Here but Not Here

David Michaelis

Here But Not Here depends heavily on selectivity. Miss Ross' love of her own work is stressed to the point of sterness, as are the unchanging joys of the love she and Shawn found in each other, as is their sex life, which, according to Miss Ross, never deteriorated. Meanwhile, shopworn words like fidelity and unfaithful and adultery and mistress are omitted.

Instead, Miss Ross is clear and straightforward as she describes the feelings created by the complicated arrangements governing the private lives of what in the end amounted to 11 people. She cuts straight to the bone, remembering sadness and pain and pity and rage and guilt and disappointment, and she takes honest inventory of her own anger and explosions when, in the early days of their liason, Shawn would leave her to check in a few blocks north. Ultimately, though, Shawn made theirs the love story -- [his wife] Cecille, writes Miss Ross, was in truth outside of us -- and although it is strange that Mrs. Shawn never divorced her husband but instead went along with the arrangements necessary for his life with Miss Ross, it is not surprising. New York Observer

Howard Kissel

Here But Not here -- the title is an incantation Shawn often uttered -- does not undermine the saintly image Shawn retains. His giving spirit becomes all the more remarkable when we see that he devoted himself as wholeheartedly to making a rich life with Ross as he did his work and that he did both without abandoning his family, especially the two growing boys, the playwright/ actor Wallace Shawn and the composer Alan. . .

What is touching about the portrait is the sense Ross conveys of two people utterly respectful of each others gifts and needs, two artists with a rare talent for self-effacement, creating a beautiful life together in the midst of deep pressure and stress. It is a love story Henry James might have enjoyed.

New York Daily News

Milena Damjanov

"A successful autobiography can make you feel as if you've stumbled upon an unlocked diary. Lillian Ross's short, page-turning story of her unconventional love affair with William Shawn, famed editor of The New Yorker, is such a tale. .

"Although some might squirm at the details of this odd relationship (Shawn had a private phone line that only Ross used installed near his bed), its honesty and surprising romanticism are not only fascinating but appealing. You are glad Ross had the courage to reveal her hidden life. . .

Although the people who knew the couple were aware of their liason, it was never made legitimate. With this book, Ross announces it to the world, revealing a truly moving love story. All moralizing be damned -- at least until you've finished the book.

Susan Jacoby

What raises Ross' memoir far above the level of titillating gossip is its depiction -- the the more powerful because it seems largely unintentional -- of the consequences of a complicated man's refusal to seek love and warmth as a unified whole instead of in fragments. Newsday

Publishers Weekly

Appearing almost simultaneously with Ved Mehta's Mr. Shawn's New Yorker (Forecasts, April 6), Ross's memoir of William Shawn, who was her lover from 1952 until his death in 1992, shows us, with mixed results, the private side of the talented, self-effacing New Yorker editor. Like Mehta's book, this one flirts with hagiography, but here we see Shawn away from his deskand outside the marriage that he maintained throughout his and Ross's affair. The author depicts him as a passionate lover, a devoted, unofficial father to her adopted son and a deeply ambivalent editor who called his vocation a "big mistake," his professional life "the ultimate cell." Unfortunately, New Yorker writer Ross (Takes) fails to bring these personaeromancer, father, literary midwifeinto focus, and she continually stresses the bliss of the relationship rather than its (probably more interesting) complications. Despite the book's title, Shawn's persistent complaint that he waswhether at home or at the magazine"here but not here," seems never to cast a shadow on his time with Ross, which she describes in almost impossibly sunny terms. When she mentions her guilt about the affair, she is quick to bury it in a rsum of personal and professional triumphs, achieved in company with luminaries as varied as A.J. Liebling, Charlie Chaplin and Robin Williams. Ross succeeds best in giving us a glimpse of Shawn's private, romantic idealsof both his work and his affair with her ("Our time together defied death," he told her). Some readers will balk at Ross's repeating these cris de coeur for public consumption; the rest will probably wish for a less romanticized account of this love story. Photos. (June)

Library Journal

New Yorker writer Ross on her intimate relationship with the magazine's famed editor, William Shawn.

Library Journal

Ross, a longtime New Yorker writer, has written a unique, behind-the-scenes memoir detailing her life and her relationship with William Shawn. For half a century, while he was the respected editor of The New Yorker, Shawn felt trapped and nonexistent. Apparently, in his professional life he mourned his own unrealized talent, and in his personal life he felt like an outsider who was "there but not there." When he met Ross, he recognized her as his soulmate. Unable to cause his wife pain by divorcing her, Shawn maintained an intimate, 40-year relationship with Ross by living both with his wife and at an apartment blocks away with Ross and their child. Ross candidly discusses their bond, Shawn's unusual personality, the many celebrities she met, and her own experiences as a New Yorker staff writer and author. Recommended for academic and public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 2/15/98.]--Ilse Heidmann, Southwest Texas State Univ., San Marcos

Kirkus Reviews

An informative if scattershot account by Ross (Takes,1983, etc.) of her 40-year romance with New Yorker editor William Shawn. Ross, who joined the staff of the New Yorker in 1945, makes no apologies for her lengthy affair with the long-married Shawn, though she goes to great (and circular) lengths to explain and excuse it. "I couldn't reconcile myself to being a þmistress.þ I didn't feel like one," she writes. "Bill told me I was his þwife.þ " The entire affair was conducted with the full knowledge of Shawn's real wife, Cecille: He and Ross kept an apartment about 12 blocks from where Mrs. Shawn and their children lived. Ross is vague and sparing with the logistics, yet apparently Shawn would usually sleep at home (where he kept a private phone in the bedroom "with a number he gave solely to me"), while taking his meals and spending most evenings with Ross (their apartmentþs previous tenant had been Marlene Dietrich). Ross notes "the familiar misery in his face" after doing time en famille; although he þlonged for the earthiest and wildest kinds of sexual adventures,þ evidently he "never became inured to his guilt." Thereþs a dated and doltish innocence in her presentation of this material, a tendency to dote goggle-eyed on Shawn that belies her true wit; Ross, after all, is well known as a tough-minded and persevering writer/reporter. Some passages are nearly incomprehensible, with few or no transitions to prepare or conclude them. Ross, who left the New Yorker with Shawn in 1987, returned in 1993, and compares Tina Brownþs regime favorably with that of her flame. Of historical interest are her recollections of J.D. Salinger andShawn's publication of "Zooey" over the objections of his own fiction editors. Both too quirky and too chatty; Ross is at her best when sticking to writers, writing, and Shawn's editing. (b&w photos, not seen)