2411 The Man from New York: John Quinn and His Friends, by B. L. Reid (read 23 Sep 1991) (Pulitzer Biography prize for 1969) I read this solely because it won the prize, as I am kind of haphazardly reading such winners--I am currently up-to-date on the Pulitzer prize winners for fiction. For years I had no idea even who John Quinn was, but after reading a Yeats biography (on 14 Sep 1991) I decided I wanted to read this book, since there was much about John Quinn in the Yeats biography. Quinn was born in 1870 in Tiffin, Ohio, of Irish-born parents and grew up in Fostoria, Ohio--"an ethnic polyglot, with many Germans and a sprinkling of Irish, and . . . a tribe of Belgians." He got a law degree at Georgetown in 1893 and another at Harvard in 1895. He then began practicing law in New York, and became a first-rate New York lawyer. But this book probably has less than ten of its 690 pages devoted to his law practice--and all that in passing. He was very interested in writers, and was a great friend and helper to Yeats, Pound, T. S. Eliot, and Joseph Conrad. He had a lot to do with Ulysses--he lost the case which banned it--and The Waste Land. All of that was of some interest. But his major obsession was in buying modern art--and the pages and pages devoted to this I found of minimal interest. He died July 28, 1924 in New York. I cannot admire the man. He was very anti-Catholic (though he had a 'beloved uncle' who was a priest and a sister who was a Sister, and had a Catholic funeral) and anti-Jewish, and had mistresses though he never married. He worked very hard as a lawyer, but found time to do so much re arts and letters. This was not a great read, but I'm glad I read it. I would like to read more about Irish affairs in the 20th century but have no interest in reading more about art collectors. ( )