Muse

Muse is a love letter to the heroic days when books were ink-and-paper, publishers were outsize, outrageous personalities, and authors were gods and goddesses. Homer Stern and Sterling Wainwright are two old-school New York publishing grandees, professional enemies and life-long rivals over the work--and affection--of the beautiful and elusive Ida Perkins, one of America's great poets. When a young editor who works for Homer gets hold of Ida's last manuscript, mayhem ensues.

Publishing veteran Jonathan Galassi's elegy for a disappearing era in our culture is hilarious, wise and deeply affecting, a thought-provoking meditation on love and work that reverberates in many directions.