The Wine Lover's Daughter
Page 19
Questions of various sorts were graciously fielded by Tom Brown, Timothy Cross, Helen Dunning, Nimal Eames-Scott, J. David Goldin, Lorraine Guimbelot, Laura Johnston, Susannah Lescher, Josh Lieberman, Harrison Monsky, Paul Needham, Gavin Parfit, Bart Paul, Wayne Posey, Allison Primak, Oleg Primak, Bishop Frank Madison Reid III, and Aube Rey Lescure.
Jean-Charles Villeroux and Bryan Martin helped me with French words and phrases; Elisabeth von Stackelberg, Friederike von Stackelberg, Dieter Verdick, and Peter Gradjansky with German; and Maud Gleason with Latin. Two of those advisers are also my dear friends. Peter and Maud not only dispensed linguistic counsel but read parts of the manuscript and provided such useful and sensitive feedback that, ipsis factis, I am deeply in their debt.
Three other friends, all of whom I’ve known for more than two thirds of my life, also gave me loving encouragement. Tina Rathborne listened to me talk about my father, laughed in all the right places, and suggested titles. Jane Condon and Lou Ann Walker always had my back; no matter what happened, they convinced me that I was writing a terrific book (even though I sometimes thought they might be its only readers).
My father’s cousin Fran Cohen; my cousins Jeff, Jim, and Ramsey Fadiman; and my half brother, Jonathan Fadiman, provided background on the Fadimans and, more important, the kind of interest and curiosity that can come only from one’s family.
My brother, Kim Fadiman, and I had innumerable conversations about our father at my home in Massachusetts, at his in Wyoming, and on the phone between visits. Without his perspective and his memories, this book would have been duller, thinner, and less accurate. If Kim had wanted to be a writer, he would have been a better one than I. Instead, he is one of the world’s best readers—and the one I most want to please. When he told me he thought I’d captured our father, his opinion mattered more than any book review.
I owe my longtime mentor John Bethell an enormous debt of gratitude, both for believing when I was eighteen that I could be a writer and for the support he has given to my writing and editing since then. John helped me choose the photographs for this book and, along with his wife, Helen, the interior and cover fonts.
I will never be able to repay Bill Whitworth for the care he lavished on this book. No one has a better ear. Bill read every sentence more than once, broke my logjams of indecision by saying Phrase A was better than Phrase B (and Phrase C was better than Phrase D and Phrase Y was better than Phrase Z), and, best of all, talked over those phrases—along with nonrestrictive clauses, pronoun-antecedent agreement, and the glories of parallelism—in long, warm phone calls in which I was constantly reminded that high standards are the only ones worth having. Bighearted friends are the only ones worth having, too.
For research and fact-checking, I am grateful to Rachel Brown, who spelunked heroically through Fadiman family history and genealogy; to Nicolas Niarchos, who checked my early chapters with skill and grace; and, most of all, to my daughter, Susannah Fadiman Colt, who checked the bulk of the book with the patience of a yogi and the acuity of a hawk. (My errors were mice. They didn’t stand a chance.) Susannah not only counted the words in Hemingway’s spifflicated letter, confirmed that my father had dissed a group of women in flowery hats at a luncheon (not a dinner), and became an expert on Château Lafite Rothschild (and on wine in general), but also made many astute editorial suggestions. Susannah, I wish that Bapa, who dedicated Worth a Jot to you not long after you learned to talk, could see what a wordsmith you have become.
My son, Henry Clifton Fadiman Colt, remembers his grandfather less well than his sister does, but he was no less enthusiastic about this project (and when Henry is enthusiastic, it’s like being bathed in the light of a 10,000-watt bulb). Thank you, Henry, for noticing when I was discouraged and commanding me to “send it.”
My husband, George Howe Colt, kept editing himself out of this book. (“It’s not about me,” he’d say, and then cross something out with a #2 Ticonderoga pencil.) A few visible vestiges remain, but George, you are invisibly present in every sentence. When I happened upon the WINE MEMORABILIA folder, you listened to me clatter down the kitchen stairs so I could tell you, breathlessly, what I had found. When I decided “the piece about my father and wine” had to be a book, you applauded. When I was tired (and most of the rest of the time, too), you cooked me dinner. When I gave you impenetrable first—and second and third—drafts to read and mark up, you marched fearlessly through the swamp. Writers who marry writers are supposed to fight like cats and dogs, but we just channel our energies into editing each other. What could be better than being able to talk about writing, every single day, with the man I love?
Photo Credits
Annalee Fadiman
Annalee Fadiman
Courtesy of Boys and Girls High School
James F. Gayle, The Plain Dealer
Phyllis Katz, Columbia College Today
Kim Fadiman
Robin Platzer / Twin Images
ALSO BY ANNE FADIMAN
The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down
Ex Libris
At Large and At Small
EDITED BY ANNE FADIMAN
The Best American Essays 2003
Rereadings
A Note About the Author
Anne Fadiman is the author of The Spirit Catches You and You Fall Down (FSG, 1997), winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award, the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, and the Salon Book Award. She is also the author of two essay collections, At Large and At Small and Ex Libris, and the editor of Rereadings: Seventeen Writers Revisit Books They Love (all published by FSG). Her essays and articles have appeared in Harper’s Magazine, The New Yorker, and The New York Times, among other publications. She is the Francis Writer-in-Residence at Yale. You can sign up for email updates here.
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Contents
Title Page
Copyright Notice
Dedication
1. Thwick
2. Civilization
3. Wager
4. Ardt
5. Gods
6. Kismet
7. Homesick
8. Multihyphenate
9. Initiation
10. Counterfeit
11. Demeatballization
12. Milkshake
13. Jew
14. Oakling
15. Drunk
16. High
17. Vintage
18. Birthday
19. VIP
20. Impotence
21. Taste
22. Memorabilia
23. Port
Notes on Sources
Acknowledgments
Photo Credits
Also by Anne Fadiman
A Note About the Author
Copyright
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
18 West 18th Street, New York 10011
Copyright © 2017 by Anne Fadiman
All rights reserved
First edition, 2017
Portions of this book originally appeared, in slightly different form, on newyorker.com and in The Yale Review.
Extract from Ernest Hemingway’s letter in chapter 15 published with the permission of The Ernest Hemingway Foundation, copyright © 2017.
Photograph credits appear at the back of the book.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Fadiman, Anne, 1953– author.
Title: The wine lover’s daughter: a memoir / Anne Fadiman.
Description: First edition. | New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2017. | Includes bibliographical references.
Identifiers: LCCN 2017008723 | ISBN 9780374228088 (hardcover) | ISBN 97
80374711764 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Fadiman, Anne, 1953—Family. | Women journalists—United States—Biography. | Fathers and daughters—Biography. | Fadiman, Clifton, 1904–1999. | Intellectuals—United States—Biography. | Authors—United States—Biography. | Editors—United States—Biography. | Wine and wine making—Miscellanea.
Classification: LCC PS3556.A314 Z46 2017 | DDC 813/.54 [B] —dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2017008723
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