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Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories Paperback – September 9, 2008

by Katha Pollitt (Author)

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Learning to Drive • Now a major motion picture starring Patricia Clarkson and Ben Kingsley

Celebrated for her award-winning political columns, criticism, and poetry, Katha Pollitt now shows us another side of her talent. Learning to Drive is a surprising, revealing, and entertaining collection of essays drawn from the author’s own life.

With deep feeling and sharp insight, Pollitt writes about the death of her father; the sad but noble final days of a leftist study group of which she was a member; and the betrayal and heartbreak inflicted by a man who seriously deceived her. (Her infinitely patient, gentle driving instructor points out her weakness—“Observation, Katha, observation!”) She also offers a candid view of her preoccupation with her ex-lover’s haunting presence on the Internet, and her search there for a secret link that might provide a revelation about him that will Explain Everything.

Other topics include the differences between women and men—“More than half the male members of the Donner party died of cold and starvation, but three quarters of the females survived, saved by that extra layer of fat we spend our lives trying to get rid of”—and the practical implications of political theory: “What if socialism—all that warmhearted folderol about community and solidarity and sharing was just an elaborate con job, a way for men to avoid supporting their kids?”

Learning to Drive demonstrates that while Katha Pollitt is undeniably one of our era’s most profound observers of culture, society, and politics, she is just as impressively a wise, graceful, and honest observer of her own and others’ human nature.

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 . . . 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.”—The 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)

Editorial Reviews

Review

“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.”—The 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

About the Author

Katha Pollitt is the author of the essay collections Learning to Drive, Virginity or Death!, Subject to Debate, and Reasonable Creatures and is a poet, essayist, and columnist for The Nation. She has won many prizes and awards for her work, including the National Book Critics Circle Award for her first collection of poems, Antarctic Traveller, and two National Magazine Awards for essays and criticism. She lives in New York City.

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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: 5.2 x 0.5 x 8 inches
Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
Average Customer Review: 22 customer reviews
Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #855,320 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #1644 in Books > Biographies & Memoirs > Professionals & Academics > Journalists
- #1903 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Women's Studies > Feminist Theory
- #3974 in Books > Literature & Fiction > Essays & Correspondence > Essays

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50 years old

Written on the cusp of change

April 5, 2013

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

I like this book. Katha Pollitt is a witty writer. A critique of socialism written by what some would say a bourgeosis perspective and a critique of heterosexuality by a feminist perspective like many major thinkers Pollitt deals with contradictions. Pollitt presents an interesting picture of the time we live in: post-every humanist ideal. If everything can be bought, like young age, beauty, sex...then human life becomes like the neighborhoods Pollitt has lived in. Where in a brief period every storefront is extinct. In the essay "I Let Myself Go", her writing is partly grounded in the United States where change is constant and marketable, presenting a feminist analysis of what it is like to live in this country. Pollitt laments a feminism that is just concerned with choices and doesn't look at the context of what is being chosen. Her example for this is the plastic surgery industry where every decision to have surgery is looked on as being beyond judgement and a personal choice that must be affirmed by others. Also like many other important thinkers Pollitt makes me want to read other authors. Her essay "Memoir of a Shy Pornographer" makes me want to read Clarissa and Pamela by Samuel Richardson.

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A coherent and tenderly personal progress report

November 24, 2007

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

As a general rule I have found that books that consist of previously published columns and suchlike material bundled together to make a book usually aren't all that good; that they tend to be a "greatest hits" compendium of the author's (supposedly) best work in the opinion of some publishing house book editor. Pollitt's book Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories is the rare exception to my rule.

Learning to Drive is a coherent and tenderly personal progress report of Pollitt's private life and growth as culled from assorted columns published in the Nation and the New Yorker magazines. As someone or other once famously said: "The personal is the political." And Pollitt goes on to show exactly how true that observation really is.
The "personal is political" meme therefore says that our personal lives are in considerable part politically delimited and determined so that improving our personal lives means we must collectively address our lives and relationships in political terms.

The choices we make personally have political implications. Obviously the choice to be an activist or not or to support this or that political project has political implications even though it is personally undertaken. But as Pollitt shows, so do our most personal relationships. All the choices we make, even the ones that seem totally apolitical and personal, have political implications. The choice to wear make-up or not, to watch TV or not, to eat this or that or not, to wear this or that item of clothing, to use a bank or not, or as in Pollitt's case, whether to put up with an obviously unfaithful boyfriend, is a personal choice, but it is also a political one.

Pollitt's mini-memoir is also replete with refreshing and honest insights about the limits of ideological purity when one's chosen ideology founders in real life practice. One of the best ongoing themes in this work is the story of her parents and especially Pollitt's father, who although a dedicated card-carrying member of the Communist Party, gives up the famous line from Stalin about having to `break eggs to make an omelet', that (paraphrasing from memory here), "I saw a lot of broken eggs, but never any omelets." Pollitt observes that her father never gave up his Marxist ideology, but he could honestly admit to its failures and shortcomings. That observation is quite Orwellian and in the most positive and affirming of ways, too. As in the way that Orwell, as a man of the Left, had no compunctions about saying what he really thought or saw, regardless of his chosen ideological leanings.

Katha Pollitt's book succeeds in much the same way; she never renounces her political views, but she isn't blindly trying to superimpose ideology in place of reality by trying to call a circle a square, either.

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Susie Madrak

Loved it!

November 10, 2017

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

Katha Pollitt is one of the most accessibly elegant writers around, and this book of essays is no exception. Loved it!

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Evalyn F. Segal

Katha Pollitt is nonpareil

July 28, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

I'm midway through this book and loving it. It's honest, and it's a pageturner. Katha Pollitt is a fine writer and a fine human being. I love her articles in The Nation, and these essays are even better.

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Elaine Edelman

Five Stars

July 7, 2016

Format: PaperbackVerified Purchase

surprising, very personal and educated and witty look at items all contemporaries who think must confront

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G. F. Boyer, Creative You Editing

Read this on Kindle, then bought the book

January 31, 2013

Format: Kindle EditionVerified Purchase

Because I wanted the book to keep and re-read someday. These stories are wonderful. I think women especially would relate to them.

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EGFD

Women's Issues

January 1, 2008

Format: HardcoverVerified Purchase

Katha Pollitt is perceptive and funny, and describes some of the issues women have these days. I like her humor, and good writing, and highly recommend the essays in Learning to Drive.

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Delta Stet

Unsatisfied

September 10, 2018

Format: Hardcover

I was terribly unsatisfied with this collection of essay. While Pollitt is undoubtedly an excellent writer, she comes across as highly elitist. I had a really difficult time getting through several essays, especially the one in which she webstalks her ex and his lovers. I really didn't enjoy the book but I have to give her credit for her writing.

**I received a copy of this book in exchange for an honest review.**

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