Alice Adams
Page 66
48 Mildred Hamilton, “It’s a very good year for Alice,” San Francisco Examiner, January 31, 1975.
CHAPTER 17: ROBERT KENDALL MCNIE
Interviews: Sandy Boucher, Imogene Gieling, Jane Kristiansen, PAL, Fred Lyon, Maureen Looney Mather, Morissa McNie, Robert McNie Jr., Patty O’Grady, Deborah Sparks, Peter Stansky, Til Brunswick Stewart.
1 AA to LJ, December 18 [1964].
2 N, September 24, 1965.
3 Susan Wood, “Stories of Love and Loss,” Washington Post, January 21, 1979.
4 N, July 9, 1964.
5 N, August 15, 1964.
6 “like a stone”: Imogene Gieling to CS.
7 AA to Peter Davison, December 27, 1964.
8 N, June 1, 1966.
9 “You’re wasting”: N, February 4, 1965; “addicted”: N, August 7, 1965; “Bob and I seem”: AA to Peter Davison, “Wednesday” [May 26, 1965]; “rather simple”: N, August 22, 1965.
10 N, June 14, 1966.
11 Fran Renoe, “North of the City, Where Nature Holds Command,” California Living, San Francisco Examiner, August 1, 1965; Kelsey Keith, “Paradise at the End of the World: An Oral History of Sea Ranch,” February 20, 2019, www.curbed.com/2019/2/20/18231590/sea-ranch-northern-california-sonoma-county-coast-history.
12 N, March 8, 1965.
13 Ibid., May 22, 1965.
14 Ibid., August 27, 1965.
15 Ibid., November 17, 1965.
16 Ibid., June 28, 1966.
17 Ibid., December 3, 1965.
18 Ibid., June 6, 1966.
19 AA to HMS and Diana Steele, June 27, 1968.
20 AA to LJ, September 8, 1967.
21 AA to HMS and Diana Steele, September 15, 1966.
22 Ibid., February 18, 1967.
23 Ibid., November 22, 1966.
24 “I’ve a surprise”: Ibid., April 5, 1967; “their shared adoration of his sex”: Ibid., May 3, 1967.
25 Bob’s house on the Truckee River was featured in Richard Von Warton’s article “Lighthearted Idea from California Ski Lodges,” House & Garden 126, no. 4 (December 1964), 162–64.
26 AA to LJ, September 8, 1967.
27 Ibid., July 9 [1969].
28 “They lay together”: N, May 3, 1967; “bodily family warmth”: “My First and Only House,” RT, 193.
CHAPTER 18: THE A B D C E FORMULA
Interviews: Virginia Breier, Stephen Brown, Linda Chown, PAL, Maureen Looney Mather, Robert McNie Jr., Lincoln Pain, Louis Pain.
1 Segal to AA, September 6, 1966.
2 AA to Matson, September 9, 1966.
3 Segal to AA, September 18, 1967.
4 Kemeny to AA, November 21, 1969.
5 AA to Matson, June 11, 1968.
6 rejections: “Susan” at the Curtis Publishing Company to Matson, November 29, 1967; Leonhard Dowty to Matson, September 19, 1967; Phyllis Sari Levy to Matson, May 18, 1967.
7 AA to Matson, June 11, 1968.
8 Letters between AA and Peter Matson, spring 1968.
9 AA, “Why I Write,” 275.
10 AA to Kay Bonetti, American Audio Prose Library, 1987.
11 “novelist’s prerogative”: Rosellen Brown, “Stories of Dreams Lost” (review of BG), Chicago Sun-Times, [1979]; “sense of an entire life”: Bruce Cook, “Sketching life portraits in just a few pages” (review of RR), Detroit News, [1980]; “the architecture”: Julie Bosman, “Alice Munro, Storyteller, Wins Nobel in Literature,” New York Times, October 11, 2013.
12 Leona Sherman, “A Conversation with Alice Adams,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, November 19–26, 1980, 14.
13 Elizabeth Gips, Scrapbook of a Haight-Ashbury Pilgrim: Spirit, Sacraments, and Sex 1967-68: lists.village.virginia.edu/lists_archive/sixties-l/2794.html.
14 Manso, Mailer, 407–8; AA to Peter Davison, May or June [26,] 1965; NM, Speech for Berkeley Teach-In, May 21, 1965, rpt. in NM, Cannibals and Christians (New York: Dial, 1966), 67–82.
15 AA to Nancy Webb, June 3, 1968.
16 Ibid., March 6, 1968.
17 Maureen Looney recalled hearing about Robbie’s plan to “suspend himself from the Golden Gate Bridge” when she came for dinner with Alice and Bob at their apartment.
18 Sherman, “A Conversation with Alice Adams,” 15.
CHAPTER 19: DISINHERITED
Interviews: Elaine Badgley Arnoux, Sandy Boucher, Virginia Breier, Stephen Brown, Alyce Denier, Jewel DeRoy, Phillip Galgiani, Jane Kristiansen, PAL, Maureen Looney Mather, Morissa McNie, Robert McNie Jr., Phyllis Mufson, Nancy Oakes, Lincoln Pain, Louis Pain, Diana Steele, Tom Wilson, VW.
1 AA, comment in American Voices: Best Short Fiction by Contemporary Authors, selected by Sally Arteseros (New York: Hyperion, 1992), 1.
2 HMS to AA, August 14, 1969.
3 LJ to AA, July 29, 1970.
4 AA to LJ, July 9, 1969, and August 19, 1969.
5 HMS to AA, October 7, 1970.
6 “connoisseur of good food”: Keller and Selig, Hispanic Studies in Honor of Nicholson B. Adams, 12; “put his pipe”: James Street Jr., letter to the editor, Chapel Hill Weekly, October 7, 1970, 3.
7 Joan Smith, “Go Ask Alice,” San Francisco Examiner Magazine, October 22, 1995, 14–15.
8 “Nic always slapped”: N, January 21, 1967; “Do what you want”: “Caroline,” MS, HRC.
9 AA to LJ, September 24, 1970.
10 Orange County, North Carolina, Estates Division, File and Docket 70-E-168, Film 72-8-283. The will was dated May 8, 1958.
11 “I told Dotsie” and “[Nic] always saw me”: AA to LJ, January 21, 1971; who had dared: LJ to AA, January 14, 1971.
12 “like most guilty”: N, March 24, 1971; “the most marvelous”: AA to LJ, May 24, 1971.
13 AA to Kay Bonetti, American Audio Prose Library.
14 AA, comment in American Voices: Best Short Fiction, 1.
15 Correspondance between AA and Peter Matson, HRC.
16 AA to Max Steele, April 26, 1971.
17 NM’s attack on RKM: AA to PAL, February 4, 1971; Frances Moffatt, “Who’s Who,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 5, 1971; Herb Cain, “Herb Cain,” San Francisco Chronicle, February 9, 1971; AA, “A Famous Friend,” incomplete story outline in N, February 6, 1971.
18 AA to LJ, March 4, 1971.
19 AA to Peter Manso, 1983, TS, HRC; Manso, Mailer, 557.
20 AA to LJ, March 4, 1971.
21 Town Bloody Hall, film by Chris Hegedus and D. A. Pennebaker, 1979: https://phfilms.com/films/town-bloody-hall/.
22 AA to LJ, May 24, 1971.
23 Germaine Greer, The Female Eunuch (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1971), 241.
24 Leona Sherman, “A Conversation with Alice Adams,” San Francisco Bay Guardian, November 20, 1980, 15.
25 Postcards, PAL to ML; AA to LJ, March 12, 1971.
26 N, May 9, 1974.
27 AA to HMS, June 27, 1968.
28 AA to VW, September 15, 1976.
29 Sandy Boucher, “Alice Adams—a San Francisco novelist who is into her third book,” San Francisco, October 1978, 130–31.
30 Talbot, Season of the Witch, 62.
31 N, December 28, 1970.
32 AA to Richard Carr, September 1981.
33 Paul Jacobs to NM, January 29, 1969, HRC.
34 N, May 27, 1971.
35 Robert Hemenway to AA, October 29, 1969; Peter Matson to AA, November 10, 1969.
36 N, August 4, 1971.
37 AA to LJ, May 24, 1971.
38 LJ to AA, September 19, 1971.
39 HMS to AA, September 28, 1971.
40 WMA, ed. Prize Stories, 1971: The O. Henry Awards (New York: Doubleday, 1971), xi–xii.
41 AA to LJ, July 2, 1972, and August 10, 1972.
42 Ibid., July 2, 1972; LJ to AA, July 30, 1972.
43 Cornelisen to Cyrilly Abels, September 13, 1972, Vassar College Special Collections.
44 AA to WMA, April 29, 1972.
45 Boucher, “Alice Adams,” 131.
46 AA to LJ, November 1, 1972.
4
7 Ibid., February 6, 1973.
48 Charles E. Martin, “Trummy Young: An Unfinished Story,” Second Line 30 (Summer 1978): 35.
49 AA to Ann Cornelisen, August 14, 1973.
50 AA to LJ, October 30, 1973.
51 AA to HMS, June 22, 1973.
52 VW, memo [1973], Knopf papers, HRC.
CHAPTER 20: EDITORS AND FRIENDS
Interviews: JCA, Rachel DuPlessis Blau, Sandy Boucher, Carolyn Burke, Linda Chown, Beverly Dahlen, Kathleen Fraser, Blair Fuller, DJ, Randall Kenan, Ella Leffland, Bryant Mangum, Morissa McNie, Robert McNie Jr., PAL, Lincoln Pain, Louis Pain, David Perlman, Tom Schmidt, VW, Al Zelver.
1 AA to HMS, September 5, 1975.
2 Correspondence and editorial records, AA collection and Knopf collection, HRC.
3 AA to VW, December 18, 1974.
4 LJ to AA, January 20, 1972, March 22, 1972, August 25, 1972; AA to HMS, November 5, 1971; HMS to AA, September 29, 1973.
5 AA to LJ, October 27, 1971.
6 AA in American Voices, 1.
7 Bill Webb to AA [February 1975].
8 AA to JCA, January 14, 1975; JCA to AA, [spring 1974] and [January 1975]; AA to JCA, February 7, 1975.
9 Willie T. Weathers to AA, April 22, 1975.
10 AA to VW, March 3, 1976.
11 HMS to AA, July 23, 1975.
12 Ibid., September 13, 1976.
13 AA to HMS, September 22, 1976.
14 HMS, “About Love and Grasshoppers,” Redbook, May 1977, 40, 126–27, 206ff. “Another Love Story” is collected in The Hat of My Mother: Stories by Max Steele (Chapel Hill: Algonquin Books, 1988), 47–61.
15 Gloria Steinem, “The City Politic,” New York, March 10, 1969.
16 AA to Margery Finn Brown, quoting Patricia Zelver, December 17, 1973. Stanford-grad Zelver lived near Palo Alto, and Alice had recently given a party in celebration of her second novel, The Happy Family.
17 AA to Ann Cornelisen, July 20, 1978, Vassar College Special Collections.
18 AA to HMS, June 22, 1973.
19 Squaw Valley Writers’ Conference: Max Steele to AA, September 1, 1974; AA to Max Steele, September 10, 1974; AA to LJ, September 12, 1974; VW to AA and RKM, August 26, 1974.
20 AA to VW, December 7, 1974.
21 Patricia Holt, “PW Interviews: Alice Adams,” Publishers Weekly, January 16, 1978, 9. Publishers Weekly spelled incorrectly the names of Margery Finn Brown (as Margaret) and Laurie Colwin (as Lori Coleman).
22 AA to “Helen,” July 28, 1975. AA’s letter refers to an interview she recently gave Helen (no last name given) for a publication called “Bookletter” that I have not found.
23 Prize Stories 1972: The O. Henry Awards, ed. William M. Abrahams (New York: Doubleday, 1972), 209.
24 AA to VW, December 7, 1974.
25 AA told HMS (AA to HMS, March 13, 1978) that her story “The Last Married Man” is “sort of about” Nichols, herself, and Leffland.
26 “very sane”: AA to Michael Silverblatt, “Bookworm,” KCRW (Los Angeles), 1989; “least satisfactory”: AA to VW, November 12, 1974.
27 AA to DJ, May 19, 1975.
28 AA to VW, May 20, 1975.
29 N, June 30, 1977.
30 AA to HMS, May 6, 1974.
31 AA to VW, December 28, 1974.
32 LJ to AA, March 13, 1975.
33 AA to LJ, March 18, 1975.
34 AA to JCA, February 28, 1975.
35 Marge Piercy, “The Grand Coolie Damn,” originally published 1969, now at www.feministezine.com/feminist/modern/The-Grand-Coolie-Damn.html.
36 Beverly Dahlen, “The Naming of HOW(ever),” unpublished MS, 2011.
37 “Frances Jaffer Reads Her Poetry,” interview with Shelley Messing for WBAI radio, Pacifica Radio Archives, archive.org/details/pacifica_radio_archives-IZ1422 (recorded 1982).
38 AA to HMS, January 22, 1974.
39 Ibid., May 6, 1974.
40 AA to LJ, June 16, 1975.
41 Denise Sullivan, “History Buff Peter Linenthal Is a Potrero Hill Treasure,” San Francisco Examiner, November 25, 2018, www.sfexaminer.com/history-buff-peter-linenthal-potrero-hill-treasure/.
42 N, December 26, 1975.
43 AA to VW, January 27, 1976; AA to HMS, February 10, 1976.
44 Typed and handwritten journal entry by Morissa McNie, n.d, collection of Serena Burman.
45 Correspondence saved by Morissa McNie, collection of Serena Burman.
46 N, January 24, 1976.
47 AA to VW, June 18, 1977.
48 AA to Staige Blackford, April 19, 1976.
49 AA, “Powerful, Vivid Novel of Two Doomed Sisters” (review of The Easter Parade by Richard Yates), San Francisco Chronicle-Examiner, October 17, 1976.
CHAPTER 21: VERY COLETTE
Interviews: Sally Arteseros, Patricia Holt, Frances Kiernan, Edwina Evers Leggett, PAL, Diane Johnson, Carolyn See, Anne Mollegen Smith, Diana Steele, Oliver Steele.
1 AA to VW, August 16, 1976.
2 AA, “On Turning Fifty.”
3 Ibid.; AA to HMS, February 1, 1977.
4 AA to VW, October 2, 1974.
5 Wayne Warga, “Alice Adams,” Los Angeles Times Book Review, November 16, 1980.
6 VW to AA, May 24, 1976.
7 Ibid., September 16, 1976.
8 AA to VW, September 24, 1976.
9 Draft of letter from VW to AA, October 20, 1976, HRC Knopf papers.
10 VW to AA, December 26, 1976.
11 VW to Robert Gottlieb [1977], Knopf papers, HRC.
12 “all went well”: AA to HMS, February 1, 1977; “she is one of those 30-year-old geniuses”: Wayne Warga, “A sophisticated author gets by with help from her friends,” Los Angeles Times, November 16, 1980, 335.
13 AA to LJ, February 3, 1977.
14 AA to DJ, September 14, 1976; AA to Max Steele, November 16, 1976; AA to LJ, October 23 and November 18, 1976.
15 Cara Chell, “Succeeding in Their Times: Alice Adams on Women and Work,” Soundings: An Interdisciplinary Journal 68 (Spring 1985): 62–71.
16 AA to Frances Kiernan, July 2, 1977, NYPL.
17 John Leonard, “The Poet and the Painter,” New York Times, January 10, 1978; Anne Tyler, “Mother and Daughter and the Pain of Growing Up,” Detroit News February 5, 1978; Tyler, “Two Women,” Quest/78 no. 2 (March–April 1978): 84–85; Lynne Sharon Schwartz, “Listening to Billie by Alice Adams,” San Francisco Review of Books [1978], 26–27.
18 Grover Sales, “A Boswell of the Neurotic Intelligentsia,” Los Angeles Times, January 29, 1978; HMS, “ ‘Listening to Billie’: Novel’s Bright Design States Its Message,” Charlotte Observer, January 29, 1978.
19 Barbara Grizzuti Harrison, “The Clairvoyance of Passion—Alice Adams’s ‘Listening to Billie,’ ” Ms. 6, no. 8 (February 1978), 31–33.
20 Nancy Faber, “Out of the Pages,” People, March 27, 1978, 52–53.
21 AA to HMS, March 13, 1978.
22 AA to Frances Kiernan, April 3, 1978.
23 AA, “Endjokes,” Harper’s, May 1976.
24 Richard Ford, “American Beauty (Circa 1955),” New York Times Book Review, April 9, 2000.
25 AA, “Powerful, Vivid Novel of Two Doomed Sisters,” San Francisco Chronicle-Examiner, April 17, 1976; correspondence between Yates and AA, November–December, 1976, HRC.
26 AA to VW, 18 March 1977.
27 Blake Bailey, A Tragic Honesty: The Life and Work of Richard Yates (New York: Macmillan, 2004), 482.
28 AA, “Loving Odette” (review of Beautiful Women, Ugly Scenes by C. D. B. Bryan), New York Times Book Review, August 28, 1983, 10.
29 AA, “In Love with L.A.,” San Francisco Sunday Examiner & Chronicle, April 24, 1977, 40; Eve Babitz to AA, April 28, 1977.
30 “rather simple-minded”: AA to Alison Lurie, October 25, 1978; AA, “Diane Johnson, delving deep into humanity” (review of Lying Low), Chicago Sun-Times, October 29, 1978, 11.
31 Reviews and associated correspondence HRC.
32 Scott Spenser to AA,
August 27, 1979; AA to HMS, August 28, 1979.
CHAPTER 22: BEAUTIFUL GIRL
1 AA to Ann Cornelisen, May 18, 1976.
2 AA to LJ, January 25, 1979.
3 AA to Dmitri Vedensky, February 5, 1979.
4 Mickey Friedman, “Alice Adams: Rewriting life into fiction,” San Francisco Examiner, February 5, 1979, 22.
5 Laurie Stone: “Short Circuits,” Village Voice, April 2, 1979, 87; Susan Wood: “Stories of Love and Loss,” Washington Post, January 21, 1979.
6 AA to LJ, February 2, 1978; AA to HMS, March 13, 1978; HMS to AA, March 2, 1978.
7 “[Diana] is better looking”: HMS to AA, March 2, 1978; “I honestly don’t think”: AA to LJ, March 23, 1978; “Most people are unsuited”: AA to LJ, August 28, 1978.
8 AA, “At First Sight: Love and Liking, a Memoir.”
9 HMS to AA, November 16, 1979; AA to HMS, January 1, 1979.
10 “Old beaux”: AA to LJ, March 23, 1978; political column: Joseph Kraft, “Italian Communism,” San Francisco Chronicle, April 22, 1976, 35; “If you are in Rome”: AA to DJ, May 13, 1976.
11 AA to HMS, April 23, 1979; AA to LJ, April 26, 1979; AA to LJ, April 30, 1979; LJ to AA, May 20, 1979.
12 AA to LJ, May 23, 1979; LJ to AA, May 31, 1979; AA to LJ, June 4, 1979; AA to HMS, June 6, 1979; AA to LJ, June 23, 1979; LJ to AA, July 7, 1979; LJ to PAL, July 12, 1979; AA to HMS, July 13, 1979; AA to LJ, July 19, 1979.
13 “a terrible letter”: AA to LJ, June 9, 1979.
14 Dotsie’s gifts and the phone call from HMS as described in AA to LJ, June 23, 1979.
15 AA to HMS, July 13, 1979.
16 HMS to Ingram Merrill Foundation [1964].
17 AA to LJ, September 5, 1979.
18 Ibid., September 8, 1979.
19 VW to AA [November, 1979], HRC, Knopf papers.
20 AA to Alice Quinn, October 29, 1979; AA to DJ, October 24, 1979.
21 AA to Frances Kiernan, November 2, 1979.
22 Ann Cornelisen to AA, June 14, 1979. Cornelisen sent AA Trentin’s office address, adding, “His home address seems to be a state secret and he’s not wrong, with kidnappings et al.”
23 AA to DJ, December 18, 1979.
24 AA interview with Marilyn Scharine, 1987.
25 AA to Diane Johnson, December 18, 1979; Neil Feineman, “An Interview with Alice Adams,” StoryQuarterly 11 (1980): 27–37.