Renata Adler
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| Renata Adler | |
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| Born | Renata Adler October 19, 1938 Milan, Italy |
| Occupation | Novelist, Non-fiction writer, Journalist |
| Nationality | American |
| Writing period | 1968-present |
| Notable work(s) | Towards A Radical Middle (1970) Speedboat (1976) Reckless Disregard (1986) |
Renata Adler (born October 19, 1938 in Milan, Italy) is an American author, journalist and film critic.
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[edit] Background and education
Adler was born in Milan, Italy, and grew up in the New York City suburb of Danbury, Connecticut.[1] (Her German Jewish parents had fled Frankfurt and the Nazi regime in 1933.)[2] After attending Bryn Mawr, The Sorbonne, and Harvard, she became a staff writer-reporter for The New Yorker. She later enrolled in Yale Law School.
[edit] Journalism
In 1968-69, Alder served as chief film critic for the New York Times. Her film reviews were collected in her book "A Year in the Dark." She then joined the staff of The New Yorker, where she remained for four decades.[3] Her reporting and essays for The New Yorker on politics, war, and civil rights were reprinted in "Toward a Radical Middle."
Her "Letter from the Palmer House" was included in the Best Magazine Articles of the Seventies.
[edit] Books
[edit] Fiction
Adler is also a high-regarded fiction writer. In 1974, her short story "Brownstone" won First Prize in the O. Henry Awards. Her novel Speedboat won the Ernest Hemingway Award for Best First Novel of 1976.
Her next novel, Pitch Dark (1983), was a highly regarded—and also best-selling—sequel. "Nobody writes better prose than Renata Adler's," critic John Leonard wrote in Vanity Fair.
[edit] Non-fiction
Adler's 1986 book Reckless Disregard: Westmoreland v. CBS et al., Sharon v. Time, an account of two libel trials and the First Amendment, was also praised: "This book should be under the Christmas tree of every lawyer and journalist," wrote William B. Shannon in The Washington Post; Edwin M. Yoder, also in The Washington Post, wrote, "Reckless Disregard is the best book about American journalism of our time." Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker (1999) occasioned, among journalists who had long felt themselves under attack by Adler,[citation needed] a kind of herd instinct of unprecedented outrage—11 negative pieces in various sections of The New York Times alone.[citation needed] The episode has already entered the lore of extreme pack journalism when its vanity is touched.[citation needed]
In 2001, Adler published Canaries in the Mineshaft: Essays on Politics and the Media, a collection of pieces from The New Yorker, Atlantic, Harper's, The New Republic, The Los Angeles Times, Vanity Fair, and The New York Review of Books. Some of these, on the National Guard, Biafra, Pauline Kael, soap operas, the impeachment inquiries (of both Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton), and the press, had received awards.[citation needed]
[edit] Honors
In 1987, Adler was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters. That same year, she received an honorary doctorate from Georgetown University. Her "Letter from Selma" has been published in the Library of America volume of Civil Rights Reporting. An essay from her tenure as film critic of The New York Times is included in the Library of America volume of American Film Criticism. In 2004, she served as a Media Fellow at Stanford's Hoover Institute.[4]
Spy magazine once called her one of the "10 Most Litigious New Yorkers."
[edit] Bibliography
- (1969) A Year in the Dark: Journal of a Film Critic, 1968-69. New York: Random House.
- (1970) Toward a Radical Middle: Fourteen Pieces of Reporting and Criticism. New York: Random House.
- (1976) Speedboat. New York: Random House. ISBN 0-394-48876-8.
- (1983) Pitch Dark. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-394-50374-0.
- (1986) Reckless Disregard: Westmoreland v. CBS et al., Sharon v. Time. New York: Knopf. ISBN 0-394-52751-8.
- (1999) Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker. New York: Simon & Schuster. ISBN 0-684-80816-1.
- (2001) Canaries in the Mineshaft: Essays on Politics and the Media. New York: St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-27520-X.
- (2004) Irreparable Harm: The U.S. Supreme Court and the Decision that Made George W. Bush President. Hoboken, N.J.: Melville House Pub.. ISBN 0-9749609-5-0.
- In Private Capacity: The History of the Bilderberg Conference. 320 pages, Time Warner Paperbacks (5 Sep 2002), ISBN 0-316-85545-6 [1]
[edit] Personal
Adler currently teaches at Boston University as a Visiting Professor of Journalism. Her son Stephen (born 1986) currently attends Boston University.
Adler has a dog named Julius and a cat, Cleopatra.
