The Miss Dennis School of Writing : And Other Lessons from a Woman's Life

Name: The Miss Dennis School of Writing : And Other Lessons from a Woman's Life
Author: Alice Steinbach, Bruce Bortz
ISBN: 9780963124623

by Alice Steinbach, Bruce Bortz

Publisher: Bancroft Press,The,U.S.
Pages: 307
Hardcover
ISBN: 9780963124623

Overview of The Miss Dennis School of Writing : And Other Lessons from a Woman's Life

This first book by Pulitzer Prize Winner Alice Steinbach is an intimate, personal collection of essays, remembrances, and columns that follows in the creative non-fiction tradition of Anna Quindlen and May Sarton. While it recounts the experiences and observations of a divorced, working mother, it expresses hopes and fears universal to all women. Steinbach focuses on the big and small things of life: the bond between lifelong friends; coming to grips with loss; the quiet, everyday moments between parents and child; the spiritual connection to nature; the realities of being a single parent. She writes of the people who've touched her own life; the influential teacher; the worldly aunt; the writer hero; the woman sees regularly at a bus stop as both head to work. She offers us beautifully written lessons she's learned during a lifetime of changes and challenges.

About the Author, Alice Steinbach, Bruce Bortz

Alice Steinbach

A Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist, Alice Steinbach believes in following the advice of Japanese poet Basho: "To learn of the pine, go to the pine." From her debut travelogue about finding herself in Europe (Without Reservations) to her globe-trotting follow-up, Educating Alice, Steinbach invites readers on delightful vicarious adventures.

Good To Know

In our interview, Steinbach shared some fun and fascinating facts about herself:

"When I was 15 I took a summer job (after giving my age as 16) at a venetian-blind factory. I worked on an assembly line, stringing the cord that runs through the blind, opening and closing it. It was the hardest work I ever hope to do. Eight hours a day with two 15n-minute breaks from the line and a half hour for lunch. I hope one day to incorporate it into a story. The good part was that at the end of the summer, I quit, took the money and spent a week in Manhattan, visiting galleries, seeing plays, and writing down everything I saw."

"It seems as though my future as a âtravel writer' was foretold. During the last weeks of my mother's life, when she was dying in the hospital, we talked of everything. And one day she told me this story: âDo you remember when you were eight years old, and your favorite game was to pretend you were going on a trip? She asked me. You would go to the basement and haul up an old suitcase, cut out a circle of white paper and write on it, PARIS, LONDON, ROME, then paste it on the side. Then you would go to your closet and take out all your clothes, remove them from the hangers and carefully pack the suitcase. You never tired of doing this.'

In the 20 years since my mother died, I have thought often of this, always with pleasure. What a gift to have time to say goodbye to my mother, and what a nice memory to have. If I close my eyes, I see myself again, an 8-year-old, removing my dresses from wire hangers and folding them into neat bundles, fitting them into an old striped suitcase."

"There are three things in life that have never let me down. I call them 'the three C's': children, cats, and coffee."

"I have no hobbies, really, but I do have interests. Collecting Japanese woodblock prints from the Edo period. Writing poetry. Traveling. Pursuing a project that entails writing biographies of a number of old passages in Paris. And, of course, my most intense interest and biggest fantasy: looking for an apartment in Paris."

Reviews of The Miss Dennis School of Writing : And Other Lessons from a Woman's Life

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Editorials

Publishers Weekly - Publisher's Weekly

In this collection of her essays and columns, Pulitzer Prize-winning Baltimore Sun journalist Steinbach seeks to "rescue from insignificance some of the small events that make up a life." These pieces thus explore, with quiet grace, the unexpected pleasures that are gleaned from an appreciation of the "ordinary"a sleeping cat, a blooming garden, a well-cooked meal. Such familiareven ostensibly mundanedetails of our lives, Steinbach maintains, play a far more important part in shaping our identities and our sense of our relationship to the world than do the "exotic encounters" or momentous events to which we attach much significance. Alternately poignant and humorous, sedately contemplative and bristling with emotional energy, Steinbach's various musings on the daily rhythms of her own moods and experiences transform "everyday life" into a rich and meaningful journey. Author tour. (Oct.)

Library Journal

Steinbach, a columnist and feature writer for the Baltimore Sun and 1985 winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Writing, presents in her first book an open, honest, charming, and witty collection of personal essays. Focusing on the familiar, Steinbach relates private thoughts and remembrances of people who influenced her, the loss of loved ones, childhood follies and fantasies, the ever-present continuing lessons from her deceased mother and grandmother, her single motherhood and relationship with two grown sons, romance, fashion, growing up, and parenthood. These essays reveal the influence of time and experience on memory, imagination, and reflection. Steinbach offers an inspirational book that will appeal primarily to women over 30 who will identify with the type of experiences and memories she describes. Recommended for public libraries and comprehensive women's studies collections.Jeris Cassel, Rutgers Univ. Libs., New Brunswick, N.J.

Kirkus Reviews

Journalist Steinbach is a Pulitzer Prize winner, but the award was given for feature articles written for the Baltimore Sun, not for this motley assortment of reflections on "the small events that make up a life."

In the footsteps of other essayists and columnistsâErma Bombeck and Steinbach's hero E.B. White among themâSteinbach digs for the universal in the personal, and from time to time, she strikes pay dirt. Among her favorite, and more successful, subjects are her sons, her cats (in particular the charismatic Max), and her late mother. Tired and dated are observations on Gloria Steinem, Martha Stewart, and dieting. The essays are corraled into the usual categories, including relationships, raising children, childhood memories, work and growing older, with each section introduced by a brief commentary. The Miss Dennis of the title was the author's ninth-grade creative-writing teacher, who loved Emily Dickinson and directed her students to "pay attention" and to "find [a] unique voice." Steinbach clearly learned how to pay attentionâshe is, after all, an award-winning reporterâbut she is still tuning her rather self- conscious voice. Nevertheless, there are some memorable turns of phrase here. Regarding wishing for the "world on a string" vs. small satisfactions like an uninterrupted supper hour, she says: "Small hopes . . . are a lot like dogs: They tend to come when they're called." There are also tender memories of her mother in the garden and her father on vacation. Steinbach's eye for eloquent detail is conveyed in only a few pieces here, among them "Pioneer Women."

Overall, Miss Dennis would not be happy. Resurrected from the newspaper morgue, these pieces tend to lose whatever punch they may have initially had.

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