The Men in My Life Book

Behind that deceptive title are eight pieces of great literary criticism. For the men in Vivian Gornick's life that get attention in this work are Philip Roth and Saul Bellow, V.S. Naipaul and James Baldwin, Raymond Carver, Richard Ford, and Allen Ginsberg, to name just a few. When asked in an interview why these writers, why her focus on loneliness, Gornick answered that:

We live in a world, in a culture that has misused the word loneliness. Our culture seems to be explaining itself in terms of a flight from loneliness. The question that interests me and many others is an old one: Who is there in the room when you are alone? What is it you're fleeing when you're fleeing loneliness? Are you fleeing the fact that you can't deal with yourself? You're not able to occupy your own skin? The writers in these essays all raise these questions for me.

I am one of those who read literary criticism for pleasure and I truly believe that great literary criticism can transcend its genre and the narrow lens through which many regard it. And Gornick's work does transcend the genre. I've fallen in love with her voice and this love is not conditioned by or based on constant agreement. In fact, I often disagree with her, partly or completely. But I'm amazed by her depth and her sharpness. The manner in which she inhabits literature. Her clarity and integrity when writing, her refusal to allow both love and disapproval of an author's work to cloud her judgement, the edginess of both her compliments and her "accusations". For instance, she acknowledges V.S. Naipaul as a literary genius, one giving himself fully to both fiction and journalism, bringing to the genre "an extraordinary capacity for making art out of lucid thought". She believes though that his bleakness, his social critique that "uniformly withholds empathy", his refusal of tenderness, and of "putting a good face on things" will lead to a diminishing readership in the future.

Vivian Gornick - a highly original voice whose prominence and influence will, I hope, only increase with time.