Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories (Paperback)

by Katha Pollitt (Author)
Key Phrases: council communism, New York, Soviet Union, Riverside Drive (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
This collection of reflections by the Nation essayist and poet Pollitt (Reasonable Creatures) ranges in subject from her philandering boyfriend to a general late-midlife sense of loss. The title essay is the zippiest and most successful, fashioning a canny metaphor about the importance of observation both in learning to drive for the first time at age 52 and in recognizing that her lover of seven years was cheating on her from the get-go. Pollitt plays the conflicted modern woman par excellence, both feminist and feminine; she writes of unabashedly joining a Marxist study group at the behest of her guru-like boyfriend, who padded the meetings with past and present lovers (In the Study Group), then wonders with wistful anticipation what kind of life it will be when she has outlived all the men who find her desirable (After the Men Are Dead). Familiarity seems to breed weariness, however, and her essays about motherhood (Beautiful Screamer) and women's tenacious collusion in men's superiority (Sisterhood) have the feel of oft-tread ground. (Sept. 4)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

Product Description
Celebrated for her award-winning political columns, criticism, and poetry, Katha Pollitt offers something new in this poignant, hilarious, and sometimes outrageous collection of stories drawn from her own life. With deep feeling and sharp insight, she writes about love, sex, betrayal, heartbreak, and much more: what she learned about her parents from reading their FBI files, the joy and loneliness of new motherhood, the curious mental effects of a post-college stint proofreading pornographic novels, and the decline and fall of practically everything, including herself. Unafraid to say what others only think and acknowledge what others won’t admit, Katha Pollitt surprises and entertains on every page.

Praise for Learning to Drive

“The kind of book you want to look up from at points so you can read aloud certain passages to a friend or lover.”
–Chicago Tribune

“A powerful personal narrative . . . full of insight and charm . . . [Katha] Pollitt is her own Jane Austen character . . . haughty and modest, moral and irresponsible, sensible and, happily for us, lost in sensibility.”
–The New York Review of Books

“With . . . bracing self-honesty, Pollitt takes us through the maddening swirl of contradictions at the heart of being fifty-something: the sense of slowing down, of urgency, of wisdom, of ignorance, of strength, of helplessness, of breakdown, of renewal.”
–Sunday Seattle Times

“Essays of breathtaking candor and razor-sharp humor . . . [Pollitt] has outdone herself. . . . [Her] observations are acute and her confessions tonic. Forget face-lifts; Pollitt’s essays elevate the spirit.”
–Booklist (starred review)

“Candid, confessional prose . . . But even at her most intimate, [Pollitt] manages to infuse her tales of dissatisfaction and heartbreak with levity and humor.”
–San Francisco Chronicle

“Pitch perfect . . . painfully hilarious to read.”
–The Boston Globe

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Product Details

• Paperback: 224 pages
• Publisher: Random House Trade Paperbacks; Reprint edition (September 9, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0812973542
• ISBN-13: 978-0812973549
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5.1 x 0.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #161,838 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Brave, honest essays from a wise soul, September 22, 2007

By	Robin Henig (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories (Hardcover)

Katha Pollitt has long been revered for her sharp feminist writings, but in "Learning to Drive" she shows her more vulnerable side. Her skills as a poet carry these lovely musings about her parents, her daughter, her own fragile aging self, and the various boyfriends and husbands who have puzzled and amazed her through the years. I especially love the way she ends the collection, with thoughts about the most universal of subjects - beauty, aging, death. Fighting off the embarrassing urge to have plastic surgery, she realizes that her face carries in its contours the details of her parents, grandparents, and great-grandparents. "I like to think about the echoes of them, and of me, in my daughter's face, and the unexplained folds and angles that remind us that we are all made up of recombined bits of ancient ancestors, even if we don't know who they are." Pollitt is a wise, witty, complicated woman, and I loved spending time with her through this book.

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Ignore the Freaking Times Book Review and Read This Book!, September 23, 2007

By	Judith Long "reader of fine books" (Sag Harbor, NY USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories (Hardcover)

Gentle Reader, ignore the natterings of the insipid NY Times reviewer and run, do not walk, to read Katha Pollitt's latest. It is pure pleasure. Witty, erudite, wise, poignant, insightful, and sometimes hilarious. I started to browse in it and came up for air two hours later to find I'd missed my favorite NPR Saturday shows.

23 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars "Each story is a fine, crafted piece of comic writing, with expert turns of phrase", September 23, 2007

By	Grundoon (NYC) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories (Hardcover)

John Freeman in the Newark Star-Ledger:

One cannot open a publication these days without stumbling upon a personal essay. Unfortunately, the awkward confessions outnumber the moving ones - and the finely written are rare indeed.

In this jungle of self-revelation, however, there is a bird which manages to embody all three qualities. And in the past couple of years, many have sprung from the aerie of Katha Pollitt's imagination.

"Learning to Drive," Pollitt's hilarious, elegant new book of personal essays, collects these pieces into one volume. If a book could contain awkward silences, this one could fill a cathedral with them.

Herein Pollitt admits to Web-stalking her ex-boyfriend, of continuously failing her driver's test, of attending a Marxist study group only to spend most of her time procrastinating for the weekly reading.

Pollitt, an award-winning poet and columnist for the Nation, knows she can't simply dump this information onto the page and expect a reader's natural sympathy to do the rest. Each story is a fine, crafted piece of comic writing, with expert turns of phrase.

"Information was what I wanted from her boyfriend's ex-lovers," she writes in a piece about befriending one of his ex-lovers: "the underside of the carpet I thought I had been standing on." A piece on feminism has this description of Iris Murdoch: "she looks a bit like an intelligent potato."

This kind of wit is hard to come by, harder still in a writer so thoughtful. One almost wishes Pollitt didn't have to go through such travails to deliver it to us - but, selfishly, most readers should take this book and run.