An Unusual Scene: A Guest Post by Valerie Merians

The follow-up to Lore Segal’s brilliant and big-hearted collection, Ladies’ Lunch, is here. Read on for an exclusive essay from Lore’s editor, Valerie Merians, on Still Talking.

It was an unusual scene: Sitting around someone’s literal deathbed, laughing. But that was the scene that led to the final collection of beloved New Yorker writer Lore Segal’s last book, Still Talking. It was in the late summer and early fall of 2024, after Lore, at 96, had gotten the word that she didn’t have long to go. So, weak but otherwise her normal chipper self, she set up camp in a hospital bed in her Upper West Side apartment, and held court.

And what she wanted to talk about was 1. Chekhov and 2. her next book. Lore’s daughter Beatrice, my husband and co-publisher Dennis Johnson, and I would sit with her bedside, chatting happily about which stories the new collection should include. We would kibbitz, but Lore’s ideas were pretty firm. “I even have the perfect title,” she declared. “Still Talking.” Which made her cackle gleefully. Everybody in the room knew we were talking about a posthumous publication. But she had us cackling, too.

Needless to say, it was not your usual death-bed scene. During one of our visits, she said, “I’m having so much fun. I feel badly, I’m not doing what I’m supposed to be doing.” “What are you supposed to be doing, Lore?” “I’m supposed to be dying!”

Lore’s trademark humor, her sense of joy in the strangeness of the world, along with the grounded clear-eyed honesty of her vision, is all beautifully on display in this posthumous collection. Readers of Ladies Lunch will recognize the educated, urbane nonagenarian women who have been friends for a lifetime, as they tackle aging’s affronts with wit, grace and resourcefulness.

Still Talking contains sixteen new stories never before collected, many of which have been published in the New Yorker. The collection also includes an introduction by Vivian Gornick, the renowned critic, memoirist, and Lore’s dear friend.

As her editor and publisher, I’m so delighted to be able to put this new, and final, collection into your hands.

Hope you enjoy it!

Valerie Merians

Co-founder and publisher, Melville House