Vivian Gornick

Home Free

“Every writer, sooner or later, must face the fact that our characters are taken directly from our own lives, so there will be friends, relatives, and acquaintances who are going to feel like they’ve been pushed under the bus.”

Mother Trouble

In her new memoir, Arundhati Roy tries to find the language to grapple with the shadow of her formidable, extraordinary mother.

The 176-Year Argument

At the University of Chicago all they wanted to know was, What’s the theory? At Yale all they wanted to know was, What’s the technique? At City College of New York all they wanted to know was, How does this relate to real life?

In Lieu of Love

Diana Athill chose a life of sexual and intellectual exploration. Could she get it all down on the page?

Isn’t It Interesting?

The most common quarrel between Lore Segal and me—between the novelist and the memoirist—is how to make use of “the way it feels.”

Camus on Tour

Most of Albert Camus’s evaluations from his promotional trips across the Atlantic are superficial or laughably snotty. What’s intriguing is how quickly he demands that things make sense.

Surviving by Accident

With neither cynicism nor sentimentality, Marina Jarre makes us feel the hard, dull ache of the spiritual aloneness that countless lives endure, especially in the shadow of a dramatic world war.

‘What We Want Is to Start a Revolution’

Formed in Greenwich Village in 1912 for “women who did things—and did them openly,” the Heterodoxy Club laid the groundwork for a century of American feminism.

Hearts vs. Minds

Why, the leftist writer Tess Slesinger asked, should people give up sex and art to make the revolution?

Sex, Noir & Isolation

In his novels, Alfred Hayes explored what he saw as noir’s central concern: the inability to feel the reality of your own life, or anyone else’s.

How Did We Get Here?

The Enduring Romance of American Communism

Many, if not most, of the Communists who felt destined for a life of serious radicalism experienced their lives as irradiated by a kind of expressiveness that made them feel brilliantly centered.

Cats, Doris Lessing, and Me

Some months ago, late on a winter afternoon, I picked up Particularly Cats again. This time, I read it through in a single sitting, hardly able to believe that I had once held this book in my hands and not been similarly compelled.

The Love We Don’t Know

‘Edge People’