Carol Sklenicka

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Carol Sklenicka is an American biographer, literary scholar, and essayist best known as the author of Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life, which remains the only comprehensive biography of short story writer Raymond Carver.[1][2][3] Ten years later, Sklenicka published her "perceptive, elegantly written"[4] Alice Adams: Portrait of a Writer, a biography of the short-story writer and novelist Alice Adams. The New York Times Book Review listed both books on end-of-year best lists; Blake Bailey called Sklenicka a "lucid, scrupulous writer… [who] is prudent and appreciative in her assessment of Adams’s work."[5]

Life[]

Sklenicka grew up in Santa Maria, California, graduated from California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California in 1971, and received a Ph.D. in English and American literature from Washington University in St. Louis, where she studied with Naomi Lebowitz, Stanley Elkin, and Howard Nemerov, in 1986. She taught literature and creative writing at Marquette University and at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. She now devotes herself to writing, environmental activism, and rural living near the Russian River in northern California with poet and novelist R. M. Ryan, author of Vaudeville in the Dark, There's a Man with a Gun Over There, The Lost Roads Adventure Club, and other books.[6]

Among the journals to which Sklenicka has contributed are Confrontation, South Atlantic Quarterly, Iowa Woman, and Sou'wester. She is an active member of Biographers International Organization.

Reception[]

The publication of her biography of Carver, which was named one of the Ten Best Books of 2009 by The New York Times Magazine and a notable book by the San Francisco Chronicle, The Washington Post, and the Seattle Times, followed more than a decade of interviews with Carver's friends, family and writing colleagues.[7] However, Carver's widow, poet Tess Gallagher, chose not to be interviewed by Sklenicka.[7] Some critics, most notably novelist Stephen King, writing in The New York Times Book Review, found that Sklenicka displayed "something like awe for Carver the writer" and was "almost nonjudgmental when it comes to Carver the nasty drunk and ungrateful (not to mention sometimes dangerous) husband,"[2] whereas Jason M. Appel, in Ploughshares, said "Carver, as presented by Sklenicka, is a man of profound moral shortcomings." Time found the book "judicious, thorough and sometimes harrowing".[8]

Sklenicka "gives us the first full-length popular biography of brilliant novelist and short story writer Alice Adams. For decades, Adams rendered believably three-dimensional female characters in beautiful, cut-glass prose in venues like The New Yorker," noted a Christian Science Monitor reviewer in naming Alice Adams: Portrait of a Writer one of that newspaper's top 10 books for the month.[9] The New York Times' reviewer noted that Sklenica was "prudent and appreciative in her assessment of Adams’s work".[10] The New Republic's reviewer commented on the book's length: "It’s hard to imagine any but the true devotee wading in: I think Adams was a superb writer, but I’m not sure I need 500 pages on her." but said that "if you’re the sort who delights in the account of the midcentury artistic life ... Portrait of a Writer does deliver."[11]

Selected works[]

  • D. H. Lawrence and the Child. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1991.
  • Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life. New York: Scribner, 2009.
  • Alice Adams: A Writer's Life. New York: Scribner, 2019.

References[]

  1. ^ Los Angeles Daily News Dec 27, 2009
  2. ^ Jump up to: a b King, Stephen (20 November 2009). "Raymond Carver's Life and Stories". The New York Times. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  3. ^ Henry, DeWitt, The Boston Globe, Dec, 20, 2009
  4. ^ Paul, Steve. "Review: 'Alice Adams: Portrait of a Writer,' by Carol Sklenicka". Star Tribune. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  5. ^ Bailey, Blake [1]"The Decorous Surfaces and Fraught Subtexts of Alice Adams's Life and Work" The New York Times Book Review, December 10, 2019.
  6. ^ Jensen, Geeta Sharma. "Carver fan Sklenicka satisfied her need for biography" Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel, Nov. 28. 2009.
  7. ^ Jump up to: a b Wiegand, David (December 19, 2009). "Serendipitous stay led writer to Raymond Carver". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 27 September 2010.
  8. ^ Lacayo, Richard. "Man of Constant Sorrow". TIME.com. Archived from the original on 17 Nov 2009. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  9. ^ Comninos, Susan (14 December 2009). "Raymond Carver: A Writer's Life". Christian Science Monitor. Retrieved 27 August 2021.
  10. ^ Bailey, Blake (10 December 2019). "The Decorous Surfaces and Fraught Subtexts of Alice Adams's Life and Work". The New York Times. Retrieved 28 August 2021.
  11. ^ Alam, Rumaan (9 January 2020). "Alice Adams's Afterlife". The New Republic. Retrieved 28 August 2021.

External links[]

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