim and proper London bookseller named Frank. I commiserated with her during those early years when she struggled to be a playwright; I laughed with her over all the escapades she shared with Maxine; I felt her joy every time she received another book and letter from Marks & Co, where Frank worked. And I made it a point to buy all the books she bought, because I trusted and shared her tastes -- except in novels. One thing Helene and I never agreed on was novels. She didn't care for them; she preferred real-life accounts by real-life people. I prefer to escape real life every once in a while.
     Helene taught me that I don't have to write about lofty things, or things outside myself, to be a good writer. Everything she wrote about could have happened to anyone. Her gift was in making those ordinary events extraordinary and immensely entertaining, with her humor, honesty, and self-effacement. She makes you feel as if she were speaking to you one-on-one, in plain, everyday language. This is the true reason I turn to her books again and again.
     If anyone wanted to start "chatting" with Helene, I would recommend they start with either 84 or the first book she wrote, Underfoot in Show Business (a very funny account of her early years as a struggling playwright); then definitely follow up with The Duchess of Bloomsbury Street and Q's Legacy (both sequels, if you will, of 84). I consider those four books to be her "canon." The others, Apple of My Eye and Letter to New York, are also delightful, especially for those who are planning a trip to New York, or just love the city.

My favorite of all Helene's books