Over at Granta, Maud Newton and Alexander Chee exchange thoughts about the novels that Jean Rhys and Ford Madox Ford wrote after their affair. It makes for a compelling companion to Newton’s review of the Jean Rhys bio above. A taste:

Ford probably saw Rhys as a (tainted) embodiment of the love interest of The Good Soldier. And honestly, I believe he was hot for Rhys very specifically even before they met. He’d read a lightly fictionalized version of her journals, been struck by her acute renderings of loneliness and poverty, fantasized about her exotic Dominican background, and decided (assuming she was pretty, of course) that he, finally, would be the man to save her.

Even the most depressive writers spin out happily-ever-after tales when they’re plotting their own life stories, and Ford was no exception. That’s what I think.