Maeve Brennan: Homesick at the New Yorker [Hardcover]

Angela Bourke (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 5, 2004

Witty, stylish, and beautiful, Maeve Brennan dazzled everyone who met her. Born in Dublin, she came to the U.S. with her father, Ireland's first Ambassador to America, and in her early thirties joined The New Yorker, where she was at the heart of the life of the magazine until she was nearly sixty. Under the pseudonym "The Long-Winded Lady," she wrote matchless urban postcards for the "Talk of the Town," and, under her own name, published fierce, intimate fiction. Today her forty-odd stories are anthology standards, prized by writers as different from one another as Alice Munro and Brennan's own nephew Roddy Doyle. But at the time of her death in 1993, she was obscure, indeed lost: She hadn't published a word since the 1970s, and she had slowly slipped into madness, ending as a bag lady in the streets of midtown Manhattan. It is Angela Bourke's achievement to trace this sad arc, and to bring her compelling personality to life. Thoroughly researched, beautifully written, and filled with a wealth of previously unpublished material, it will be welcomed by anyone interested in Ireland, The New Yorker, and a woman who remains one of the twentieth century's most distinctive prose stylists.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Bourke (The Burning of Bridget Cleary) writes a sensitive biography of writer Brennan, who came to the U.S. from Ireland as a teenager (her father was the first Irish ambassador to the U.S.) and in 1949, in her early 30s, joined the New Yorker to write about women's fashion. Tiny, fiercely intelligent and impeccably groomed, Brennan was cherished by her colleagues. William Maxwell, a close friend, edited her stories—mainly fictionalized accounts of her Irish childhood, which he greatly admired—for the magazine. She also wrote a "Talk of the Town" column under the pseudonym "The Long-Winded Lady." Yet behind the archly sophisticated persona, Bourke writes, was a fragile, alienated woman who, following a failed marriage to fellow writer St. Clair McKelway, drifted into an eccentric middle age and serious mental breakdown before leaving the New Yorker. She died in an obscure nursing home in 1993. Bourke, who teaches at University College, Dublin, draws a portrait rich in New Yorker history and modern Irish feminist history alike, one likely to do much to foster a new readership for Brennan's work. 8 pages of b&w photos.
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From Booklist

There are writers whose lives and works are so synonymous with a sense of place that to visit that location, whether in print or in person, is to feel their spirit in every building and around every corner. Brennan was one such writer, and her works evoke the two very disparate worlds to which she belonged-- Dublin and Manhattan. Born in Ireland, Brennan immigrated with her family to America when she was a teenager. Her formative years in the villages and neighborhoods in and around Dublin influenced her work for the rest of her life, work that would span nearly four decades as one of the most prolific contributors of short stories, book reviews, and social commentary for the New Yorker as the "Long-Winded Lady." Conspicuously torn between her past and present, Brennan would eventually break under the pressure, ending her days in abject obscurity, penniless and homeless. Bourke's stellar biography captures the pain and promise, the tragedy and beauty of this mercurial, mesmerizing talent. Carol Haggas
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 360 pages
• Publisher: Counterpoint; First Edition edition (October 5, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1582432295
• ISBN-13: 978-1582432298
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,373,534 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars What's there is great...would benefit from greater depth or more analysis, November 15, 2005

By 

Susan Doran (San Francisco CA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Maeve Brennan: Homesick at the New Yorker (Hardcover)

There are many reasons to read Homesick at the New Yorker. Among them, the book may be the only existing full-length biography of this talented and fascinating author. And Homesick at the New Yorker is well-written, indeed.

But there are shortcomings to this account of Maeve Brennan's life. The review prior to this one speculates that author Angela Bourke may have found her subject illusive. And that may be the case. But what certainly is the case is that Bourke's resulting portrait of Brennan is somewhat blurred. Is it because Brennan moves out of scope of the camera just as the shutter is capturing the image...or is it that Bourke's camera itself is moving? I don't know for certain. But repeatedly, just as it seems we're homing in for some tasty detail or substantive level of depth, Bourke takes off in another direction, and the initial thread is dropped. Frustrating.

The very restraint that makes Bourke's prose so neat and elegant may also serve to diminish the overall impact of the book. Often the author brings us close to gaining insight about Maeve Brennan, and then abruptly pulls down the shade, as if it would be too embarrassing for her, us, or Brennan, to see what would be revealed if she analyzed her subject a bit more closely. Brennan's relationship with her father comes to mind; it seems an extremely important and complex relationship, but beyond stating that fact, Bourke doesn't pursue it. What conflicts did it create? What are the implications for her work? relationships? etc. Perhaps the author figured she could drop the ingredients onto the pages and readers could bake up our own conclusions, but I'd like to have had a few of her *theories* served straight up. I have few if any theories on Maeve Brennan myself, but Angela Bourke must, after clearly having spent a great deal of time researching Brennan.

Another example, Brennan's relationship with her husband. Bourke may be trying to be journalistic, keeping distance from her subject(s), but the result is basically: they did this, and then they did this, and then they did this, and someone said this about them--but not what any of that might *mean* or how it would foreshadow X, or how that was reminiscent of Y, or how it seems to have affected Z. I suppose what I am saying is the author seems to keep too polite a distance from Maeve Brennan.

Finally, the review prior to this one also commented positively on Bourke's frequent mentions of Irish history, in context of Brennan's life. To me, Bourke's attempt to braid her own interests in Irish history, Irish nationalism, and Irish language movement into the narrative of Brennan's life seemed gratuitous and somewhat self-indulgent. There are entire passages that could have been edited out. Not that they weren't in some way interesting, but they had little or no bearing -- neither direct not distant -- on Brennan's life or work. Consequently, these references were distracting and ultimately irritating, rather than illuminating.

Perhaps Angela Bourke is more comfortable in the realm of "facts," rather than speculation or analysis. One biography cannot ever be the only biography. And perhaps this one will spur on others to research and write about Maeve Brennan. And, even if not, Homesick at the New Yorker is, quite lovely indeed, in many ways, a very nice read, even if it isn't everything that might be hoped for.

8 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars No Icon, But A Terribly Sad, Fragile Beauty, November 17, 2005

By 

Kevin Killian (San Francisco, CA United States) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Maeve Brennan: Homesick at the New Yorker (Hardcover)

Angela Bourke, who has written a serviceable biography of Maeve Brennan, must have cringed when marketing suggested she include the totem words "The New Yorker" in the subtitle of her book.

It is such bad taste to try to sell this book by linking it to the supposed chic of THE NEW YORKER. Imagine a comparable biography of, say, JD Salinger with the subtitle, "He Wrote for THE NEW YORKER." How reductive, how pointless, to make her reputation depend, like the sword of Damocles, on the perceived glamour of the magazine!

Brennan, with two spiritual homes, one in New York, one in Ireland, was always homesick for whichever one she wasn't in. The subtitle, with its suggestion of "homeless" as well as "homesick," hints at her eventual destination: pauperhood, madness, wandering the streets like the lowest of the low. It's a sad story indeed, and more of an indictment of The New Yorker's corporate philosophy then anything else. If they stop glittering, chuck them out I guess! Watch out, Hilton Als! Alex Ross, you too!

I like the book but I think Bourke is a little guilty of overselling her wares. One sentence in particular floored me, "Her effect on the people who met her, her eye for human behavior, clothing and interiors, her unsparing reading of literature, her memory of home and her courageous life as a woman alone in metropolitan America make her an icon of the twentieth century." Excuse me, but no, they don't. Angela Bourke, may I introduce you to the word "icon"? It's in the dictionary. It doesn't mean Maeve Brennan.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Fascinating subject, terrible writing, April 21, 2008

By 

Sheelagh Oconnor - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Maeve Brennan: Homesick At The New Yorker (Hardcover)

I really wanted to learn more about Maeve Brennan, but we got stuck with every detail around her in this book, like we wanted to learn about this colorful carousel, but all we got were details of the circus!