"Avid Reader: A Life," by Robert Gottlieb

Editor/critic/writer Robert Gottlieb’s memoir, “Avid Reader: A Life” (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016) is a big box of goodies for those of us who love reading. Gottlieb, who is now in his mid-80s, still healthy and still working, has given us a book crammed full of stories, names, discreet but (almost) never mean-spirited gossip, opinions, and wonderful insights into the world of publishing, as well as into his own life. The index is one of the longest lists of literary and related figures I have seen in a book. And much of the book is a kind of annotated listing of the authors he has edited, the people he has known. Name dropping? Yes indeed. But he has earned the right to do so. And he does it with such joy that it is hard to fault him. There are a lot of stories that start and end with how close Gottlieb became to this and that big name author or smaller name editor or agent or other person in his life. He does seem to have a genuine talent for many close friendships, and he says toward the end of the book that this comes at least partly from his yearning for family. He has his own family – a (second) wife (who is an actress) and three grown children – but lacked a close relationship with his family of origin, in which he was the only child of loving but sometimes difficult parents. Gottlieb seems to have lived two or three lives, not only with his editorial work at Simon and Schuster, Knopf, and the New Yorker, but with his intense involvement with his family and his friends; with the world of dance (especially the New York City Ballet and the Miami City Ballet) through various types of work and support and board memberships; with much travel; with his several homes spread out over the U.S. and in Paris; with his own writing (which he started in late middle age, and which includes literary and dance criticism among other topics); with his several intense collecting projects (he has collected and written about many quirky pop culture items such as plastic handbags); and more. And throughout, he always, always, always reads and reads and reads. There is a certain amount of humblebragging, but somehow it is easy to forgive him, as his persona, at least in the book, is easygoing, friendly, and engaging. I have to note and appreciate that Gottlieb seems to deeply admire (without making a special point of it or patting himself on the back for it) and have many (platonic) friendships with women. Okay, the good stuff: Here are some of the names of people he has edited or otherwise connected with, and this is just a tiny fraction of those he discusses in the book: Toni Morrison, Joseph Heller, Sylvia Ashton-Warner, George Balanchine, Jerome Robbins, Bill Clinton, Nora Ephron, Susan Sontag, Jessica Mitford, Cynthia Ozick, John Cheever, Antonia Fraser, Katherine Graham, Gail Godwin, Pauline Kael, Michael Crichton, Chaim Potok, John le Carre, Doris Lessing, Natalia Makarova, Edna O’Brien, George Plimpton, Twyla Tharp, Barbara Tuchman, and so many, many more. In case I haven't made it clear: reading “Avid Reader” was pure, pure pleasure for me!

"Hungry Heart," by Jennifer Weiner

I truly admire Jennifer Weiner’s candor, gutsiness, and courage, as well as her humor. She is now known not only for her bestselling fiction, but for speaking up on a number of issues, most notably the uneven (OK, unequal, unfair) treatment of women writers, in terms of fewer and more negative reviews, condescending attitudes of critics and others, and more. She has been attacked for, and mocked for (including obscene and horrible comments by the now-ubiquitous trolls on the Internet), speaking out, but she doesn’t let that stop her. The New Yorker has called her “an unlikely feminist enforcer,” and I say “Brava!” to that! Her new book, “Hungry Heart: Adventures in Life, Love, and Writing” (Atria, 2016), is billed as a memoir, and it is that, albeit in the form of a series of connected essays, some previously published. She exposes her most difficult experiences and feelings, in order to make readers, especially women, realize they are not alone, and in order to give them hope. She also writes of overcoming problems, as well as of her personal and professional successes. This all sounds very self-help-ish, but Weiner’s gift is to be able to tell her stories with self-awareness, humor, and even joy. Her topics include her lifelong struggle with her weight (and with the ways she has been criticized and even insulted for it, especially as she became a prominent writer and public personality); the ups and downs of her love life; being a mother; writing what she proudly acknowledges is women’s literature, even “chick lit,” but the dismissal of which she fights against; aging; and much more. She offers heartfelt advice to her readers, with a caring tone but a light touch. This memoir, like her novels, is entertaining, accessible, authentic, generous, and engaging. I love her bravery and her “realness.”

RIP Anita Brookner

I somehow missed the news that writer Anita Brookner died in March 2016 at the age of 87. (Thank you, John Williams, of the New York Times Book Review, on 12/25/16, for the information, and for your mention of reading four of her novels in 2016, and how you “loved all four.”) I have read Brookner’s novels on and off for decades. She writes exquisitely, usually focusing on women characters who are elegant and self-sufficient but fight loneliness; the tone of her writing is often bleak, even desolate. Her writing is somewhat autobiographical. A London writer whose family were Polish immigrants, she said that they were “transplanted and frail people, an unhappy brood” whom she felt the need to take care of. She had a successful career as an art historian and academic, only starting to publish novels in her early 50s. After that, though, she published a novel almost every year from 1981 to 2011. Her most well known novel, and one that won the Booker Prize in 1984, was “Hotel du Lac.” Although I have not read her novels for some years now, I can clearly remember the feeling of reading these depressing yet perfectly insightful and somehow crystalline and even exhilarating volumes. Reading her was a distinctive experience. So although I am late in acknowledging her death, I feel the need to pay my respects here.

The Consolations of Austen

I loved seeing Susan Chira’s short piece, “The Comforts of Jane,” in the Christmas Day 2016 issue of The New York Times Book Review. She writes there of how in a difficult, painful, and stress-filled time (“when the life of someone I loved was hanging in the balance”), she “turned to reading for solace,” and found the perfect book to (re)read was Jane Austen’s novel “Pride and Prejudice.” She says that because she already knew the plot, she “could savor the language, satire and repartee, the cutting observations…Austen was irresistible.” She adds, “I wanted escape, but I needed moral resonance.” She goes on to describe all the reasons that this beloved novel was the perfect consolation and companion during the crisis she was living through. Fortunately her story ended well, as “life righted itself.” She, like most Austen devotees, including me, continues to re-read Austen’s novels, and always remembers “how grateful I remain for the comfort I found in her pages.” Readers of this blog know how central Austen’s novels are to my own reading life, so you will understand how I definitely appreciated and connected to Chira’s story.

"Faithful," by Alice Hoffman

I have ambivalent feelings about Alice Hoffman’s novels. As I wrote on 5/11/15 in a post about her novel “The Story Sisters,” I had gradually stopped reading her novels because of the magical element (although I did enjoy “The Story Sisters”). I have a bit of a bias against novels with magical aspects, although I have read plenty of them over the years, including many by South American writers. In the case of Alice Hoffman’s writing, this bias is somewhat balanced by my enjoyment of her focus on families and especially sisters, and on the lives of young girls growing up. Thus the ambivalence. On a swing back toward her novels, I just read “Faithful” (Simon & Schuster, 2016), and although it too had a bit of low-key but important (seeming) magic in it, I liked it very much. The main character, a young woman named Shelby, has experienced a terrible loss, and blames herself for it. She retreats from the world, is angry and sad, shaves her head, and in general does not engage with life any more than she absolutely has to. But (and I know this sounds corny and too-easily-inspiring, but it works) she gradually, very gradually, finds small reasons and then bigger reasons to re-engage with people and the world. She is fortunate to have people who believe in her and care about her even when she pushes them away. She moves to and gradually falls in love with New York. She starts, by happenstance and with reluctance, rescuing unfortunate dogs, and they become a big part of her reconnection to the world. She connects to the family of her co-worker and becomes a sort of surrogate big sister to the children in that family. She finds romance, albeit romance with twists and wrong turns along the way. She goes to college and is headed toward a satisfying career. In a way the story is predictable, but it is also fresh and original, and contains some real surprises as well. Shelby is a unique character whom the reader cannot help rooting for.

My Reading is San Franciscan Too

In the “Books” section of the Sunday San Francisco Chronicle, there are Best Sellers lists that include “Hardcover Fiction Bay Area” and “Hardcover Fiction National.” I have frequently noticed that the two lists are somewhat different, although obviously with plenty of overlap. I have also noticed that my own reading tracks more with the San Francisco list than with the national list. On 12/11/16, for example, the S.F. list of ten books included three that I had read (“Swing Time,” “Commonwealth,” and “Today Will be Different,” the first two of which I have recently posted about here), whereas I had read none of the novels on the national list. If this just happened once or twice, I would think it was coincidental, but there is a distinct pattern. What does it mean (if anything)? Most obviously, it seems I am in tune with the local book culture. In addition, I and other San Francisco readers apparently tend more toward literary fiction and less toward the more traditional bestseller fare (although, again, of course there is much overlap, and much divergence among individuals; also, as I have written about before, my own reading is not always "literary"). In this aspect, we are perhaps in tune with other large cities, and university cities, with vibrant literary scenes (many resident authors, many independent bookstores, frequent book festivals and author readings, etc.). I hesitate to post this entry, because I am well aware that it may sound self-congratulatory as well as “San Francisco-congratulatory,” and perhaps it is. But I am, in fact, happy and even proud to live and work in the San Francisco Bay Area, for many reasons, one of which is its literary culture and its support of its bookstores, authors, and literary events. Such stores and institutions are both supported by, and in turn support, a literary culture and more reading, not only locally but nationally.

RIP Shirley Hazzard

Sad news: Shirley Hazzard, the great Australian writer, has died in Manhattan at the age of 85. (After her family moved from Australia, she lived in Europe and in the United States.) The author of several novels and nonfiction works, she is best known for her great 1976 novel “The Transit of Venus.” I read this novel soon after it was published, and then again in 2013, at which time I was struck, even more forcefully than on the first reading, with the power and insight of this gorgeously written novel. Hazzard’s understanding of human nature is impressive. (I posted about this novel on 4/2/13.) Her novels won several awards, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for “The Transit of Venus.” Hazzard was married to the late writer Francis Steegmuller, and had a long friendship with the writer Graham Greene as well as with other writers around the world. She will be missed, but her wonderful work lives on.