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Death of a Great American Writer


 





One of my favorite writers, Alison Lurie, died this week. She was 94.

Lurie won the Pulitzer Prize for the novel "Foreign Affairs," but she also wrote essays about children's literature (including "Babar"), and she wrote about houses, museums, religious buildings ("how we choose to order the space we live and work in").

"Intelligence, authority, wit, and charm." "Lucid, jargon-free." "Engaging and captivating." This is how people talk about Lurie's writing.

Lurie could be lightly "cutting," and you see this in her reflections on writing-as-a-task:

Over the years many people have told me that they want to be a writer. It gradually becomes clear what some of them have in mind; they are daydreaming of becoming a special sort of person who will be recognized as more sensitive and creative than others, with a more interesting personality. If they ask me about agents and publishers and reviewers, I know that they are also daydreaming of fame and fortune: of articles and photographs in newspapers and magazines, of awards and prizes and film sales.....

They believe that writing great fiction....will often be painful and wearisome. At first they may be lonely; but eventually....they will be recognized and praised. They will have fans who will understand how much they have suffered, and will want to sleep with them, even if they are not very attractive or agreeable....

A novel of Lurie's I really liked was "The Last Resort," about smart people behaving badly in Key West. One character realizes that you can delight everyone around you just by paraphrasing all remarks you hear. If someone says, "I really struggle with bad weather and overcrowded Monday schedules....." you can then say, "It sounds like stress and gray clouds are really discouraging for you...." And the person--so shocked to have been "heard"--will look at you as if you were the Messiah.

Lurie had fun when she was writing--she came out and said this--and that sense of fun makes her work more delightful than the "loftier" novels of some of her peers.

Also, Lurie mentored Lorrie Moore at Cornell (Cornell is a main setting of many Lurie novels) -- and I find it odd that the Times didn't mention the Moore connection today.

In any case, I loved Lurie's work, and I also recommend "Truth and Consequences." I was sorry to hear the news this morning.
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