In these five profiles, four of which originally appeared in the New Yorker, the author evokes the life and work of seven gifted artists. Among those presented, often through lively conversations, are Jean Hélion, Mark Rothko, R.B. Kitaj, and Dennis Creffield. Chief among those portrayed however is Henri Cartier-Bresson (1908-2004), the great French photographer and photojournalist who, famed for dodging contact with the press, is here sketched in rare and fond detail. Of all these artists, only two still live: what emerges from this book is a picture, often bizarre, often hilarious, of a bygone bohemian world. 

“Hofstadter is writing on the basis of firsthand acquaintance; most of his subjects could also be called his friends. This gives him an authority which many writers lack, yet at the same time there’s no sense that he’s addressing a self-satisfied coterie. His prose is at once exceptionally knowledgeable and jargon-free. As Hofstadter himself notes in the preface, Temperaments isn’t a collection of art criticism. He writes about art a great deal, and with contagious enthusiasm, but finally he’s practicing a kind of biography. Hofstadter is gifted with curiosity, inexhaustible interest in the trivial yet luminous details that make his subjects vividly present to the reader. He’s a storyteller, too; each chapter is a self-contained narrative, replete with strange twists of fate and hidden harmonies.” —Magill Book Reviews