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Right up until his death in 2008, John Leonard was a lion in American letters. A passionate, erudite, and wide-ranging critic, he helped shape the landscape of modern literature. He reviewed the most celebrated writers of his age—from Kurt Vonnegut and Joan Didion to Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon. He championed Morrison’s work so ardently that she invited him to travel with her to Stockholm when she accepted her Nobel Prize. He also contributed many pieces on television, film, politics, and the media, which continue to surprise and impress with their fervor and prescience.
Reading for My Life is a monumental collection of Leonard’s most significant writings—spanning five decades—from his earliest columns for the Harvard Crimson to his final essays for The New York Review of Books. Here are Leonard’s best writings—many never before published in book form—on the cultural touchstones of a generation, each piece a testament to his sharp wit, fierce intelligence, and lasting love of the arts. Definitive reviews of Doris Lessing, Vladimir Nabokov, Maxine Hong Kingston, Tom Wolfe, Don DeLillo, Milan Kundera, and Philip Roth, among others, display his passion and nearly encyclopedic knowledge of literature in the second half of the twentieth century. His essay on Ed Sullivan and the evolution of television remains a classic. Throughout Leonard’s reviews and essays is a dedicated political spirit, pleading for social justice, advocating for the women’s movement, and forever calling attention to writers whose work challenged and excited him.
With an introduction by E. L. Doctorow and remembrances by Leonard’s friends, family, and colleagues, including Gloria Steinem and Victor Navasky, Reading for My Life stands as a landmark collection from one of America’s most beloved and influential critics.
Introduction E. L. Doctorow xi
Reading for My Life 1
1958 The Cambridge Scene 9
1958 The Demise of Greenwich Village 12
1959 Pasternak's Hero: Man Against the Monoliths 17
1959 Epitaph for the Beat Generation 1
1962 Richard Nixon's Six Crises 24
1969 Doris Lessing's the Four-Gated City 31
1969 Nabokov's Ada 34
1970 Gabriel García Márquez's One Hundred Years of Solitude 37
1970 Arthur Koestler's Arrow in the Blue and The Invisible Writing 39
1970 Supergirl Meets the Sociologist 42
1976 Maxine Hong Kingston's The Woman Warrior 45
1978 Edward Said's Orientalism 47
1988 Gay Talese's Thy Neighbor's Wife 50
1981 Robert Stone's A Flag for Sunrise 57
1987 Tom Wolfe's The Bonfire of the Vanities and Jim Sleeper's In Search of New York 60
1988 Don DeLillo's Libra 71
1988 AIDS Is Everywhere 77
1988 On the Beat at Ms 81
1988 Nan Robertson's Getting Better 84
1989 Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses 88
1990 Thomas Pynchon's Vineland 93
1990 Günter Grass: Bad Boys and Fairy Tales 103
1990 Peggy Noonan's What I Saw at the Revolution 118
1990 No Turning Back, Barbara Ferraro and Patricia Hussey, with Jane O'Reilly 120
1991 Philip Roth's Patrimony 122
1991 Milan Kundera's Immortality 124
1991 Norman Mailer's Harlot's Ghost 134
1992 Ed Sullivan Died for Our Sins 147
1993 Dear Bill (on the Occasion of His Inauguration) 168
1994 Meeting David Grossman 171
1995 Eduardo Galeano Walks Some Words 180
1996 Amos Oz in the Desert 183
1997 Family Values, Like the House of Atreus 194
1997 When Studs Listens, Everyone Else Talks 224
1998 Amazing Grace 227
1998 Morrison's Paradise Lost 230
1999 Ralph Ellison, Sort Of (Plus Hemingway and Salinger) 238
2000 Why Socialism Never Happened Here 249
2001 Maureen Howard's Big as Life 256
2001 Bill Ayers's Fugitive Days 262
2001 Blowing His Nose in the Wind 271
2002 Networks of Terror 281
2003 Richard Powers's The Time of Our Singing 286
2004 Jacobo Timerman, Renaissance Troublemaker 289
2005 Jonathan Lethem's Men and Cartoons, The Disappointment Artist, and The Fortress of Solitude 293
2006 Citizen Doctorow 305
2007 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band (on Václav Havel) 309
2007 The Last Innocent White Man 316
2007 Michael Chabon's The Yiddish Policeman's Union 320
2005 Joan Didion's The Year of Magical Thinking 332
Writing for His Life 347
Overview
Right up until his death in 2008, John Leonard was a lion in American letters. A passionate, erudite, and wide-ranging critic, he helped shape the landscape of modern literature. He reviewed the most celebrated writers of his age—from Kurt Vonnegut and Joan Didion to Toni Morrison and Thomas Pynchon. He championed Morrison’s work so ardently that she invited him to travel with her to Stockholm when she accepted her Nobel Prize. He also contributed many pieces on television, film, politics, and the ...