Renata Adler
Encyclopedia
Renata Adler is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...
) is an American
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
author
Author
An author is broadly defined as "the person who originates or gives existence to anything" and that authorship determines responsibility for what is created. Narrowly defined, an author is the originator of any written work.-Legal significance:...
, journalist
Journalist
A journalist collects and distributes news and other information. A journalist's work is referred to as journalism.A reporter is a type of journalist who researchs, writes, and reports on information to be presented in mass media, including print media , electronic media , and digital media A...
and film critic.
Background and education
Adler was born in Milan, Italy, and grew up in Danbury, ConnecticutDanbury, Connecticut
Danbury is a city in northern Fairfield County, Connecticut, United States. It had population at the 2010 census of 80,893. Danbury is the fourth largest city in Fairfield County and is the seventh largest city in Connecticut....
. (Her parents had fled Nazi Germany in 1933.) After gaining a B.A. in philosophy and German from Bryn Mawr
Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College is a women's liberal arts college located in Bryn Mawr, a community in Lower Merion Township, Pennsylvania, ten miles west of Philadelphia. The name "Bryn Mawr" means "big hill" in Welsh....
, Adler studied for an M.A. in Comparative Literature at Harvard
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
under I. A. Richards
I. A. Richards
Ivor Armstrong Richards was an influential English literary critic and rhetorician....
, before pursuing her interest in philosophy, linguistics and structuralism at the Sorbonne
Sorbonne
The Sorbonne is an edifice of the Latin Quarter, in Paris, France, which has been the historical house of the former University of Paris...
, where she gained a D.E.S. under the tutelage of Jean Wahl
Jean Wahl
Jean André Wahl was a French philosopher.-Early career:He was professor at the Sorbonne from 1936 to 1967, broken by World War II. He was in the U.S...
and Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss
Claude Lévi-Strauss was a French anthropologist and ethnologist, and has been called, along with James George Frazer, the "father of modern anthropology"....
. She later received her J.D. from Yale Law School
Yale Law School
Yale Law School, or YLS, is the law school of Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, United States. Established in 1824, it offers the J.D., LL.M., J.S.D. and M.S.L. degrees in law. It also hosts visiting scholars, visiting researchers and a number of legal research centers...
, and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
.
Journalism
In 1962, Adler became a staff writer-reporter for The New YorkerThe New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, and in 1968-69, she served as chief film critic for the New York Times. Her film reviews were collected in her book "A Year in the Dark." She then rejoined the staff of The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, where she remained for four decades. Her reporting and essays for The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
on politics, war, and civil rights were reprinted in "Toward a Radical Middle."
Her "Letter from the Palmer House" was included in the Best Magazine Articles of the Seventies.
In 1980, upon the release of her New Yorker colleague Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
's collection When the Lights Go Down, she published an 8,000-word review in The New York Review of Books that dismissed the book as "jarringly, piece by piece, line by line, and without interruption, worthless," arguing that Kael's post-sixties work contained "nothing certainly of intelligence or sensibility," and faulting her "quirks [and] mannerisms," including Kael's repeated use of the "bullying" imperative and rhetorical question. The piece, which stunned Kael and quickly became infamous in literary circles, was described by Time magazine as "the New York literary Mafia['s] bloodiest case of assault and battery in years."
Fiction
Adler is also a highly-regarded fiction writer. In 1974, her short story "Brownstone" won First Prize in the O. Henry Awards. Her novel Speedboat won the Ernest Hemingway Award for Best First Novel of 1976. In 2010 members of the National Book Critics Circle called for the novel to be returned to print. (Speedboat appears to be slated for reprint by independent publisher Melville House, although this news only appears on Amazon.com, and no future publication date is given.)Her next novel, Pitch Dark (1983), was a highly regarded—and also best-selling—sequel. "Nobody writes better prose than Renata Adler's," critic
Critic
A critic is anyone who expresses a value judgement. Informally, criticism is a common aspect of all human expression and need not necessarily imply skilled or accurate expressions of judgement. Critical judgements, good or bad, may be positive , negative , or balanced...
John Leonard
John Leonard (American critic)
John Leonard was an American literary, television, film, and cultural critic.-Biography:John Leonard grew up in Washington, D.C., Jackson Heights, Queens, and Long Beach, California, where he graduated from Woodrow Wilson High School...
wrote in Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
.
Non-fiction
Adler's 1986 book Reckless Disregard: WestmorelandWilliam Westmoreland
William Childs Westmoreland was a United States Army General, who commanded US military operations in the Vietnam War at its peak , during the Tet Offensive. He adopted a strategy of attrition against the National Liberation Front of South Vietnam and the North Vietnamese Army. He later served as...
v. CBS
CBS
CBS Broadcasting Inc. is a major US commercial broadcasting television network, which started as a radio network. The name is derived from the initials of the network's former name, Columbia Broadcasting System. The network is sometimes referred to as the "Eye Network" in reference to the shape of...
et al., Sharon
Ariel Sharon
Ariel Sharon is an Israeli statesman and retired general, who served as Israel’s 11th Prime Minister. He has been in a permanent vegetative state since suffering a stroke on 4 January 2006....
v. Time, an account of two libel trials and the First Amendment, was also praised: "This book should be under the Christmas tree of every lawyer and journalist," wrote William B. Shannon in The Washington Post
The Washington Post
The Washington Post is Washington, D.C.'s largest newspaper and its oldest still-existing paper, founded in 1877. Located in the capital of the United States, The Post has a particular emphasis on national politics. D.C., Maryland, and Virginia editions are printed for daily circulation...
; Edwin M. Yoder, also in The Washington Post, wrote, "Reckless Disregard is the best book about American journalism of our time."
Her 1999 book Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker described what she saw as that magazine's decline in the 1980s and 1990s. Its sharp criticism of various journalists, editors, and publishing figures excited controversy, and it was decried by the New York Times in eight separate articles, largely owing to allegations it made against Watergate judge John Sirica
John Sirica
John Joseph Sirica was the Chief Judge for the United States District Court for the District of Columbia, where he became famous for his role in the Watergate scandal...
.
In 2001, Adler published Canaries in the Mineshaft: Essays on Politics and the Media, a collection of pieces from The New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper's, The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
, The Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, and The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books
The New York Review of Books is a fortnightly magazine with articles on literature, culture and current affairs. Published in New York City, it takes as its point of departure that the discussion of important books is itself an indispensable literary activity...
. Some of these, on the National Guard
United States National Guard
The National Guard of the United States is a reserve military force composed of state National Guard militia members or units under federally recognized active or inactive armed force service for the United States. Militia members are citizen soldiers, meaning they work part time for the National...
, Biafra
Biafra
Biafra, officially the Republic of Biafra, was a secessionist state in south-eastern Nigeria that existed from 30 May 1967 to 15 January 1970, taking its name from the Bight of Biafra . The inhabitants were mostly the Igbo people who led the secession due to economic, ethnic, cultural and religious...
, Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael
Pauline Kael was an American film critic who wrote for The New Yorker magazine from 1968 to 1991. Earlier in her career, her work appeared in City Lights, McCall's and The New Republic....
, soap opera
Soap opera
A soap opera, sometimes called "soap" for short, is an ongoing, episodic work of dramatic fiction presented in serial format on radio or as television programming. The name soap opera stems from the original dramatic serials broadcast on radio that had soap manufacturers, such as Procter & Gamble,...
s, the impeachment
Impeachment
Impeachment is a formal process in which an official is accused of unlawful activity, the outcome of which, depending on the country, may include the removal of that official from office as well as other punishment....
inquiries (of both Richard Nixon
Richard Nixon
Richard Milhous Nixon was the 37th President of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. The only president to resign the office, Nixon had previously served as a US representative and senator from California and as the 36th Vice President of the United States from 1953 to 1961 under...
and Bill Clinton
Bill Clinton
William Jefferson "Bill" Clinton is an American politician who served as the 42nd President of the United States from 1993 to 2001. Inaugurated at age 46, he was the third-youngest president. He took office at the end of the Cold War, and was the first president of the baby boomer generation...
), and the press, had received awards.
In 2008, Adler contributed an essay to the Corcoran Gallery of Art exhibition catalog Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power. Her introduction, a memoir of her close friendship and work with the photographer, includes details of her work as editor of Avedon's 1976 photo-essay for Rolling Stone magazine, "The Family."
Honors
In 1968, Adler's essay "Letter from the Palmer House," which appeared in The New Yorker,was included in The Best Magazine Articles of 1967. In 1975, Adler's short story "Brownstone," received First Prize in the O. Henry Awards Best Short Stories of 1974.
The same story was selected for the O. Henry Collection Best Short Stories of the Seventies.
Adler's novel Speedboat received the Ernest Hemingway prize as the best first novel of 1976. In 1987, Adler was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. That same year, she received an honorary doctorate from the Georgetown University
Georgetown University
Georgetown University is a private, Jesuit, research university whose main campus is in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C. Founded in 1789, it is the oldest Catholic university in the United States...
School of Law. Her "Letter from Selma" has been published in the Library of America
Library of America
The Library of America is a nonprofit publisher of classic American literature.- Overview and history :Founded in 1979 with seed money from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Ford Foundation, the LoA has published over 200 volumes by a wide range of authors from Mark Twain to Philip...
volume of Best
Civil Rights Reporting. An essay from her tenure as film critic of The New York Times is included in the Library of America volume of American Film Criticism. In 2004, she served as a Media Fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution
Hoover Institution
The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace is a public policy think tank and library founded in 1919 by then future U.S. president, Herbert Hoover, an early alumnus of Stanford....
.