American Notebooks is much more than a fascinating autobiographical account of the intellectual flowering of a great writer. An album of exquisitely drawn literary portraits of companions, intellectuals, writers, musicians, artists and social activists of the period; Edmund and Elena Wilson, Mary Meigs, Maud Morgan, Barbara Deming, Truman Capote, her first Quebec publisher, now Senator, Jacques Hebert, and many others, it also introduces many of the real life personalities who have inspired her fictional characters.

"In a world which often regards the creative act as lunatic or criminal...Marie-Claire Blais continue(s) to assert the crucial importance of art". -- Canadian Book Review Annual