Doris Grumbach
Encyclopedia
Doris Grumbach is an American novelist, biographer, literary critic, and essayist. She taught at the College of Saint Rose in Albany, New York, and was literary editor of the The New Republic
for several years. Since 1985, she has had a bookstore, Wayward Books.
to Leonard William and Helen (Oppenheimer) Isaac. She grew up in Manhattan
and attended elementary school
. A very bright student, she skipped many grades and entered high school at age eleven. She was not prepared socially for this early advancement and did poorly, developing a stammer and losing her self-confidence. She was encouraged by her teachers to take a year off from high school
, and when she returned, she was an indifferent student in the classroom but showed talent in theater and in creative writing
. In her senior year, she won a citywide short story
contest, which helped secure her admission to Washington Square College of New York University
. She majored in philosophy
and graduated Phi Beta Kappa, receiving her B.A. degree in 1939. She earned her M.A. degree in medieval literature
in 1940 from Cornell University
.
At Cornell, she met her future husband, Leonard Grumbach, a doctoral student in neurophysiology
. They were married on October 5, 1941, and during 1940-41, Grumbach worked for Loew's, Inc./MGM writing subtitles for films distributed abroad. During 1941-42, she was employed as a proofreader for Mademoiselle magazine and then for the journal Architectural Forum
in 1942-43, eventually rising to the position of associate editor. When her husband was drafted during World War II
, Grumbach joined the Navy
in 1943 as an officer in the WAVES
(Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). She served in the Navy from 1943-45.
After the war, Grumbach moved with her husband around the country as he pursued a career in physiology
. During this period, the Grumbachs had four daughters: Barbara, Jane, Elizabeth, and Kathryn. Before the birth of their fourth daughter, the Grumbachs settled in Albany
, New York
, where Leonard Grumbach taught at Albany Medical College
and Doris Grumbach began a career in teaching. From 1957-60, she taught junior and senior English at the Albany Academy for Girls
. In 1960, she became a professor of English at the College of Saint Rose and taught there until 1971. During her time at the College of Saint Rose, Grumbach also began to focus on her writing career and published her first two novels, The Spoil of the Flowers (1962), and The Short Throat, The Tender Mouth (1964).
In 1971, after raising their children, Grumbach left her husband. She spent a year in Saratoga Springs
, New York
helping to set up the external degree program at Empire State College
. In 1972, she divorced her husband and began a relationship with Sybil Pike, who became and remains her life partner. Also in 1972, Grumbach accepted a position at The New Republic
magazine as literary editor. Later she and Pike moved to Washington, D.C.
, where Grumbach worked for a magazine for two years. When it was sold, she lost her job. She remained in Washington and in 1975 accepted a position as professor of American literature
at American University
. During this time, she also wrote a nonfiction column for The New York Times Book Review
.
Her writing career continued, and in 1976 she published a literary biography
of novelist Mary McCarthy
titled The Company She Kept. The biography was noteworthy and controversial for its use of correspondence and other documents which McCarthy had shared with Grumbach, her long-time friend, but had never intended to be made public, let alone published.
In 1979, Grumbach published the novel, Chamber Music, which was critically well received and helped establish her reputation as a novelist. In six years, three more books followed: The Missing Person (1981), The Ladies (1984), and The Magician's Girl (1987). During this period, Grumbach also taught creative writing at the Writers Workshop
at the University of Iowa
and at Johns Hopkins University
, where she worked with such writers of note as John Irwin, John Barth
, Edward Albee
, and Jennifer Finney Boylan
. Grumbach also was a book reviewer and commentator for the “Morning Edition” of National Public Radio and the televised McNeil-Lehrer Newshour.
In 1985, Grumbach resigned her professorship at American University but remained in Washington, D.C. for five more years. She and Pike opened a bookstore for rare and used books, named Wayward Books, located near Eastern Market
on Capitol Hill.
In 1990 Grumbach and Pike moved to Sargentville
, Maine
, and opened their bookstore there. Grumbach continues to write and publish.
Grumbach writes in a wide range of genres—a feature that may raise questions along the lines of "jack of all trades, but master of none." But, a counter argument may be that Grumbach shows interesting talents and a myriad of literary skills to be able to write as a novelist, literary critic, essayist, biographer, memoirist, and cultural critic.
As a writer who explored gay and lesbian themes in the 1950s and 1960s, Grumbach tends to be grouped with other groundbreaking authors who explored these themes and issues at a time in which the popular sentiment was to regard homosexuality
as deviant behavior. Such writers as Ann Bannon
, Marijane Meaker, Sylvia Townsend Warner
, and Patricia Highsmith
explored gay and lesbian themes in positive ways similar to Grumbach. As Ann Cothran, a literary critic of writers on lesbian themes and author of a study on Simone de Beauvoir
states, perhaps Grumbach’s “most important contribution to gay and lesbian literature is the manner in which she consistently represents homosexual relationships matter of factly, as an integral part of the human landscape. Grumbach depicts lesbianism as a positive, life-giving force in women's lives.”
Grumbach’s novels tend to be literary and literate in tone in that she often draws upon well-known writers or writings for her titles and for references within her works. For example, she drew her title for The Spoil of the Flowers from a poetic fragment by Euripides
, the title for The Short Throat, The Tender Mouth from "The Pardoner’s Tale" in The Canterbury Tales
by Geoffrey Chaucer
, and The Magician’s Girl from a poem by Sylvia Plath
. In addition, Grumbach’s writings often refer to well-known or arcane writings; her dialogs or internal monologue
s have phrases from Latin, French, and other languages.
Critics have noted that she has drawn from historic persons and events for her fiction. In Chamber Music, for example, she bases the characters and the plot on the American composer Edward MacDowell
and his wife, Marian; upon Marilyn Monroe
in The Missing Person; upon Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby in The Ladies; and Sylvia Plath
and Diane Arbus
in The Magician’s Girl.
Grumbach’s achievements as a novelist were recognized, but a significant part of her reputation and current audience is based upon her two memoir
s that focus upon aging: Coming into the End Zone and Extra Innings. She has also received praise for her spiritual reflections about her life in The Presence of Absence: On Prayers and an Epiphany. Grumbach has written introductions and critical assessments to the works of such writers as Willa Cather
, Edith Wharton
, and Zora Neale Hurston
. Grumbach also wrote an influential review of the novel Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor. Her article on an aborted plan to write a biography of Willa Cather was published in the American Scholar in January 2001.
Grumbach remains an important author for the focus she brought to women’s lives and women’s struggles in the redefinition of women’s roles from the 1950s onward. This dimension is especially true with regard to her positive presentations of lesbians and lesbian lifestyles. Grumbach is admired for her writing style and characterization, which often presents overtones of Henry James
and of Gustave Flaubert
and Jane Austen
in Grumbach’s focus upon social conventions and their influence upon the development of individual lives and psyches. Grumbach is one of several twentieth-century women writers, such as Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland
, and Katherine Mansfield
who represent a transition from Victorian styles and emphases combined with the social and psychological concerns of modernism
. Grumbach’s papers (from 1938 to 2002) are archived in the New York Public Library
(Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division).
“The Short Throat, The Tender Mouth” (1964)
“Chamber Music” (1979)
“The Missing Person” (1981)
“The Ladies” (1984)
“The Magician’s Girl” (1987)
“The Book of Knowledge” (1995)
“Extra Innings” (1993)
“Fifty Days of Solitude” (1994)
“Life in a Day” (1996)
“The Presence of Absence: On Prayers and an Epiphany” (1998)
“The Pleasure of Their Company” (2001)
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
for several years. Since 1985, she has had a bookstore, Wayward Books.
Life
Grumbach was born in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
to Leonard William and Helen (Oppenheimer) Isaac. She grew up in Manhattan
Manhattan
Manhattan is the oldest and the most densely populated of the five boroughs of New York City. Located primarily on the island of Manhattan at the mouth of the Hudson River, the boundaries of the borough are identical to those of New York County, an original county of the state of New York...
and attended elementary school
Elementary school
An elementary school or primary school is an institution where children receive the first stage of compulsory education known as elementary or primary education. Elementary school is the preferred term in some countries, particularly those in North America, where the terms grade school and grammar...
. A very bright student, she skipped many grades and entered high school at age eleven. She was not prepared socially for this early advancement and did poorly, developing a stammer and losing her self-confidence. She was encouraged by her teachers to take a year off from high school
High school
High school is a term used in parts of the English speaking world to describe institutions which provide all or part of secondary education. The term is often incorporated into the name of such institutions....
, and when she returned, she was an indifferent student in the classroom but showed talent in theater and in creative writing
Creative writing
Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...
. In her senior year, she won a citywide short story
Short story
A short story is a work of fiction that is usually written in prose, often in narrative format. This format tends to be more pointed than longer works of fiction, such as novellas and novels. Short story definitions based on length differ somewhat, even among professional writers, in part because...
contest, which helped secure her admission to Washington Square College of New York University
New York University
New York University is a private, nonsectarian research university based in New York City. NYU's main campus is situated in the Greenwich Village section of Manhattan...
. She majored in philosophy
Philosophy
Philosophy is the study of general and fundamental problems, such as those connected with existence, knowledge, values, reason, mind, and language. Philosophy is distinguished from other ways of addressing such problems by its critical, generally systematic approach and its reliance on rational...
and graduated Phi Beta Kappa, receiving her B.A. degree in 1939. She earned her M.A. degree in medieval literature
Medieval literature
Medieval literature is a broad subject, encompassing essentially all written works available in Europe and beyond during the Middle Ages . The literature of this time was composed of religious writings as well as secular works...
in 1940 from Cornell University
Cornell University
Cornell University is an Ivy League university located in Ithaca, New York, United States. It is a private land-grant university, receiving annual funding from the State of New York for certain educational missions...
.
At Cornell, she met her future husband, Leonard Grumbach, a doctoral student in neurophysiology
Neurophysiology
Neurophysiology is a part of physiology. Neurophysiology is the study of nervous system function...
. They were married on October 5, 1941, and during 1940-41, Grumbach worked for Loew's, Inc./MGM writing subtitles for films distributed abroad. During 1941-42, she was employed as a proofreader for Mademoiselle magazine and then for the journal Architectural Forum
Architectural Forum
Architectural Forum was an American magazine that covered the home-building industry and architecture. Started in 1892, it absorbed the magazine Architect's world in October 1938, and ceased publication in 1974.-Other titles:...
in 1942-43, eventually rising to the position of associate editor. When her husband was drafted during World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, Grumbach joined the Navy
United States Navy
The United States Navy is the naval warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the seven uniformed services of the United States. The U.S. Navy is the largest in the world; its battle fleet tonnage is greater than that of the next 13 largest navies combined. The U.S...
in 1943 as an officer in the WAVES
WAVES
The WAVES were a World War II-era division of the U.S. Navy that consisted entirely of women. The name of this group is an acronym for "Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service" ; the word "emergency" implied that the acceptance of women was due to the unusual circumstances of the war and...
(Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). She served in the Navy from 1943-45.
After the war, Grumbach moved with her husband around the country as he pursued a career in physiology
Physiology
Physiology is the science of the function of living systems. This includes how organisms, organ systems, organs, cells, and bio-molecules carry out the chemical or physical functions that exist in a living system. The highest honor awarded in physiology is the Nobel Prize in Physiology or...
. During this period, the Grumbachs had four daughters: Barbara, Jane, Elizabeth, and Kathryn. Before the birth of their fourth daughter, the Grumbachs settled in Albany
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
, where Leonard Grumbach taught at Albany Medical College
Albany Medical College
Albany Medical College is a medical school located in Albany, New York, United States. It was founded in 1839 by Amos Dean, Dr. Thomas Hun and others, and is one of the oldest medical schools in the nation...
and Doris Grumbach began a career in teaching. From 1957-60, she taught junior and senior English at the Albany Academy for Girls
Albany Academy for Girls
Albany Academy for Girls is an independent college-preparatory day school for girls in Albany, New York, USA, enrolling students from Preschool to Grade 12. Founded in 1814 by Ebenezer Foote as the Albany Female Academy, AAG is the oldest independent girls day school in the United States...
. In 1960, she became a professor of English at the College of Saint Rose and taught there until 1971. During her time at the College of Saint Rose, Grumbach also began to focus on her writing career and published her first two novels, The Spoil of the Flowers (1962), and The Short Throat, The Tender Mouth (1964).
In 1971, after raising their children, Grumbach left her husband. She spent a year in Saratoga Springs
Saratoga Springs, New York
Saratoga Springs, also known as simply Saratoga, is a city in Saratoga County, New York, United States. The population was 26,586 at the 2010 census. The name reflects the presence of mineral springs in the area. While the word "Saratoga" is known to be a corruption of a Native American name, ...
, New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
helping to set up the external degree program at Empire State College
Empire State College
Empire State College, one of the thirteen arts and science colleges of the State University of New York, is a multi-site institution offering associate, bachelor's, and master's degrees. It is primarily oriented towards the adult learner...
. In 1972, she divorced her husband and began a relationship with Sybil Pike, who became and remains her life partner. Also in 1972, Grumbach accepted a position at The New Republic
The New Republic
The magazine has also published two articles concerning income inequality, largely criticizing conservative economists for their attempts to deny the existence or negative effect increasing income inequality is having on the United States...
magazine as literary editor. Later she and Pike moved to Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C.
Washington, D.C., formally the District of Columbia and commonly referred to as Washington, "the District", or simply D.C., is the capital of the United States. On July 16, 1790, the United States Congress approved the creation of a permanent national capital as permitted by the U.S. Constitution....
, where Grumbach worked for a magazine for two years. When it was sold, she lost her job. She remained in Washington and in 1975 accepted a position as professor of American literature
American literature
American literature is the written or literary work produced in the area of the United States and its preceding colonies. For more specific discussions of poetry and theater, see Poetry of the United States and Theater in the United States. During its early history, America was a series of British...
at American University
American University
American University is a private, Methodist, liberal arts, and research university in Washington, D.C. The university was chartered by an Act of Congress on December 5, 1892 as "The American University", which was approved by President Benjamin Harrison on February 24, 1893...
. During this time, she also wrote a nonfiction column for The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review
The New York Times Book Review is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to The New York Times in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely read book review publications in the industry. The offices are located near Times Square in New York...
.
Her writing career continued, and in 1976 she published a literary biography
Biography
A biography is a detailed description or account of someone's life. More than a list of basic facts , biography also portrays the subject's experience of those events...
of novelist Mary McCarthy
Mary McCarthy (author)
Mary Therese McCarthy was an American author, critic and political activist.- Early life :Born in Seattle, Washington, to Roy Winfield McCarthy and his wife, the former Therese Preston, McCarthy was orphaned at the age of six when both her parents died in the great flu epidemic of 1918...
titled The Company She Kept. The biography was noteworthy and controversial for its use of correspondence and other documents which McCarthy had shared with Grumbach, her long-time friend, but had never intended to be made public, let alone published.
In 1979, Grumbach published the novel, Chamber Music, which was critically well received and helped establish her reputation as a novelist. In six years, three more books followed: The Missing Person (1981), The Ladies (1984), and The Magician's Girl (1987). During this period, Grumbach also taught creative writing at the Writers Workshop
Writers Workshop
Writers Workshop is a Calcutta-based literary publisher founded by the poet-professor P. Lal in 1958. Over the next few decades it published many new authors in urban literature of the post-independence period. These authors later became big names.-History:...
at the University of Iowa
University of Iowa
The University of Iowa is a public state-supported research university located in Iowa City, Iowa, United States. It is the oldest public university in the state. The university is organized into eleven colleges granting undergraduate, graduate, and professional degrees...
and at Johns Hopkins University
Johns Hopkins University
The Johns Hopkins University, commonly referred to as Johns Hopkins, JHU, or simply Hopkins, is a private research university based in Baltimore, Maryland, United States...
, where she worked with such writers of note as John Irwin, John Barth
John Barth
John Simmons Barth is an American novelist and short-story writer, known for the postmodernist and metafictive quality of his work.-Life:...
, Edward Albee
Edward Albee
Edward Franklin Albee III is an American playwright who is best known for The Zoo Story , The Sandbox , Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? , and a rewrite of the screenplay for the unsuccessful musical version of Capote's Breakfast at Tiffany's . His works are considered well-crafted, often...
, and Jennifer Finney Boylan
Jennifer Finney Boylan
Jennifer Finney Boylan is an American author and professor at Colby College. She has openly discussed being a trans woman. Boylan's memoir, She's Not There, was published by Broadway Books in 2003. Until 2001, she published under the name James Boylan...
. Grumbach also was a book reviewer and commentator for the “Morning Edition” of National Public Radio and the televised McNeil-Lehrer Newshour.
In 1985, Grumbach resigned her professorship at American University but remained in Washington, D.C. for five more years. She and Pike opened a bookstore for rare and used books, named Wayward Books, located near Eastern Market
Eastern Market, Washington, D.C.
The Eastern Market is a public market in the Capitol Hill neighborhood of Washington, D.C., housed in a 19th century brick building. It is located on 7th Street SE, a few blocks east of the U.S. Capitol between North Carolina Avenue SE and C Street SE. The Eastern Market is on the National...
on Capitol Hill.
In 1990 Grumbach and Pike moved to Sargentville
Sedgwick, Maine
Sedgwick is a town in Hancock County, Maine, United States. The population was 1,102 at the 2000 census. The town includes the village of Sargentville....
, Maine
Maine
Maine is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States, bordered by the Atlantic Ocean to the east and south, New Hampshire to the west, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec to the northwest and New Brunswick to the northeast. Maine is both the northernmost and easternmost...
, and opened their bookstore there. Grumbach continues to write and publish.
Critical reception of Grumbach's work
Several facets of Grumbach’s work have won her both praise and criticism. Grumbach is often lauded as a feminist writer championing the cause of women in her fiction and revealing the economic, social, and psychological difficulties women face. Other critics find her work not feminist enough and regard her portrayals of women characters as stilted. Grumbach is both highly regarded and often criticized for her focus on gay and lesbian characters. A number of her works, such as The Spoil of the Flowers, Chamber Music, and The Ladies, focus on gay and lesbian themes and characters. She presents lesbian and gay characters in a positive light; social critics have sometimes criticized her writing as unconventional, if not immoral.Grumbach writes in a wide range of genres—a feature that may raise questions along the lines of "jack of all trades, but master of none." But, a counter argument may be that Grumbach shows interesting talents and a myriad of literary skills to be able to write as a novelist, literary critic, essayist, biographer, memoirist, and cultural critic.
As a writer who explored gay and lesbian themes in the 1950s and 1960s, Grumbach tends to be grouped with other groundbreaking authors who explored these themes and issues at a time in which the popular sentiment was to regard homosexuality
Homosexuality
Homosexuality is romantic or sexual attraction or behavior between members of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality refers to "an enduring pattern of or disposition to experience sexual, affectional, or romantic attractions" primarily or exclusively to people of the same...
as deviant behavior. Such writers as Ann Bannon
Ann Bannon
Ann Bannon is an American author who, from 1957 to 1962, wrote six lesbian pulp fiction novels known as The Beebo Brinker Chronicles. The books' enduring popularity and impact on lesbian identity has earned her the title "Queen of Lesbian Pulp Fiction"...
, Marijane Meaker, Sylvia Townsend Warner
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Sylvia Nora Townsend Warner was an English novelist and poet.-Life:Sylvia Townsend Warner was born at Harrow on the Hill, the only child of George Townsend Warner and his wife Eleanora Hudleston...
, and Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith
Patricia Highsmith was an American novelist and short-story writer most widely known for her psychological thrillers, which led to more than two dozen film adaptations. Her first novel, Strangers on a Train, has been adapted for stage and screen numerous times, notably by Alfred Hitchcock in 1951...
explored gay and lesbian themes in positive ways similar to Grumbach. As Ann Cothran, a literary critic of writers on lesbian themes and author of a study on Simone de Beauvoir
Simone de Beauvoir
Simone-Ernestine-Lucie-Marie Bertrand de Beauvoir, often shortened to Simone de Beauvoir , was a French existentialist philosopher, public intellectual, and social theorist. She wrote novels, essays, biographies, an autobiography in several volumes, and monographs on philosophy, politics, and...
states, perhaps Grumbach’s “most important contribution to gay and lesbian literature is the manner in which she consistently represents homosexual relationships matter of factly, as an integral part of the human landscape. Grumbach depicts lesbianism as a positive, life-giving force in women's lives.”
Grumbach’s novels tend to be literary and literate in tone in that she often draws upon well-known writers or writings for her titles and for references within her works. For example, she drew her title for The Spoil of the Flowers from a poetic fragment by Euripides
Euripides
Euripides was one of the three great tragedians of classical Athens, the other two being Aeschylus and Sophocles. Some ancient scholars attributed ninety-five plays to him but according to the Suda it was ninety-two at most...
, the title for The Short Throat, The Tender Mouth from "The Pardoner’s Tale" in The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales
The Canterbury Tales is a collection of stories written in Middle English by Geoffrey Chaucer at the end of the 14th century. The tales are told as part of a story-telling contest by a group of pilgrims as they travel together on a journey from Southwark to the shrine of Saint Thomas Becket at...
by Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer
Geoffrey Chaucer , known as the Father of English literature, is widely considered the greatest English poet of the Middle Ages and was the first poet to have been buried in Poet's Corner of Westminster Abbey...
, and The Magician’s Girl from a poem by Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
. In addition, Grumbach’s writings often refer to well-known or arcane writings; her dialogs or internal monologue
Internal monologue
Internal monologue, also known as inner voice, internal speech, or verbal stream of consciousness is thinking in words. It also refers to the semi-constant internal monologue one has with oneself at a conscious or semi-conscious level....
s have phrases from Latin, French, and other languages.
Critics have noted that she has drawn from historic persons and events for her fiction. In Chamber Music, for example, she bases the characters and the plot on the American composer Edward MacDowell
Edward MacDowell
Edward Alexander MacDowell was an American composer and pianist of the Romantic period. He was best known for his second piano concerto and his piano suites "Woodland Sketches", "Sea Pieces", and "New England Idylls". "Woodland Sketches" includes his most popular short piece, "To a Wild Rose"...
and his wife, Marian; upon Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe
Marilyn Monroe was an American actress, singer, model and showgirl who became a major sex symbol, starring in a number of commercially successful motion pictures during the 1950s....
in The Missing Person; upon Eleanor Butler and Sarah Ponsonby in The Ladies; and Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath
Sylvia Plath was an American poet, novelist and short story writer. Born in Massachusetts, she studied at Smith College and Newnham College, Cambridge before receiving acclaim as a professional poet and writer...
and Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus
Diane Arbus March 14, 1923 – July 26, 1971) was an American photographer and writer noted for black-and-white square photographs of "deviant and marginal people or of people whose normality seems ugly or surreal." A friend said that Arbus said that she was "afraid.....
in The Magician’s Girl.
Grumbach’s achievements as a novelist were recognized, but a significant part of her reputation and current audience is based upon her two memoir
Memoir
A memoir , is a literary genre, forming a subclass of autobiography – although the terms 'memoir' and 'autobiography' are almost interchangeable. Memoir is autobiographical writing, but not all autobiographical writing follows the criteria for memoir set out below...
s that focus upon aging: Coming into the End Zone and Extra Innings. She has also received praise for her spiritual reflections about her life in The Presence of Absence: On Prayers and an Epiphany. Grumbach has written introductions and critical assessments to the works of such writers as Willa Cather
Willa Cather
Willa Seibert Cather was an American author who achieved recognition for her novels of frontier life on the Great Plains, in works such as O Pioneers!, My Ántonia, and The Song of the Lark. In 1923 she was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for One of Ours , a novel set during World War I...
, Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton
Edith Wharton , was a Pulitzer Prize-winning American novelist, short story writer, and designer.- Early life and marriage:...
, and Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston
Zora Neale Hurston was an American folklorist, anthropologist, and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance...
. Grumbach also wrote an influential review of the novel Wise Blood by Flannery O’Connor. Her article on an aborted plan to write a biography of Willa Cather was published in the American Scholar in January 2001.
Grumbach remains an important author for the focus she brought to women’s lives and women’s struggles in the redefinition of women’s roles from the 1950s onward. This dimension is especially true with regard to her positive presentations of lesbians and lesbian lifestyles. Grumbach is admired for her writing style and characterization, which often presents overtones of Henry James
Henry James
Henry James, OM was an American-born writer, regarded as one of the key figures of 19th-century literary realism. He was the son of Henry James, Sr., a clergyman, and the brother of philosopher and psychologist William James and diarist Alice James....
and of Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert
Gustave Flaubert was a French writer who is counted among the greatest Western novelists. He is known especially for his first published novel, Madame Bovary , and for his scrupulous devotion to his art and style.-Early life and education:Flaubert was born on December 12, 1821, in Rouen,...
and Jane Austen
Jane Austen
Jane Austen was an English novelist whose works of romantic fiction, set among the landed gentry, earned her a place as one of the most widely read writers in English literature, her realism and biting social commentary cementing her historical importance among scholars and critics.Austen lived...
in Grumbach’s focus upon social conventions and their influence upon the development of individual lives and psyches. Grumbach is one of several twentieth-century women writers, such as Sylvia Townsend Warner, Valentine Ackland
Valentine Ackland
Valentine Ackland was an English poet, an important figure in the emergence of modernism in twentieth-century British poetry.-Life:...
, and Katherine Mansfield
Katherine Mansfield
Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp Murry was a prominent modernist writer of short fiction who was born and brought up in colonial New Zealand and wrote under the pen name of Katherine Mansfield. Mansfield left for Great Britain in 1908 where she encountered Modernist writers such as D.H. Lawrence and...
who represent a transition from Victorian styles and emphases combined with the social and psychological concerns of modernism
Modernism
Modernism, in its broadest definition, is modern thought, character, or practice. More specifically, the term describes the modernist movement, its set of cultural tendencies and array of associated cultural movements, originally arising from wide-scale and far-reaching changes to Western society...
. Grumbach’s papers (from 1938 to 2002) are archived in the New York Public Library
New York Public Library
The New York Public Library is the largest public library in North America and is one of the United States' most significant research libraries...
(Humanities and Social Sciences Library, Manuscripts and Archives Division).
Novels
“The Spoil of the Flowers” (1962)“The Short Throat, The Tender Mouth” (1964)
“Chamber Music” (1979)
“The Missing Person” (1981)
“The Ladies” (1984)
“The Magician’s Girl” (1987)
“The Book of Knowledge” (1995)
Memoirs
“Coming into the End Zone” (1991)“Extra Innings” (1993)
“Fifty Days of Solitude” (1994)
“Life in a Day” (1996)
“The Presence of Absence: On Prayers and an Epiphany” (1998)
“The Pleasure of Their Company” (2001)