Also of interest...in letters, journals, and sketchbooks

The Letters of T.S. Eliot: Volumes 1 and 2

edited by Valerie Eliot and Hugh Haughton

(Yale, $45 each)

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To J. Alfred Prufrock’s line, “I have measured out my life in coffee spoons,” T.S. Eliot might have added: “and headed notepaper,” said Jeremy Noel-Tod in the London Telegraph. With the publication of 900 pages of Eliot’s letters, readers now have access to “just about every communication Eliot ever sent.” The letters provide new insight into the Waste Land poet’s life, from his troubled first marriage to the origins of his anti-Semitism.

Alfred Kazin’s Journals

edited by Richard M. Cook

(Yale, $45)

In addition to being an “exemplary American intellectual,” Alfred Kazin was a restless seeker of experiences, said William Deresiewicz in Slate.com. From his celebrated 1942 study of American prose, On Native Grounds, to his 1951 memoir, A Walker in the City, Kazin wrote “from a ferocious intensity of hunger and joy.” His journals, which have been “lovingly” distilled by Richard Cook, prove of a piece with the rest of his oeuvre. Their “overwhelming note is passion.”

The Journals of Spalding Gray

edited by Nell Casey

(Knopf, $29)

The written ruminations of actor and monologuist Spalding Gray darken as they approach his 2004 suicide, said Kirkus Reviews. Though widely admired for his ability to spin intimate personal narratives, the performer kept much hidden. Gray is “profoundly insecure” in these pages, racked by his mother’s 1967 suicide, by doubts about his sexuality, and by alcohol abuse. In the end, Gray’s was “a journey into a darkness too deep for hope to brighten.”

The Art of Walt Disney

by Christopher Finch

(Abrams, $85)

This classic behind-the-scenes look at the work of Walt Disney Studios has been updated to include “the groundbreaking computer animation” of Pixar, said The Wall Street Journal. Even so, the heart of the book remains its tour through the early sketches and storyboards of Disney and his team. One interesting detail: “Where other early animators drew ‘straight ahead’ from one motion to the next, Disney animators picked key positions and animated between them.”