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{{Short description|American novelist and biographer (1918–2022)}} |
{{Short description|American novelist and biographer (1918–2022)}} |
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{{Use mdy dates|date=November 2022}} |
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{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] --> |
{{Infobox writer <!-- for more information see [[:Template:Infobox writer/doc]] --> |
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| name = Doris Grumbach |
| name = Doris Grumbach |
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| caption = Doris Grumbach in 1980 |
| caption = Doris Grumbach in 1980 |
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| pseudonym = |
| pseudonym = |
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| birth_name = Doris M. Isaac |
| birth_name = Doris M. Isaac |
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| birth_place = [[Manhattan, New York]], U.S. |
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| death_date = {{death date and age|mf=y|2022|11| |
| birth_place = New York City, U.S. |
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| death_date = {{death date and age|mf=y|2022|11|04|1918|07|12}} |
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| death_place = [[Kennett Square, Pennsylvania]], U.S. |
| death_place = [[Kennett Square, Pennsylvania]], U.S. |
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| occupation = {{flatlist| |
| occupation = {{flatlist| |
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* |
* Novelist |
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* |
* memoirist |
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* [[biographer]] |
* [[List of biographers|biographer]] |
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* professor |
* professor |
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* bookstore owner |
* bookstore owner |
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}} |
}} |
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| alma_mater = [[Washington Square College]] of [[New York University]]<br/>[[Cornell]] |
| alma_mater = [[New York University College of Arts & Science#History|Washington Square College]] of [[New York University]]<br />[[Cornell University]] |
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| period = |
| period = |
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| genre = |
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'''Doris M. Grumbach''' (''[[née]]'' '''Isaac'''; July 12, 1918 – November 4, 2022) was an American novelist, memoirist, biographer, literary critic, and essayist. She taught at the [[College of Saint Rose]] in [[Albany, New York]], the [[Iowa Writers' Workshop]], and [[American University]] in |
'''Doris M. Grumbach''' (''[[Birth name#Maiden and married names|née]]'' '''Isaac'''; July 12, 1918 – November 4, 2022) was an American novelist, memoirist, biographer, literary critic, and essayist. She taught at the [[College of Saint Rose]] in [[Albany, New York]], the [[Iowa Writers' Workshop]], and [[American University]] in Washington, D.C., and was literary editor of ''[[The New Republic]]'' for several years. She published many novels highlighting and focusing on gay and lesbian characters. For two decades, she and her partner, Sybil Pike, operated a bookstore, Wayward Books, in [[Sargentville, Maine]].<ref name=":0">{{Cite web|title=Happy 100th Birthday to Memoirist, Author, Professor, and NPR Contributor Doris Grumbach|url=http://www.thegayalmanac.com/2018/07/happy-100th-birthday-to-memoirist.html|access-date=December 5, 2020|archive-date=September 24, 2020|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20200924220827/http://thegayalmanac.com/2018/07/happy-100th-birthday-to-memoirist.html|url-status=dead}}</ref> |
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==Personal life== |
==Personal life== |
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'''Doris M Isaac''' was born in |
'''Doris M. Isaac''' was born in New York City as a fifth-generation Manhattanite, to Leonard William Isaac and Helen Oppenheimer.<ref>"Doris M. Isaac" in the New York, New York, U.S., Birth Index, 1910-1965</ref> When she was six, her younger sister Joan Elaine Isaac was born. |
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She grew up in [[Manhattan]], where she attended [[PS 9 Sarah Anderson School|elementary school PS 9]]. A very bright student, she skipped many grades and entered high school at age eleven. She was not prepared socially for this early advancement and did poorly, developing a stammer and losing her self-confidence. She was encouraged by the principal to take a year off from |
She grew up in [[Manhattan]], where she attended [[PS 9 Sarah Anderson School|elementary school PS 9]]. A very bright student, she skipped many grades and entered high school at age eleven. She was not prepared socially for this early advancement and did poorly, developing a stammer and losing her self-confidence. She was encouraged by the principal to take a year off from high school. When she returned, she was an indifferent student in the classroom, but showed talent in theater and in creative writing. In her senior year, she won a citywide short story contest, which helped secure her admission to [[New York University College of Arts & Science#History|Washington Square College]] of [[New York University]].<ref name=":0" /> |
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Isaac received her |
Isaac received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Washington Square College of New York University in 1939. She majored in philosophy and graduated [[Phi Beta Kappa]].<ref name=":1">{{Cite web |first=Doris |last=Grumbach |display-authors=0 |title=Doris Grumbach Collection |date=1991–1996 |url=https://www.une.edu/mwwc/research/featured-writers/doris-grumbach-collection-1991-1996 |access-date=December 5, 2020 |website=University of New England |language=en}}</ref> |
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In 1940, she earned her |
In 1940, she earned her Master of Arts degree in [[medieval literature]] from [[Cornell University]]. There, she met her husband, Leonard Grumbach, who was studying for his doctorate in [[neurophysiology]]. They were married on October 5, 1941.<ref>"Doris Grumbach" in the U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995</ref><ref name=":2">{{Cite web|last=Rolle|first=Elisa|date=July 12, 2014|title=Doris Grumbach & Sybil Pike|url=https://reviews-and-ramblings.dreamwidth.org/1573304.html|access-date=December 5, 2020|website=reviews-and-ramblings|language=en}}</ref> |
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After the war, Grumbach moved around the country with her husband as he taught [[physiology]]. During this period, the Grumbachs had four daughters: Barbara, Jane, Elizabeth, and Kathryn. Before the birth of their fourth daughter, the Grumbachs settled in [[Albany, |
After the war, Grumbach moved around the country with her husband as he taught [[physiology]]. During this period, the Grumbachs had four daughters: Barbara, Jane, Elizabeth, and Kathryn. Before the birth of their fourth daughter, the Grumbachs settled in [[Albany, New York]], where Leonard Grumbach taught at [[Albany Medical College]] and Doris Grumbach began a career in teaching.<ref name=":3">{{Cite web|title=archives.nypl.org -- Doris Grumbach papers|url=http://archives.nypl.org/mss/1261|access-date=December 5, 2020|website=archives.nypl.org}}</ref> |
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In 1971, after raising their children, Grumbach left her husband. She spent a year in [[Saratoga Springs, New York|Saratoga Springs]], |
In 1971, after raising their children, Grumbach left her husband. She spent a year in [[Saratoga Springs, New York|Saratoga Springs]], New York, helping to set up the external degree program at [[Empire State College]]. Following her divorce, she began a relationship with Sybil Pike, who became and remained her life partner. In 1972, accepting a position at ''[[The New Republic]]'' magazine as literary editor, Grumbach and Pike moved to Washington, D.C. Pike worked for the [[Library of Congress]].<ref name=":4">{{Cite news|last=Miller|first=Lori|date=April 19, 1990|title=HILL BOOKSHOP WANDERS OFF DOWN EAST|url=https://www.washingtonpost.com/archive/local/1990/04/19/hill-bookshop-wanders-off-down-east/28fb867f-142a-47fc-adae-4dea4e4b9644/|newspaper=The Washington Post}}</ref> |
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⚫ | In 1990 Grumbach and Pike moved themselves and the bookstore to [[Sedgwick, Maine|Sargentville, Maine]].<ref name=":2" />{{sfn|Grumbach|1991–1996}} There, Grumbach continued to write while Pike tended to the bookstore. Grumbach published another fiction novel, ''The Book of Knowledge,'' in 1995, and several memoirs focusing mostly on aging.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States|publisher=ABC-CLIO|year=2009|isbn=9780313348600|editor-last=Nelson|editor-first=Emmanuel S.|pages=276–278}}</ref> In 2009 Wayward Books and their house in Maine were sold. |
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In 1990 Grumbach and Pike moved to [[Sedgwick, Maine|Sargentville]], [[Maine]].<ref name=":2" /> |
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Around 2009, the couple moved to a Quaker retirement community in Kennett Square, |
Around 2009, the couple moved to a Quaker retirement community in [[Kennett Square, Pennsylvania]], where Pike died in March 2021, aged 91.<ref name="chestercounty.com">[https://www.chestercounty.com/2021/03/29/351908/obituaries-for-march-29 ChesterCounty: Obituaries for March 29]</ref> Grumbach continued to write, contributing pieces of memoir and articles on old age to [[The American Scholar]].<ref>{{Cite web|date=March 2, 2011|title=The View from 90|url=https://theamericanscholar.org/the-view-from-90/|access-date=December 5, 2020|website=The American Scholar|language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=March 11, 2014|title=A Whole Day Nearer Now|url=https://theamericanscholar.org/a-whole-day-nearer-now/|access-date=December 5, 2020|website=The American Scholar|language=en-US}}</ref><ref>{{Cite web|date=February 29, 2016|title=The Remains of My Days|url=https://theamericanscholar.org/the-remains-of-my-days/|access-date=December 5, 2020|website=The American Scholar|language=en-US}}</ref> Grumbach celebrated her 100th birthday in 2018,<ref name=":0" /> and died in Kennett Square on November 4, 2022, at the age of 104.<ref>{{cite web |last1=McFadden |first1=Robert D. |title=Doris Grumbach, Author Who Explored Women's Plight, Dies at 104 |url=https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/05/books/doris-grumbach-dead.html |website=[[The New York Times]] |access-date=November 5, 2022}}</ref> |
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== Career == |
== Career == |
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During |
During 1940–1941, Grumbach worked for Loew's Inc./MGM writing subtitles for films distributed abroad. During 1941–1942, she was employed as a proofreader for [[Mademoiselle (magazine)|''Mademoiselle'' magazine]] and then for the journal ''[[Architectural Forum]]'' in 1942–1943, eventually rising to the position of associate editor. When her husband was drafted during [[World War II]], Grumbach joined the [[United States Navy|U.S. Navy]] in 1943 as an officer in the [[WAVES]] and served from 1943 to 1945.<ref name=":2" /> |
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From 1957 to 1960, she taught senior English at the [[Albany Academy for Girls]]. In 1960, she became a professor of English at the [[College of Saint Rose]] in Albany and taught there until 1971. During her time at the college, Grumbach also began to focus on her writing career and published her first two novels, ''The Spoil of the Flowers'' (1962), and ''The Short Throat, The Tender Mouth'' (1964). In 1967 she published a literary |
From 1957 to 1960, she taught senior English at the [[Albany Academy for Girls]]. In 1960, she became a professor of English at the [[College of Saint Rose]] also in [[Albany, New York]] and taught there until 1971. During her time at the college, Grumbach also began to focus on her writing career and published her first two novels, ''The Spoil of the Flowers'' (1962), and ''The Short Throat, The Tender Mouth'' (1964). In 1967 she published a literary biography of novelist [[Mary McCarthy (author)|Mary McCarthy]] titled ''The Company She Kept'', based in part on correspondence and other documents which McCarthy had shared with Grumbach.<ref name=":3" /> |
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Grumbach worked as a literary editor for ''The New Republic''. She wrote a column called "Fine Print |
Grumbach worked as a literary editor for ''The New Republic''. She wrote a column called "Fine Print". After two years, the magazine was sold and Grumbach lost her job. She remained in Washington with Pike and in 1975 accepted a position as a professor of [[American literature]] at [[American University]]. During this time, she also wrote a non-fiction column for ''[[The New York Times Book Review]]'' and her column "Fine Print" was picked up by the [[Saturday Review (U.S. magazine)|Saturday Review.]]<ref name=":1" /> |
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In 1979, Grumbach published the novel ''Chamber Music'', which was critically well-received and helped establish her reputation as a novelist. In six years, three more books followed: ''The Missing Person'' (1981), ''The Ladies'' (1984), and ''The Magician's Girl'' (1987). During this period, Grumbach also taught creative writing at the [[Iowa Writers' Workshop]] at the [[University of Iowa]] and at [[Johns Hopkins University]], where she substituted briefly for [[John Barth]]. Grumbach |
In 1979, Grumbach published the novel ''Chamber Music'', which was critically well-received and helped establish her reputation as a novelist. In six years, three more books followed: ''The Missing Person'' (1981), ''The Ladies'' (1984), and ''The Magician's Girl'' (1987). During this period, Grumbach also taught creative writing at the [[Iowa Writers' Workshop]] at the [[University of Iowa]] and at [[Johns Hopkins University]], where she substituted briefly for [[John Barth]]. Grumbach was also a book reviewer and commentator for the ''Morning Edition'' of [[NPR|National Public Radio]] and the televised ''[[PBS NewsHour|MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour]]''.<ref name=":1" /> |
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In 1985, Grumbach resigned from her professorship at American University but remained in Washington, D.C. |
In 1985, Grumbach resigned from her professorship at American University but remained in Washington, D.C. for five more years. She and Pike opened a bookstore for rare and used books, named Wayward Books, located near [[Eastern Market, Washington, D.C.|Eastern Market]], on [[Capitol Hill]].<ref name=":4" /> |
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⚫ | In 1990 Grumbach and Pike moved themselves and the bookstore to [[Sedgwick, Maine|Sargentville |
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===Critical reception of Grumbach's work=== |
===Critical reception of Grumbach's work=== |
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Several facets of |
Several facets of Grumbach's work have won her both praise and criticism. Grumbach is often lauded as a [[Feminism|feminist]] writer, championing the cause of women in her fiction and revealing the economic, social, and psychological difficulties women face. Other critics find her work not feminist enough and regard her portrayals of women characters as stilted. Grumbach is both highly regarded and often criticized for her focus on gay and lesbian characters. A number of her works, such as ''The Spoil of the Flowers'', ''Chamber Music'', and ''The Ladies'', focus on gay and lesbian themes and characters. Grumbach wrote in a wide range of genres, as a novelist, literary critic, essayist, biographer, memoirist, and cultural critic. |
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As a writer who explored gay and lesbian themes in the 1950s and 1960s, Grumbach tends to be grouped with other groundbreaking authors who explored these themes and issues at a time in which the popular sentiment was to regard |
As a writer who explored gay and lesbian themes in the 1950s and 1960s, Grumbach tends to be grouped with other groundbreaking authors who explored these themes and issues at a time in which the popular sentiment was to regard homosexuality as deviant behavior. Such writers as [[Ann Bannon]], [[Marijane Meaker]], [[May Sarton]], [[Sylvia Townsend Warner]], and [[Patricia Highsmith]] explored gay and lesbian themes in positive ways similar to Grumbach. As Ann Cothran, a literary critic of writers on lesbian themes and author of a study on [[Simone de Beauvoir]] states, perhaps Grumbach's “most important contribution to gay and lesbian literature is the manner in which she consistently represents homosexual relationships matter of factly, as an integral part of the human landscape. Grumbach depicts lesbianism as a positive, life-giving force in women's lives.” |
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Grumbach's novels tend to be literary and literate in tone in that she often draws upon well-known writers or writings for her titles and for references within her works. For example, she drew her title for ''The Spoil of the Flowers'' from a poetic fragment by [[Euripides]], the title for ''The Short Throat, The Tender Mouth'' from "The Pardoner's Tale" in ''[[The Canterbury Tales]]'' by [[Geoffrey Chaucer]], and ''The Magician's Girl'' from a poem by [[Sylvia Plath]]. In addition, Grumbach's writings often refer to well-known or arcane writings; her dialogues or [[Intrapersonal communication|internal monologues]] have phrases from Latin, French, and other languages. |
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Critics have noted that she |
Critics have noted that she drew from historic persons and events for her fiction. In ''Chamber Music'', for example, she based the characters and the plot on the American composer [[Edward MacDowell]] and his wife, Marian, upon [[Marilyn Monroe]] in ''The Missing Person'', upon Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby in ''The Ladies'', and [[Sylvia Plath]] and [[Diane Arbus]] in ''The Magician's Girl''.<ref>{{Cite news|last=Schreiber|first=le Anne|date=October 2, 1994|title=Home Alone (Published 1994)|language=en-US|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1994/10/02/books/home-alone.html|access-date=December 5, 2020|issn=0362-4331}}</ref> |
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A significant part of her reputation and the current audience is based upon her two |
A significant part of her reputation and the current audience is based upon her two memoirs that focus on aging: ''Coming into the End Zone'' and ''Extra Innings''. She also explored spiritual reflections about her life in ''The Presence of Absence: On Prayers and an Epiphany'' and in her memoir ''Fifty Days of Solitude''. Grumbach penned introductions and critical assessments of the works of such writers as [[Willa Cather]], [[Edith Wharton]], and [[Zora Neale Hurston]]. Grumbach also wrote an influential review of the novel ''Wise Blood'' by [[Flannery O'Connor]]. Her article on an aborted plan to write a biography of Willa Cather was published in ''[[The American Scholar]]'' in January 2001. |
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Grumbach remains an important author for the focus she brought to |
Grumbach remains an important author for the focus she brought to women's lives and women's struggles in the redefinition of women's roles from the 1950s onward. This dimension is especially true with regard to her positive presentations of lesbians and lesbian lifestyles. Grumbach is admired for her writing style and characterization, which often presents overtones of [[Henry James]] and of [[Gustave Flaubert]] and [[Jane Austen]] in Grumbach's focus upon social conventions and their influence upon the development of individual lives and psyches. Grumbach is one of several 20th-century women writers, such as Sylvia Townsend Warner, [[Valentine Ackland]], and [[Katherine Mansfield]], who represents a transition from Victorian styles and emphases combined with the social and psychological concerns of [[modernism]].{{citation needed|date=September 2011}} Grumbach's papers (from 1938 to 2002) are archived in the [[New York Public Library]] (Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division). |
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She received the [[Bill Whitehead Award]] for Lifetime Achievement from [[Publishing Triangle]] in 2000.{{ |
She received the [[Bill Whitehead Award]] for Lifetime Achievement from [[Publishing Triangle]] in 2000.<ref>{{cite web | title=The Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement | website=The Publishing Triangle | date=21 September 2023 | url=https://publishingtriangle.org/awards/bill-whitehead-award/ | ref={{sfnref | The Publishing Triangle | 2023}} | access-date=16 July 2024}}</ref> |
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== |
== Bibliography == |
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{{Incomplete list |date=May 2023}}{{bots|deny=Citation bot}} |
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===Novels=== |
===Novels=== |
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*''The Missing Person'' (1981) |
*''The Missing Person'' (1981) |
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*''The Ladies'' (1984) |
*''The Ladies'' (1984) |
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*''The |
*''The Magician's Girl'' (1987) |
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*''The Book of Knowledge'' (1995) |
*''The Book of Knowledge'' (1995) |
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=== |
===Non-fiction=== |
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⚫ | |||
* {{cite journal <!--|author=Grumbach, Doris |author-mask=1--> |date=January 2023 |title=Father Church and the motherhood of God |department=From the Archives |journal=Commonweal |volume=150 |issue=1 |pages=18–19 |url=https://www.commonwealmagazine.org/father-church-and-motherhood-god |url-access=limited <!--|access-date=2023-05-29-->}}<ref group=lower-alpha>Originally published in 1970.</ref> |
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;Memoirs |
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*''Coming into the End Zone'' (1991) |
*''Coming into the End Zone'' (1991) |
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*''Extra Innings'' (1993) |
*''Extra Innings'' (1993) |
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*''The Pleasure of Their Company'' (2001) |
*''The Pleasure of Their Company'' (2001) |
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=== |
===Children's books=== |
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===Children’s book=== |
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*''Lord, I Have No Courage'' (1964) |
*''Lord, I Have No Courage'' (1964) |
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——————— |
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;Notes |
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{{reflist|40em|group=lower-alpha}} |
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==References== |
==References== |
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{{reflist |
{{reflist}} |
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==External links== |
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*{{Charlie Rose guest|8404}} |
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{{Authority control}} |
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Grumbach, Doris}} |
{{DEFAULTSORT:Grumbach, Doris}} |
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[[Category:2022 deaths]] |
[[Category:2022 deaths]] |
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[[Category:20th-century American novelists]] |
[[Category:20th-century American novelists]] |
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[[Category:American LGBT military personnel]] |
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[[Category:American lesbian writers]] |
[[Category:American lesbian writers]] |
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[[Category:Commonweal (magazine) people]] |
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[[Category:Cornell University alumni]] |
[[Category:Cornell University alumni]] |
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[[Category:Female United States Navy officers]] |
[[Category:Female United States Navy officers]] |
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[[Category:Lesbian memoirists]] |
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[[Category:Lambda Literary Award winners]] |
[[Category:Lambda Literary Award winners]] |
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[[Category:MacDowell Colony fellows]] |
[[Category:MacDowell Colony fellows]] |
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[[Category:Military personnel from New York City]] |
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[[Category:New York University alumni]] |
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[[Category:People from Kennett Square, Pennsylvania]] |
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[[Category:People from Sedgwick, Maine]] |
[[Category:People from Sedgwick, Maine]] |
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[[Category: |
[[Category:United States Navy officers]] |
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[[Category:WAVES personnel]] |
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Latest revision as of 07:47, 16 July 2024
Doris Grumbach | |
---|---|
Born | Doris M. Isaac July 12, 1918 New York City, U.S. |
Died | November 4, 2022 Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, U.S. | (aged 104)
Occupation |
|
Alma mater | Washington Square College of New York University Cornell University |
Spouse |
Leonard Grumbach
(m. 1941; div. 1972) |
Partner | Sybil Pike (1972–2021; her death)[1] |
Children | 4 |
Doris M. Grumbach (née Isaac; July 12, 1918 – November 4, 2022) was an American novelist, memoirist, biographer, literary critic, and essayist. She taught at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and American University in Washington, D.C., and was literary editor of The New Republic for several years. She published many novels highlighting and focusing on gay and lesbian characters. For two decades, she and her partner, Sybil Pike, operated a bookstore, Wayward Books, in Sargentville, Maine.[2]
Personal life
[edit]Doris M. Isaac was born in New York City as a fifth-generation Manhattanite, to Leonard William Isaac and Helen Oppenheimer.[3] When she was six, her younger sister Joan Elaine Isaac was born.
She grew up in Manhattan, where she attended elementary school PS 9. A very bright student, she skipped many grades and entered high school at age eleven. She was not prepared socially for this early advancement and did poorly, developing a stammer and losing her self-confidence. She was encouraged by the principal to take a year off from high school. When she returned, she was an indifferent student in the classroom, but showed talent in theater and in creative writing. In her senior year, she won a citywide short story contest, which helped secure her admission to Washington Square College of New York University.[2]
Isaac received her Bachelor of Arts degree from Washington Square College of New York University in 1939. She majored in philosophy and graduated Phi Beta Kappa.[4]
In 1940, she earned her Master of Arts degree in medieval literature from Cornell University. There, she met her husband, Leonard Grumbach, who was studying for his doctorate in neurophysiology. They were married on October 5, 1941.[5][6]
After the war, Grumbach moved around the country with her husband as he taught physiology. During this period, the Grumbachs had four daughters: Barbara, Jane, Elizabeth, and Kathryn. Before the birth of their fourth daughter, the Grumbachs settled in Albany, New York, where Leonard Grumbach taught at Albany Medical College and Doris Grumbach began a career in teaching.[7]
In 1971, after raising their children, Grumbach left her husband. She spent a year in Saratoga Springs, New York, helping to set up the external degree program at Empire State College. Following her divorce, she began a relationship with Sybil Pike, who became and remained her life partner. In 1972, accepting a position at The New Republic magazine as literary editor, Grumbach and Pike moved to Washington, D.C. Pike worked for the Library of Congress.[8]
In 1990 Grumbach and Pike moved themselves and the bookstore to Sargentville, Maine.[6][9] There, Grumbach continued to write while Pike tended to the bookstore. Grumbach published another fiction novel, The Book of Knowledge, in 1995, and several memoirs focusing mostly on aging.[10] In 2009 Wayward Books and their house in Maine were sold.
Around 2009, the couple moved to a Quaker retirement community in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, where Pike died in March 2021, aged 91.[1] Grumbach continued to write, contributing pieces of memoir and articles on old age to The American Scholar.[11][12][13] Grumbach celebrated her 100th birthday in 2018,[2] and died in Kennett Square on November 4, 2022, at the age of 104.[14]
Career
[edit]During 1940–1941, Grumbach worked for Loew's Inc./MGM writing subtitles for films distributed abroad. During 1941–1942, she was employed as a proofreader for Mademoiselle magazine and then for the journal Architectural Forum in 1942–1943, eventually rising to the position of associate editor. When her husband was drafted during World War II, Grumbach joined the U.S. Navy in 1943 as an officer in the WAVES and served from 1943 to 1945.[6]
From 1957 to 1960, she taught senior English at the Albany Academy for Girls. In 1960, she became a professor of English at the College of Saint Rose also in Albany, New York and taught there until 1971. During her time at the college, Grumbach also began to focus on her writing career and published her first two novels, The Spoil of the Flowers (1962), and The Short Throat, The Tender Mouth (1964). In 1967 she published a literary biography of novelist Mary McCarthy titled The Company She Kept, based in part on correspondence and other documents which McCarthy had shared with Grumbach.[7]
Grumbach worked as a literary editor for The New Republic. She wrote a column called "Fine Print". After two years, the magazine was sold and Grumbach lost her job. She remained in Washington with Pike and in 1975 accepted a position as a professor of American literature at American University. During this time, she also wrote a non-fiction column for The New York Times Book Review and her column "Fine Print" was picked up by the Saturday Review.[4]
In 1979, Grumbach published the novel Chamber Music, which was critically well-received and helped establish her reputation as a novelist. In six years, three more books followed: The Missing Person (1981), The Ladies (1984), and The Magician's Girl (1987). During this period, Grumbach also taught creative writing at the Iowa Writers' Workshop at the University of Iowa and at Johns Hopkins University, where she substituted briefly for John Barth. Grumbach was also a book reviewer and commentator for the Morning Edition of National Public Radio and the televised MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour.[4]
In 1985, Grumbach resigned from her professorship at American University but remained in Washington, D.C. for five more years. She and Pike opened a bookstore for rare and used books, named Wayward Books, located near Eastern Market, on Capitol Hill.[8]
Critical reception of Grumbach's work
[edit]Several facets of Grumbach's work have won her both praise and criticism. Grumbach is often lauded as a feminist writer, championing the cause of women in her fiction and revealing the economic, social, and psychological difficulties women face. Other critics find her work not feminist enough and regard her portrayals of women characters as stilted. Grumbach is both highly regarded and often criticized for her focus on gay and lesbian characters. A number of her works, such as The Spoil of the Flowers, Chamber Music, and The Ladies, focus on gay and lesbian themes and characters. Grumbach wrote in a wide range of genres, as a novelist, literary critic, essayist, biographer, memoirist, and cultural critic.
As a writer who explored gay and lesbian themes in the 1950s and 1960s, Grumbach tends to be grouped with other groundbreaking authors who explored these themes and issues at a time in which the popular sentiment was to regard homosexuality as deviant behavior. Such writers as Ann Bannon, Marijane Meaker, May Sarton, Sylvia Townsend Warner, and Patricia Highsmith explored gay and lesbian themes in positive ways similar to Grumbach. As Ann Cothran, a literary critic of writers on lesbian themes and author of a study on Simone de Beauvoir states, perhaps Grumbach's “most important contribution to gay and lesbian literature is the manner in which she consistently represents homosexual relationships matter of factly, as an integral part of the human landscape. Grumbach depicts lesbianism as a positive, life-giving force in women's lives.”
Grumbach's novels tend to be literary and literate in tone in that she often draws upon well-known writers or writings for her titles and for references within her works. For example, she drew her title for The Spoil of the Flowers from a poetic fragment by Euripides, the title for The Short Throat, The Tender Mouth from "The Pardoner's Tale" in The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer, and The Magician's Girl from a poem by Sylvia Plath. In addition, Grumbach's writings often refer to well-known or arcane writings; her dialogues or internal monologues have phrases from Latin, French, and other languages.
Critics have noted that she drew from historic persons and events for her fiction. In Chamber Music, for example, she based the characters and the plot on the American composer Edward MacDowell and his wife, Marian, upon Marilyn Monroe in The Missing Person, upon Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby in The Ladies, and Sylvia Plath and Diane Arbus in The Magician's Girl.[15]
A significant part of her reputation and the current audience is based upon her two memoirs that focus on aging: Coming into the End Zone and Extra Innings. She also explored spiritual reflections about her life in The Presence of Absence: On Prayers and an Epiphany and in her memoir Fifty Days of Solitude. Grumbach penned introductions and critical assessments of the works of such writers as Willa Cather, Edith Wharton, and Zora Neale Hurston. Grumbach also wrote an influential review of the novel Wise Blood by Flannery O'Connor. Her article on an aborted plan to write a biography of Willa Cather was published in The American Scholar in January 2001.
Grumbach remains an important author for the focus she brought to women's lives and women's struggles in the redefinition of women's roles from the 1950s onward. This dimension is especially true with regard to her positive presentations of lesbians and lesbian lifestyles. Grumbach is admired for her writing style and characterization, which often presents overtones of Henry James and of Gustave Flaubert and Jane Austen in Grumbach's focus upon social conventions and their influence upon the development of individual lives and psyches. Grumbach is one of several 20th-century women writers, such as Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland, and Katherine Mansfield, who represents a transition from Victorian styles and emphases combined with the social and psychological concerns of modernism.[citation needed] Grumbach's papers (from 1938 to 2002) are archived in the New York Public Library (Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division).
She received the Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement from Publishing Triangle in 2000.[16]
Bibliography
[edit]Novels
[edit]- The Spoil of the Flowers (1962)
- The Short Throat, The Tender Mouth (1964)
- Chamber Music (1979)
- The Missing Person (1981)
- The Ladies (1984)
- The Magician's Girl (1987)
- The Book of Knowledge (1995)
Non-fiction
[edit]- The Company She Kept: A Revealing Portrait of Mary McCarthy (1967)
- "Father Church and the motherhood of God". From the Archives. Commonweal. 150 (1): 18–19. January 2023.[a]
- Memoirs
- Coming into the End Zone (1991)
- Extra Innings (1993)
- Fifty Days of Solitude (1994)
- Life in a Day (1996)
- The Presence of Absence: On Prayers and an Epiphany (1998)
- The Pleasure of Their Company (2001)
Children's books
[edit]- Lord, I Have No Courage (1964)
———————
- Notes
- ^ Originally published in 1970.
References
[edit]- ^ a b ChesterCounty: Obituaries for March 29
- ^ a b c "Happy 100th Birthday to Memoirist, Author, Professor, and NPR Contributor Doris Grumbach". Archived from the original on September 24, 2020. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
- ^ "Doris M. Isaac" in the New York, New York, U.S., Birth Index, 1910-1965
- ^ a b c "Doris Grumbach Collection". University of New England. 1991–1996. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
- ^ "Doris Grumbach" in the U.S., City Directories, 1822-1995
- ^ a b c Rolle, Elisa (July 12, 2014). "Doris Grumbach & Sybil Pike". reviews-and-ramblings. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
- ^ a b "archives.nypl.org -- Doris Grumbach papers". archives.nypl.org. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
- ^ a b Miller, Lori (April 19, 1990). "HILL BOOKSHOP WANDERS OFF DOWN EAST". The Washington Post.
- ^ Grumbach 1991–1996.
- ^ Nelson, Emmanuel S., ed. (2009). Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States. ABC-CLIO. pp. 276–278. ISBN 9780313348600.
- ^ "The View from 90". The American Scholar. March 2, 2011. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
- ^ "A Whole Day Nearer Now". The American Scholar. March 11, 2014. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
- ^ "The Remains of My Days". The American Scholar. February 29, 2016. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
- ^ McFadden, Robert D. "Doris Grumbach, Author Who Explored Women's Plight, Dies at 104". The New York Times. Retrieved November 5, 2022.
- ^ Schreiber, le Anne (October 2, 1994). "Home Alone (Published 1994)". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved December 5, 2020.
- ^ "The Bill Whitehead Award for Lifetime Achievement". The Publishing Triangle. September 21, 2023. Retrieved July 16, 2024.
External links
[edit]- 1918 births
- 2022 deaths
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