The Eyes of the Heart: a memoir of the lost and found (1999), is the fourth of four partial autobiographies written by Frederick Buechner. Published in 1999, the work moves between a number of vignettes from the author’s life, remembering friendships, and imagining conversations with lost family members. Overview Buechner’s fourth memoir begins with a description of his study, ‘the Magic Kingdom’, which, he explains, was named ‘as a kind of joke – part Disneyland, part the Land of Oz’. The author uses objects in the study, photographs, paintings, pieces of sculpture, books, and furniture, as a way into discussing memories of particular moments, people, and occasions associated with them. In his description, Buechner gives the names of a number of the authors whose books feature on his shelves and have formed his work. These include Herman Melville, Lancelot Andrewes, John Donne, Jonathan Swift, Henry James, Mark Twain, and Anthony Trollope. Concerning the latter, he writes:It is the sound of Trollope’s voice that I think I cherish most about him. He never rants or preaches or sobs like Dickens. He is rarely ironic or arch like Jane Austen, or tongue-in-cheek like Thackeray, whom he knew and much admired. He simply goes on speaking unostentatiously, clearly, honestly, as if there is all the time in the world for telling us everything he wants us to know in order to spin out his tale.Several of the books prompt Buechner to recall the process of researching his tenth, eleventh, and twelfth novels – Godric (1980), Brendan (1987), and The Son of Laughter (1993). The author also remembers in detail the summer spent writing his first novel, A Long Day’s Dying (1950), in the company of his friend, the poet James Merrill. Buechner considers his lifelong friendship with Merrill, culminating in the poet’s death in 1995, and their final phone call on the previous day:He was having some difficulty breathing, but otherwise sounded entirely himself. He said he was glad that whatever was happening to him was happening far from home where he wouldn’t be “smothered with concern,” as he put it. He said that he was in no serious pain and that when they had given him some Welch’s grape juice sorbet earlier in the day, it had tasted so good to him he had asked for another. He asked me to stay in touch with his mother and sent his love to