Alice Adams
Page 68
22 N, May 21, 1992; John Updike, ed. A Century of Arts and Letters (New York: Columbia University Press, 1998), vii-xii, 264–91.
23 VW to AA, September 20, 1992.
24 Robert Taylor, “Adams’ elegant, complex ‘Almost Perfect,’ ” Boston Globe, July 28, 1993.
25 Morissa McNie to Deborah Sparks, [summer] 1993, collection of Deborah Sparks.
26 Kenneth Baker, “Critics Preview Yerba Events—Surprises in first Galleries show,” San Francisco Chronicle, October 11, 1993, E1.
27 Morissa McNie and Deborah Sparks to CS.
28 N, September 7, 1992.
29 Ibid., September 22, 1992; medical records, Mount Zion Hospital, UCSF. The medical record reports there was “a large left nasal mass that completely occluded the airway and extended in the region of the sephnoethmoid recess to the nasal pharynx. This nasal mass was polypoid in some portions but had a friable and granular texture as well. The disease of the left paranasal sinuses was more extensive. This included disease of the entire ethmoid labyrinth extending to the sphenoid. There was gross disease along the lateral nasal wall in the region of the osteomeatal complex. There was trapped mucopurulent fluid behind this mass lesion.”
30 Ibid., September 22, 1992.
CHAPTER 29: SICK
Interviews: JCA, Steven Barclay, Ruth Gebhart Belmeur, Michelle Blake, Millicent Dillon, Willard Fee Jr., Carol Field, John Field, Frances Gendlin, Lucy Gray, Robert Flynn Johnson, Frances Kiernan, Edwina Evers Leggett, PAL, Dennis McFarland, Derek Parmenter, Sandra Russell, Mark Singer, Diana Steele, David Thomson, Betsy Wing.
1 Daniel Simon, MD, to Willard Fee Jr., MD, late 1995, as reported to CS by Dr. Fee by telephone, July 1, 2011.
2 Mark Singer, MD, to CS by telephone, December 2, 2010.
3 Stanford University Hospital medical records; N, [October–November] 1992.
4 Radiation oncology report by Rami Ben-Yosef, MD, Stanford records, February 11, 1993.
5 N, November 13 and January 11, 1993.
6 Ibid., December 14, 1992.
7 Ibid., November 11, 1992.
8 Ibid., January 24, 1993.
9 The story appeared as “A Shadow on the Brain” in Allure, September 1993, 170–73, 209. To Adams’s consternation, the magazine presented the piece as nonfiction.
10 N, February 15, 1993.
11 Ibid., October 27, 1995; Daniel Simon, MD, to Willard Fee Jr., MD, late 1995, as reported to CS by Dr. Fee by telephone, July 1, 2011.
12 Edwina Evers Leggett to CS.
13 Joan Smith, “Ask Alice,” San Francisco Examiner Magazine, October 22, 1995, 13.
14 N, April 8, 1993.
15 Ibid., “Montana,” July 22, 1993.
16 Dennis McFarland, memorial remarks for Alice Adams, 1999.
17 Details of trip east in N, October 12–19, 1993.
18 Lee Smith, “Going South,” New York Times Book Review, October 8, 1995, 19.
19 Joan Smith, “Ask Alice,” San Francisco Examiner Magazine, October 22, 1995, 13–14.
20 Joan Smith Cramer to CS, November 29, 2016.
21 N, October 12, 1994.
22 Nan Talese to AA, October 18, 1994.
23 N, October 25, 1994.
24 AA to Donald Hall [July 11], 1994.
25 Mavis Gallant to AA [1997].
26 Elisabeth Sherwin, “Adams Gives a Reading, Encourages Others to Write,” Davis Virtual Market, July 14, 1996.
27 Mark Singer, MD to CS by telephone, December 2, 2010.
28 Francine Prose, “Hippocratic Oafs,” Los Angeles Times, June 8, 1997.
29 Correspondence and reviews regarding MM: HRC.
30 Edward Said, On Late Style: Music and Literature Against the Grain (New York: Pantheon Books, 2006), 12.
CHAPTER 30: THE AGE CARD
Interviews: JCA, PA, Michelle Blake, Millicent Dillon, Stephen Drewes, Deirdre English, Thaisa Frank, Mary Gaitskill, Adam Hochschild, Arlie Hochschild, Diane Johnson, Frances Kiernan, Anne Lamott, Ella Leffland, PAL, Phillip Lopate, Alison Lurie, Dennis McFarland, John Murray, Derek Parmenter, Bernard Rosenthal, Penelope Rowlands, William Jay Smith, Elizabeth Spencer, Susan Sward, Amanda Urban.
1 “The Last Lovely City,” LLC.
2 N, August 27–28, 1990.
3 Envelope of photos taken by Barbara Chevalier and saved by Bernard Rosenthal from Felix Rosenthal’s papers.
4 AA to Elizabeth Love, November 11, 1996.
5 Lucy Gray, “Naming the Homeless,” artist’s website, lucygrayphotography.com/photo_gallery/naming-the-homeless/.
6 AA to LJ, May 23, 1979.
7 N, February 4, 1995.
8 AA to Ella Leffland, February 24 [1999].
9 Cathleen Medwick, “Visions and Revisions: An Editor’s Dream,” New York Times, October 27, 2006, F1.
10 Mary Gaitskill, “Alice Adams,” Salon.com, June 9, 1999.
11 N, August 11 and 14, 1996.
12 AA to Betty Love White, August 16, 1996.
13 AA to JCA, July 28, 1998.
14 N, November 3 and 14, 1996; AA, “The Best Revenge,” Boulevard 13, no. 3 (Spring 1998): 82–91.
15 Stephen Drewes to CS.
16 AA to JCA, July 28, 1998.
17 Notebook entries about DP: November 10, 1995, May 1, 1996, February 26, 1997, July 28, 1998, and passim.
18 AA to Betty White Love, February 3, 1999.
19 AA to RP, September 19 [1995].
20 Video of “The Twenty-First Century: Defining the Challenges,” Radcliffe College, June 6, 1997, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study.
21 Philip Anasovich, memorial talk for Alice Adams, June 27, 1999.
22 AA to Adeline Naiman, April 12, 1997.
23 AA, “At First Sight: Love and Liking, a Memoir.”
24 AA to Alison Lurie, “Tuesday” [April 1998]; AA to Don Hall [April 1998].
25 AA, “Why I Left Home: Partial Truths.”
26 AA to JCA, July 28, 1998.
27 N, April 12, 1998; AA to Don Hall, n.d.; AA to Alison Lurie, “Tuesday” [April 1998].
28 AA to Carolyn See, August 22, 1998; photograph, PAL.
29 AA to Donald Hall, May 21 and 28, 1996, Hall papers, University of New Hampshire.
30 AA to Alison Lurie, July 30, 1996, and Alison Lurie to AA, August 22, 1996.
31 N, October–December 1998; Jaicks to AA, December 28, 1998.
32 Ibid., March 28, 1999.
33 Ibid., December 5, 1998; AA, “First Date” and “Her Unmentionables.”
34 Susan Bolotin, “Semidetached Couples,” New York Times Book Review, February 14, 1999; Alison Baker, “Collection Simmers Below Surface,” Sunday Oregonian, February 14, 1999; Sallie Bingham, “Private Lives,” Santa Fe New Mexican, March 21, 1999; Randall Curb, “When Is a Story More Than a Story? A Fiction Chronicle,” Southern Review 35, no. 3 (Summer 1999): 608; Rita D. Jacobs, “The Last Lovely City,” World Literature Today 73, no. 4 (Autumn 1999): 735; Carol Lake, “Prisoners of Passivity: Malaise Afflicts Characters in Adams’ Short Stories,” Austin American-Statesman, March 7, 1999.
35 Mary Gordon: N, February 9, 1999; Mavis Gallant to AA, March 11, 1999.
36 AA to DJ [April 1999]; Donald Hall to AA, May 7, 1999.
37 AA to RP, May 5, 1999, Columbia University archives.
38 AA, “Sending Love,” MS and TS, AA Papers, HRC.
39 Jack Leggett, memorial for AA, June 27, 1999.
40 UCSF medical records. In an email to CS in July 2018, Dr. Thomas Addison commented, “I regret that I was wrong about the cardiac cath ruling out a dissection. A CT scan of the aorta would have been a better study which I suspect was not done. I suspect that today should the same symptom complex arise, a CT with the contrast would have been ordered to evaluate the possibility of a thoracic aneurysm dissection.”
EPILOGUE
Interviews: PA, JCA, Blair Fuller, Sydney Goldstein, Diane Johnson, Frances Kiernan, Edwina Evers Leggett, PAL, Morissa McNie, Robert McNie Jr., John Murray, Judith Ra
scoe, David Reid, Andrea Richardson, Christy Rocca, Penelope Rowlands, Carolyn See, Amanda Urban, Victoria Wilson.
1 Peter Applebom, “Alice Adams, 72, Writer of Deft Novels,” New York Times, May 28, 1999, B11; Elaine Woo, “Alice Adams; Novelist, Short-Story Writer,” Los Angeles Times, May 29, 1999, B8; Susan Sward and Sam Whiting, “Alice Adams—Renowned S.F. Novelist,” San Francisco Chronicle, May 28, 1999, D8.
2 David Kipen, “A Street Named Alice Adams,” San Francisco Chronicle, June 3, 1999, E1, E7.
3 Memorial audio recording, June 27, 1999, HRC.
4 The entire poem appears in note 8, chapter 25.
5 Richard Poirier, “Remembering Alice Adams,” unpublished TS, PAL collection.
6 Randall Curb, “Did Alice Adams lead a double life in literature?” Raleigh News & Observer, December 31, 2000, 4G.
7 Diana Steele to PAL, July 9, 2011.
Index
A note about the index: The pages referenced in this index refer to the page numbers in the print edition. Clicking on a page number will take you to the ebook location that corresponds to the beginning of that page in the print edition. For a comprehensive list of locations of any word or phrase, use your reading system’s search function.
Note: works by Alice Adams are indicated by the title followed by type of work in parentheses; i.e., (novel); (story).
Abbe, James, 520n
Abbe, Jessica, 520n
Abbe, Pauline, 176, 308, 364
Abbe, Richard, 308, 364
Abels, Cyrilly, 291, 294–96, 310, 318, 506
Abrahams, William Miller “Billy,” 225, 291, 327, 384, 459, 463, 498 Adams’s seventieth-birthday party for, 429
“Are You in Love?” character based on, 300
death of, 480–81
editing by, 241, 261, 472, 481
friendship at first sight with, 150, 200, 481, 500
friendship with Adams, 150–52, 158, 159, 166, 167, 176, 178, 200, 239, 292, 332, 338, 358, 364, 418, 481
Adams, Agatha Erskine Boyd (mother) Alice on, 13, 148, 35–36, 57–58, 94, 95
Alice on reaching same age as mother at her death, 373–74
Alice’s association of women’s reactions to her fiction with her mother, 310
Alice’s attempts to fathom through fiction writing, 36
Alice’s definition of self through, 149
Alice’s physical resemblance to, 240, 247
Alice’s study with photograph of, 392
Alice’s wedding to Mark and, 120, 158–59
ambivalence about motherhood and resentment of lost years, 161
bitterness seen in speech to female undergraduates, 95
Bull’s Head Bookshop and, 30, 46, 50
burial site of, 160, 275, 374, 500
death of, 160–61, 164, 504
disapproval of Southern women image by, 12
health problems of, 28, 35
high school teaching jobs of, 14, 17–18, 21
Information Center work in World War II by, 84
joy in nature of, 45
library degree and work of, 54, 57, 65, 84, 94–95, 148, 161
love of Mexico, 56, 57
master’s degree in Spanish, Columbia University, by, 8, 19, 22
mental accomplishment versus sensuality in, 94
physical appearance of, 13, 34, 35, 42, 84, 120, 148, 482–83
political views of, 57
as possible secret drinker, 201
stepmother Dotsie’s disposal of property of, after Nic’s death, 277, 413
summer camp work of, 17, 19, 36, 278
trustee, Randolph-Macon Woman’s College, 95, 160
volunteering to drive sick Negro women to doctors, 57
will not written by, 160n, 162
FAMILY BACKGROUND AND EARLY LIFE, 8–14 ambition in family, 20–21
birth in Roanoke, Virginia, 12, 503
differences in background and temperament between Nic and, 15–16
heritage of pride, gentility, and guilt from plantation past with slaves, 11–12
love of Latin studies, 13, 14, 19
maternal Tayloe ancestors, 9–12
paternal Boyd ancestors, 12
slaveholders among ancestors, 10–12
Southern (Virginian) background of family, 8, 9–12
undergraduate degree with classical studies, 12–14
white Anglo-Saxon Protestant background, 9
MARRIAGE TO NIC, 503 Agatha’s anger at Nic, 250
Agatha’s independence from Nic in later years, 161, 175
Alice’s imagining of parents’ lives before her birth, 19
changes with aging, 35
Chapel Hill farmhouse home, 8, 22–23, 27, 33, 46–47, 53, 503
Chapel Hill life, 21–23, 36, 42, 43, 195
choice of name for daughter, 9
coping with Nic’s absence for depression treatment, 114
death of son in childbirth, 30–33, 40, 160, 343, 503
emotional distance, 33–34
European sojourn and travels, 19–20
financial status and privileged condition of family, 55
marriage to Nic and move to New York, 19
meeting and courtship, 17, 19
Nic as visiting professor at Wisconsin, 65, 71
Nic’s flirtations with other women, 149
Nic’s mental health strains and treatments, 37, 38–39
Nic’s pursuit of Dotsie, 38, 40, 96, 342, 343
separate sleeping arrangements in expanded house, 33
social circle of literature professors, 27
staying in marriage for Alice’s sake, 60
Toklas-Stein visit, 37–38
vacation in Cuba and Mexico, 55, 57–58, 503
Verlie Jones’s employment in home, 24–25, 26–27, 29, 55, 160
Wisconsin stay, 68–71, 76
ALICE’S CHILDHOOD Agatha on Alice as “obstreperous” and “extremely sweet at times,” 41
Agatha’s criticism of Alice, 43, 46
Agatha’s poem “Legacy” and doubts about her parenting, 45
Alice’s adolescent physical development, 61, 62
Alice’s aggressive behavior, 28, 42
Alice’s birth and Agatha’s convalescence, 8–9, 23, 24
Alice’s diary at age eleven describing her activities and friends, 43–44, 45
Alice’s enjoying independence outside of parents’ sphere, 48, 50, 78
Alice sent to grandmother during mother’s pregnancy with son, 30–31
Alice’s identification with Agatha’s accomplishments and disappointments, 116, 149, 162
Alice’s rewriting fairy tales and relocating to familiar sites, 30
college planning with Alice, 86
concerns about Alice’s romantic life, 60–61, 62, 483
desire to teach her daughter to rely on her mind, 49
literary precocity of Alice, 46
summer vacations on Lake Sebago, Maine, 36, 38, 45, 48, 77, 83
AS WRITER extension course guide on Mexico, 56
freelance editorial work, 40
“The Haunted Deacon” (story), 13
“Legacy” (poem), 45
library guides and brief biographies, 96
master’s thesis on legendary character in Spanish drama, 22, 27
Mexican journal, 56, 57, 58
as Nic’s collaborator in academic projects, 8, 19, 22, 40, 54
Paul Green biography, 462
talk on women’s work in later life, 161–62
Thomas Wolfe research for biography, 160, 162
“To a Caller” (poem), 33
writerly ambitions, 8, 19, 22, 108, 116, 149, 302
ALICE’S WRITING RELATED TO PARENTS’ EXPERIENCES Agatha as literary mother of Alice Adams, 58
Beautiful Girl, 36
Careless Love, 36
changing views of her mother after her death, in “Return Trip,” 375
characters based on parents’ marriage in “Are You in
Love?,” 19, 300
coolness toward mother in “A Room Alone,” 114
criticism of Alice’s portrayal of her mother in fiction, 302
description of mother in “Roses, Rhododendron,” 35, 38, 303
effect of parental affairs in “At First Sight,” 39–40
grief at mother’s death in “Alternatives,” 201
mother as complex character in range of fiction, 163
mother’s dreams in “Wonderful,” 107–8
mother’s feelings in “The Fog in the Streets,” 183
range of fiction based on parent’s marriage, 260, 349
stories with theme of family unit of loving parents and children, 34
unpublished story on parents’ romance, 17
visiting burial sites of parents, in short stories, 374
“The Wake,” 36, 57–58, 163–64
Adams, Alice birthday celebrations, 105, 149, 200, 249, 251, 321, 375–76, 403–4, 475, 483, 506
burial site of, 374, 500
cats, 237, 258, 292, 319, 391, 400, 410, 412, 431, 441, 475, 479, 486, 488
clothes as self-expression and freedom, 192–93
death at home, 489
drinking by, 278
feelings of loneliness, 8–9, 129, 181, 278–79, 289, 306, 336, 369, 415, 422, 442, 457, 474, 491
internment of ashes of, 497, 499–500
mother’s will and selling of house, 496–97
New York memorial gathering for Adams, 497, 498
Norman Mailer’s loan to, 159–60
Radcliffe University degree of, 1, 86, 88–95, 99, 105, 108–9, 110, 113–14, 196, 263, 403, 504
smoking by, 107, 115, 250, 254
son Peter on meeting men Alice dated, 215, 228
CHILDHOOD THROUGH COLLEGE Agatha’s dream of being a writer, 107–8
aggressive behavior, 28, 42
awareness of emotional distance of parents, 33–34
birth and mother’s convalescence, 8–9, 23, 24
camp experiences, 47, 48, 49, 55
Chapel Hill farmhouse home, 8, 22–23, 27, 33, 46–47, 53
college planning with parents, 86–87
diary at age eleven describing activities and friends, 43–44, 45
dolls and, 7–8, 29, 36
Dorothy Clark’s charcoal portraits of Alice and Judith, 53