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Katha Pollitt

Learning to Drive: And Other Life Stories Hardcover – September 4, 2007

by Katha Pollitt (Author)

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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 stories 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.

Print length

224 pages
Language

English
Publisher

Random House
Publication date

September 4, 2007
Dimensions

5.71 x 0.87 x 8.55 inches
ISBN-10

1400063329
ISBN-13

978-1400063321
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Katha Pollitt
10
Hardcover
12 offers from $2.48

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.

About the Author

Katha Pollitt, the author of Virginity or Death!, 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.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House; 1st edition (September 4, 2007)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 224 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 1400063329
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-1400063321
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.01 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 5.71 x 0.87 x 8.55 inches

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50 years old

Written on the cusp of change

Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2013

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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.

One person found this helpful

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Kenneth Kraska

A coherent and tenderly personal progress report

Reviewed in the United States on November 25, 2007

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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.

3 people found this helpful

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Susie Madrak

Loved it!

Reviewed in the United States on November 10, 2017

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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

Reviewed in the United States on July 28, 2013

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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.

One person found this helpful

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Elaine Edelman

Five Stars

Reviewed in the United States on July 8, 2016

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

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G. F. Boyer

Read this on Kindle, then bought the book

Reviewed in the United States on January 31, 2013

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

Reviewed in the United States on August 12, 2015

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Couldn't finish it. I felt it had a very low opinion of men.

2 people found this helpful

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EGFD

Women's Issues

Reviewed in the United States on January 2, 2008

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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.

2 people found this helpful

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