Mona Simpson and Steve Jobs: Brilliant Siblings

I find it fascinating that the well-known novelist Mona Simpson (whose most recent novel, “My Hollywood,” I wrote about here on 1/10/11), is the biological sister of the late Steve Jobs. Their unmarried parents -- graduate student Joanne Schieble (later Simpson) and fellow graduate student and Syrian immigrant Abdulfattah “John” Jandali -- were not married at the time Jobs was born, and he was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs. A short time later, Schieble and Jandali married, and Simpson was born to them. The marriage didn’t last, and some of Simpson’s fiction deals with her search for and feelings about her “lost father.” Jobs and Simpson did not meet until they were young adults (Jobs was 27) and they became quite close. Simpson’s first novel, “Anywhere but Here,” is dedicated to her mother and to “my brother Steve,” and some say her novel “A Regular Guy” is partially based on Jobs’ life and career. Jobs refused to meet his biological father, who was first a professor of politics and is now an executive of a casino in Reno. I have read conflicting reports about whether Simpson has ever been in touch with him. What impresses me is that two such brilliant people, each in her or his own field, who grew up separately and didn’t know each other until adulthood, were siblings.