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Synopsis
Celebrated for her award-winning political columns, criticism, and poetry, Katha Pollitt offers something new in this poignant, hilarious, and sometimes outrageous collection of stories drawn from her own life. With deep feeling and sharp insight, she writes about love, sex, betrayal, heartbreak, and much more: what she learned about her parents from reading their FBI files, the joy and loneliness of new motherhood, the curious mental effects of a post-college stint proofreading pornographic novels, and the decline and fall of practically everything, including herself. Unafraid to say what others only think and acknowledge what others won’t admit, Katha Pollitt surprises and entertains on every page.
Praise for Learning to Drive
“The kind of book you want to look up from at points so you can read aloud certain passages to a friend or lover.”
–Chicago Tribune
“A powerful personal narrative . . . full of insight and charm . . . [Katha] Pollitt is her own Jane Austen character . . . haughty and modest, moral and irresponsible, sensible and, happily for us, lost in sensibility.”
–The New York Review of Books
“With . . . bracing self-honesty, Pollitt takes us through the maddening swirl of contradictions at the heart of being fifty-something: the sense of slowing down, of urgency, of wisdom, of ignorance, of strength, of helplessness, of breakdown, of renewal.”
–Sunday Seattle Times
“Essays of breathtaking candor and razor-sharp humor . . . [Pollitt] has outdone herself. . . . [Her] observations are acute and her confessions tonic. Forget face-lifts; Pollitt’s essays elevate the spirit.”
–Booklist (starred review)
“Candid, confessional prose . . . But even at her most intimate, [Pollitt] manages to infuse her tales of dissatisfaction and heartbreak with levity and humor.”
–San Francisco Chronicle
“Pitch perfect . . . painfully hilarious to read.”
–The Boston Globe
The New York Times - Toni Bentley
Her three previous essay collections gathered brilliant commentary on welfare, abortion, surrogate motherhood, Iraq, gay marriage and health care, mostly from the pages of The Nation. But with Learning to Drive, she gets personal, and shameless. She has decided to wave her dirty laundry (among which she found unidentified striped panties) and confesses to "Webstalking" her longtime, live-in, womanizing former boyfriend…It's hard to tell if she's coming into her own, trying to sell more books or has lost it entirely. Or perhaps she's giving up her dignity in a generous motion of solidarity toward the rest of us who have already blown our cover? Whatever the reason, she's entitled.