Local Observation : Joie de Vivre
By Christina Oxenberg
Joy Williams is a writer admired by great writers. Lanky as a teenager yet she was here in the heydays. The love of her life was Rust Hills, the famous New Yorker editor. Theirs was a great romance. They were a couple everybody wanted at their dinner table and cocktail parties. As much as everybody else loved them, they loved each other.
Key West has long attracted writers, that is known. Some left but many stayed and now in their Decembers they waste contentedly in the heat. Sometimes wading ponderously in their swimming pools. Dining at each others houses. The group dwindles, inexorably. Musical chairs with coffins.
It is 2016 and Joy Williams who winters here is still raring to go. She was on stage in her jeans and cowboy boots tight black turtleneck and a silver necklace for the Literary Seminar and I saw her in the same outfit at dinner parties, which to me means one of two things 1 she’s not much into clothes 2 she never went home in between my sightings of her. And always wearing an enormous pair of very black sunglasses. Indoors outdoors day or night they are on.
William Wright is another of the eminent writers who has been here through the decades though summering in Bucks County. Bill has seen it all. So I asked him recently ‘what’s behind Joy Williams’ sunglasses, Bill please tell me? ‘And Bill, who was at that instant munching on a sticky bun paused, allowing crumbs to gather inarticulately in his beard, and said in his low gruff voice, ‘the most beautiful eyes in the world.’
Still holding the sticky bun with both hands it was evident his mind had traveled to another time all together, his face glowed from the memories.
‘I’ve seen Joy Williams in a bikini and I can tell you every piece of clothing she puts on is a crime! Concealing the greatest living work of art, she is perfection itself, a real beauty.’
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