The Men in My Life

Praise

Gornick remains one of the more intelligent, independent-minded readers writing criticism today, one who insists on making a connection between how we read and how we live…. The essays in this collection, in their conviction about the relevance of literature in this hypertext age and their attentiveness to the irritant of all-too-human despair that yields the pearl of lasting art, will provide enjoyment and illumination for fans old and new.—Bookforum—

Gornick is a vigorous and sophisticated thinker…. [The Men in My Life] illustrates how magnificent the literary yield of human frailty can be…. [An] excellent collection.

—Library Journal—

… [the book] for the man who loves women.

—Playboy—

Vivian Gornick makes you want to read. In her new collection of essays, The Men in My Life, authors, all great literary men, come alive on the page like great characters, bleeding, raging and most of all trying (but almost always failing) to love.

—Los Angeles Times Book Review—

Gornick, a reader of immense sympathy and insight, is not out to expose and chasten the unseemly underbellies of the men in her life, but rather, as she says in the preface to this short, elegant book, ‘to think more inclusively about the emotional imprisonment of mind and spirit to which all human beings are heir.’

—Village Voice—

Whether she is writing about a friendship that has gone wrong or the work of James Baldwin, Gornick brings a rare honesty, appropriate anger, striking precision and great tenderness to her subject.

—New Statesman—

[Gornick] is fearless…. Reading her essays, one is reassured that the conversation between life and literature is mutually sustaining as well as mutually corrective.

—New York Times Book Review, Praise for The End of the Novel of Love—

Reading [Gornick] is a thrilling, invigorating, challenging experience.

—Boston Sunday Globe, Praise for The End of the Novel of Love—

Vivian Gornick’s prose is so penetrating that reading it can be almost painful…. [This book] stands out as a model of luminous clarity.

—Los Angeles Times, Praise for The End of the Novel of Love—

I love writers who treat thinking as a dynamic process. Ms. Gornick does—here and in all her books. Imagine a photographer of the psyche. She studies her subject from all angles. Whether in close-up or on a landscape crowded with political and religious movements, she explores the public and private selves…. What a potent book this is!

—New York Times, Praise for The Solitude of the Self—