I wonder if you remember 84 Charing Cross Road? It was a delightful film with Anthony Hopkins in his London bookshop during the stringent times of the Second World War and Anne Bancroft as a jobbing writer sitting for the most part alone at her typewriter in her small New York City apartment. The book as nearly always was even better. This story kept coming to mind as I read my new acquisition about ‘The Odd Woman.’
The Strand bookshop near my daughter’s apartment in the city nearly always has a large table at the front of the shop displaying books about or set in New York City. I do enjoy reading a book that is geographically where I am. It adds to the flavour somehow. So, obviously this was a slim volume that had to be mine.
Vivian Gornick was not a writer that I knew of but she has produced a lot: several books, short stories for many periodicals and even the dizzy heights of the New Yorker. She has written essays and papers…and of course she teaches. I’m sure all of the above are necessary to support a life in this most extortionate of cities.
This book is essentially a memoir of growing up in the Bronx, longing and eventually managing to live in Manhattan. For most of the time Vivian is single and so, as is often the case, her friends are very important, particularly Leonard, who she describes thus:
‘My friend Leonard is a witty, intelligent gay man, sophisticated about his own unhappiness.’
That is, I find, quite a funny line and very New York. Leonard is not an everyday sort of friend but there is an understanding between them that whenever wanted or needed, they are at the end of the phone for each other. There is a Jewish strain that runs through much of New York humour and it nearly always has a hint of melancholy to it, as well as the ability to mock oneself. This city can be quite harsh, people are often loud, confrontational and brusque. All this comes through so clearly in this memoir. I can sense myself walking through the Upper West Side streets and passing the characters that she writes of. It is a beautifully composed piece that I am so pleased to have picked up from that large, round table.