A few months ago I wrote about Barry Day’s latest book about Noel Coward, a collection of light verse. Day winters in West Palm Beach, and before he’ll appear back for the season he’s completed yet another book. Star Quality: The Treasures of Noel Coward is a sumptuous collection of facsimile documents contained in a large book, not to mention a DVD with previously unreleased home movie footage of Coward.

The effect is of spending several hours luxuriating amidst the Coward archives in Switzerland in a way that allows you to not just enjoy the documents that outline his creative process, but to enjoy the fruits of that process as well.

Among the documents are a reproduction of a poster from Brief Encounter, Coward’s script that was so beautifully directed by David Lean. By the evidence of the rest of the contents, Coward was a huge pack rat; there is a contract dating from 1911 for a walk-on part, a program from the Drury Lane Theater for Cavalcade, his long-running - in London, anyway - theatrical tribute to his country, lyric sheets for I’ve Been to a Marvelous Party, letters from Gertrude Lawrence and Douglas Fairbanks Jr.

It’s a gracefully edited package, worthy of its subject, who remains one of the few creative artists of the 20th century to sustain this kind of loving examination.

In the Pipeline…

Bloomsbury has bought a new novel by Gail Godwin, about a summer love affair near the end of World War II… Norton will publish Thunder in the Mountains by Daniel Sharfstein, the story of the war between Col. Otis Howard and Chief Joseph of the Nez Perce tribe… Lisa Scottoline will write three more books for St. Martin’s series of books about the law firm Rosato and Associates.

Mike Browning’s Word of the Week…

peccable: capable of sinning.

Quote Unquote…

“There is no such thing as conversation. There are intersecting monologues.”

—— Rebecca West