Fernanda Eberstadt
Encyclopedia
Fernanda Eberstadt is an American
writer
.
, Frederick Eberstadt, a photographer and psychotherapist, and Isabel Eberstadt, a writer. Her paternal grandfather was Ferdinand Eberstadt
, a Wall Street
financier and adviser to presidents; her maternal grandfather was the poet Ogden Nash
.
She went to the Brearley School
in New York City. As a teenager, she worked at Andy Warhol
's Factory and for Diana Vreeland
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
. Her first published piece was a profile in Andy Warhol's "Interview" in 1979 of the travel writer Bruce Chatwin
.
At age eighteen, Eberstadt moved to the United Kingdom
, where she was one of the first women to attend Magdalen College, Oxford
, from which she graduated in 1982.
, where she appeared with Bret Easton Ellis
, who had published Less Than Zero the same year. The same year, Eberstadt discussed the author of Survival in Auschwitz
, Primo Levi
, in an article in Commentary
magazine. An essay in The Cambridge Companion to Primo Levi by Bryan Cheyette describes the article as follows: "The problem with Levi, clearly, is that he is not Eli Wiesel ... Levi's secular humanism offers a completely different representation of The Holocaust
to that of Wiesel and thereby endangers Wiesel's hegemony as the emblematic Holocaust survivor in the United States." Biographer Ian Thomson's 2002 volume Primo Levi characterizes Eberstadt's article as motivated mainly by a disagreement with "Levi's reputation as a liberal Diaspora Jew". (p. 482) Shortly after, Levi wrote to his translator that "It is not merely for this episode that I have lost my good humour."
Her next novel Isaac and His Devils came in 1991 and was again widely acclaimed, described by Library Journal
as a "rich novel, full of promise for the author's future". Set in rural New Hampshire
, the novel's hero is Isaac Hooker, a half-deaf, half-blind, hugely fat and ambitious boy-genius and his struggle to fulfill his parents' blighted dreams.
Her third novel, published in 1997 and set in the late 1980s New York art world, When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth, recounted the rise and fall of the now young painter, Isaac Hooker.
Eberstadt began writing essays and criticism for such publications as Commentary, The New Yorker
, Vogue
, The New York Times Magazine
, and Vanity Fair
.
Her widely cited essay "The Palace and the City", about the Sicilian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
and the politics of urban restoration in Palermo
, was published in the December 23, 1991, issue of The New Yorker.
In more recent years, she has worked extensively for The New York Times Magazine, publishing profiles of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk
, of Moroccan-based Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo
, and the Portuguese novelist José Saramago
, as well as of indie-rock group CocoRosie
.
Following her pattern of a six-year interval between novels, Eberstadt published The Furies in 2003. Praised by Kirkus Reviews
, Booklist
, Publishers Weekly
, and The New York Times Book Review
, fellow writer Bret Easton Ellis called it "spellbinding", and The New York Observer said "The Furies veers pretty close to genius."
John Updike
, reviewing Little Money Street in The New Yorker, described Eberstadt as "ambitious, resourceful novelist".
, outside the city of Perpignan
. She became friends with a family of French gypsy musicians. Her first work of non-fiction, Little Money Street—In Search of Gypsies and Their Music in the South of France, which portrays that friendship, was released by Knopf in March 2006. Luc Sante
called the book "passionate, intimate, at once exhilarating and despairing, a rich and profound work of high nonfiction literature. A portrait of the Gypsies of southwestern France, it is also about family, about consumerism, and about the ruthlessness of a world in which there is no more open world."
Eberstadt and her husband, Alastair Meddon Oswald Bruton, a journalist whom she married on June 5, 1993, live in France
; they have two children.
Her sixth book, a novel called RAT, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in March 2010. RAT tells the story of a 15-year-old girl who set off on a journey from rural France to London, with her adopted brother in search of her birth father and a better life. It received very good reviews with Booklist calling it "mythic, gritty and unforgettable".
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
writer
Writer
A writer is a person who produces literature, such as novels, short stories, plays, screenplays, poetry, or other literary art. Skilled writers are able to use language to portray ideas and images....
.
Early life
She is the daughter of two patrons of New York City's avant-gardeAvant-garde
Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....
, Frederick Eberstadt, a photographer and psychotherapist, and Isabel Eberstadt, a writer. Her paternal grandfather was Ferdinand Eberstadt
Ferdinand Eberstadt
Ferdinand A. Eberstadt was an American lawyer, investment banker, and an important policy advisor to the United States government who was instrumental in the creation of the National Security Council.-Biography:...
, a Wall Street
Wall Street
Wall Street refers to the financial district of New York City, named after and centered on the eight-block-long street running from Broadway to South Street on the East River in Lower Manhattan. Over time, the term has become a metonym for the financial markets of the United States as a whole, or...
financier and adviser to presidents; her maternal grandfather was the poet Ogden Nash
Ogden Nash
Frederic Ogden Nash was an American poet well known for his light verse. At the time of his death in 1971, the New York Times said his "droll verse with its unconventional rhymes made him the country's best-known producer of humorous poetry".-Early life:Nash was born in Rye, New York...
.
She went to the Brearley School
Brearley School
The Brearley School is an all-girls private school in New York City, New York, United States. It is located on the Upper East Side of the Manhattan borough of New York City. The school is divided into the Lower School , Middle School and Upper School...
in New York City. As a teenager, she worked at Andy Warhol
Andy Warhol
Andrew Warhola , known as Andy Warhol, was an American painter, printmaker, and filmmaker who was a leading figure in the visual art movement known as pop art...
's Factory and for Diana Vreeland
Diana Vreeland
Diana Vreeland was a noted columnist and editor in the field of fashion. She worked for the fashion magazines Harper's Bazaar and Vogue and the Costume Institute of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.Born as Diana Dalziel, Vreeland was the eldest daughter of American socialite mother Emily Key Hoffman...
at the Metropolitan Museum of Art
Metropolitan Museum of Art
The Metropolitan Museum of Art is a renowned art museum in New York City. Its permanent collection contains more than two million works, divided into nineteen curatorial departments. The main building, located on the eastern edge of Central Park along Manhattan's Museum Mile, is one of the...
. Her first published piece was a profile in Andy Warhol's "Interview" in 1979 of the travel writer Bruce Chatwin
Bruce Chatwin
Charles Bruce Chatwin was an English novelist and travel writer. He won the James Tait Black Memorial Prize for his novel On the Black Hill...
.
At age eighteen, Eberstadt moved to the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
, where she was one of the first women to attend Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College, Oxford
Magdalen College is one of the constituent colleges of the University of Oxford in England. As of 2006 the college had an estimated financial endowment of £153 million. Magdalen is currently top of the Norrington Table after over half of its 2010 finalists received first-class degrees, a record...
, from which she graduated in 1982.
Writing career
In 1985, Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. published the 25-year-old Eberstadt's first work of literary fiction, titled Low Tide. This told the story of Jezebel, daughter of an English art dealer and a mad Louisa heiress, and her fatal love affair with two young brothers. It takes place in New York, Oxford and Mexico. Praise for her work landed her an interview with intellectual William F. Buckley on his television program, Firing LineFiring Line
Firing Line was an American public affairs show founded and hosted by conservative William F. Buckley, Jr. Its 1,504 episodes over 33 years made Firing Line the longest-running public affairs show in television history with a single host...
, where she appeared with Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Easton Ellis
Bret Easton Ellis is an American novelist and short story writer. His works have been translated into 27 different languages. He was regarded as one of the so-called literary Brat Pack, which also included Tama Janowitz and Jay McInerney...
, who had published Less Than Zero the same year. The same year, Eberstadt discussed the author of Survival in Auschwitz
If This Is a Man
If This Is a Man is a work by the Italian writer, Primo Levi, describing his 11 months—from February 21, 1944 until liberation on January 27, 1945—in the German concentration camp at Auschwitz in Poland, during the Second World War...
, Primo Levi
Primo Levi
Primo Michele Levi was an Italian Jewish chemist and writer. He was the author of two novels and several collections of short stories, essays, and poems, but is best known for If This Is a Man, his account of the year he spent as a prisoner in the Auschwitz concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland...
, in an article in Commentary
Commentary (magazine)
Commentary is a monthly American magazine on politics, Judaism, social and cultural issues. It was founded by the American Jewish Committee in 1945. By 1960 its editor was Norman Podhoretz, a liberal at the time who moved sharply to the right in the 1970s and 1980s becoming a strong voice for the...
magazine. An essay in The Cambridge Companion to Primo Levi by Bryan Cheyette describes the article as follows: "The problem with Levi, clearly, is that he is not Eli Wiesel ... Levi's secular humanism offers a completely different representation of The Holocaust
The Holocaust
The Holocaust , also known as the Shoah , was the genocide of approximately six million European Jews and millions of others during World War II, a programme of systematic state-sponsored murder by Nazi...
to that of Wiesel and thereby endangers Wiesel's hegemony as the emblematic Holocaust survivor in the United States." Biographer Ian Thomson's 2002 volume Primo Levi characterizes Eberstadt's article as motivated mainly by a disagreement with "Levi's reputation as a liberal Diaspora Jew". (p. 482) Shortly after, Levi wrote to his translator that "It is not merely for this episode that I have lost my good humour."
Her next novel Isaac and His Devils came in 1991 and was again widely acclaimed, described by Library Journal
Library Journal
Library Journal is a trade publication for librarians. It was founded in 1876 by Melvil Dewey . It reports news about the library world, emphasizing public libraries, and offers feature articles about aspects of professional practice...
as a "rich novel, full of promise for the author's future". Set in rural New Hampshire
New Hampshire
New Hampshire is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state was named after the southern English county of Hampshire. It is bordered by Massachusetts to the south, Vermont to the west, Maine and the Atlantic Ocean to the east, and the Canadian...
, the novel's hero is Isaac Hooker, a half-deaf, half-blind, hugely fat and ambitious boy-genius and his struggle to fulfill his parents' blighted dreams.
Her third novel, published in 1997 and set in the late 1980s New York art world, When the Sons of Heaven Meet the Daughters of the Earth, recounted the rise and fall of the now young painter, Isaac Hooker.
Eberstadt began writing essays and criticism for such publications as Commentary, The New Yorker
The New Yorker
The New Yorker is an American magazine of reportage, commentary, criticism, essays, fiction, satire, cartoons and poetry published by Condé Nast...
, Vogue
Vogue (magazine)
Vogue is a fashion and lifestyle magazine that is published monthly in 18 national and one regional edition by Condé Nast.-History:In 1892 Arthur Turnure founded Vogue as a weekly publication in the United States. When he died in 1909, Condé Montrose Nast picked up the magazine and slowly began...
, The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine
The New York Times Magazine is a Sunday magazine supplement included with the Sunday edition of The New York Times. It is host to feature articles longer than those typically in the newspaper and has attracted many notable contributors...
, and Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair (magazine)
Vanity Fair is a magazine of pop culture, fashion, and current affairs published by Condé Nast. The present Vanity Fair has been published since 1983 and there have been editions for four European countries as well as the U.S. edition. This revived the title which had ceased publication in 1935...
.
Her widely cited essay "The Palace and the City", about the Sicilian writer Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa
Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa , was a Sicilian writer. He is most famous for his only novel, Il Gattopardo which is set in Sicily during the Risorgimento...
and the politics of urban restoration in Palermo
Palermo
Palermo is a city in Southern Italy, the capital of both the autonomous region of Sicily and the Province of Palermo. The city is noted for its history, culture, architecture and gastronomy, playing an important role throughout much of its existence; it is over 2,700 years old...
, was published in the December 23, 1991, issue of The New Yorker.
In more recent years, she has worked extensively for The New York Times Magazine, publishing profiles of the Nobel Prize-winning novelist Orhan Pamuk
Orhan Pamuk
Ferit Orhan Pamuk , generally known simply as Orhan Pamuk, is a Turkish novelist. He is also the Robert Yik-Fong Tam Professor in the Humanities at Columbia University, where he teaches comparative literature and writing....
, of Moroccan-based Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo
Juan Goytisolo
Juan Goytisolo is a Spanish poet, essayist, and novelist. He currently lives in a voluntary self-exile in Marrakech.-Background:Juan Goytisolo was born to an aristocratic family...
, and the Portuguese novelist José Saramago
José Saramago
José de Sousa Saramago, GColSE was a Nobel-laureate Portuguese novelist, poet, playwright and journalist. His works, some of which can be seen as allegories, commonly present subversive perspectives on historic events, emphasizing the human factor. Harold Bloom has described Saramago as "a...
, as well as of indie-rock group CocoRosie
CocoRosie
CocoRosie is a musical group formed in 2003 by sisters Bianca "Coco" and Sierra "Rosie" Casady. The sisters were born and raised in the United States, but formed the band in Paris after meeting for the first time in years...
.
Following her pattern of a six-year interval between novels, Eberstadt published The Furies in 2003. Praised by Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews
Kirkus Reviews is an American book review magazine founded in 1933 by Virginia Kirkus . Kirkus serves the book and literary trade sector, including libraries, publishers, literary and film agents, film and TV producers and booksellers. Kirkus Reviews is published on the first and 15th of each month...
, Booklist
Booklist
Booklist is a publication of the American Library Association that provides critical reviews of books and audiovisual materials for all ages. It is geared toward libraries and booksellers and is available in print or online...
, Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly
Publishers Weekly, aka PW, is an American weekly trade news magazine targeted at publishers, librarians, booksellers and literary agents...
, and 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...
, fellow writer Bret Easton Ellis called it "spellbinding", and The New York Observer said "The Furies veers pretty close to genius."
John Updike
John Updike
John Hoyer Updike was an American novelist, poet, short story writer, art critic, and literary critic....
, reviewing Little Money Street in The New Yorker, described Eberstadt as "ambitious, resourceful novelist".
Life in France
In 1998, Eberstadt went to live on a vineyard in the French PyreneesFrench Pyrenees
The French Pyrenees is a large mountain range on the French-Spanish border that is part of the following départements, from east to west: Pyrénées-Orientales, Aude, Ariège, Haute-Garonne, Hautes-Pyrénées, and Pyrénées-Atlantiques ....
, outside the city of Perpignan
Perpignan
-Sport:Perpignan is a rugby stronghold: their rugby union side, USA Perpignan, is a regular competitor in the Heineken Cup and seven times champion of the Top 14 , while their rugby league side plays in the engage Super League under the name Catalans Dragons.-Culture:Since 2004, every year in the...
. She became friends with a family of French gypsy musicians. Her first work of non-fiction, Little Money Street—In Search of Gypsies and Their Music in the South of France, which portrays that friendship, was released by Knopf in March 2006. Luc Sante
Luc Sante
-Early life:Born in Verviers, Belgium, Sante emigrated to the United States in the early 1960s. He attended school in New York City, first at Regis High School in Manhattan and then at Columbia University.-Writing:...
called the book "passionate, intimate, at once exhilarating and despairing, a rich and profound work of high nonfiction literature. A portrait of the Gypsies of southwestern France, it is also about family, about consumerism, and about the ruthlessness of a world in which there is no more open world."
Eberstadt and her husband, Alastair Meddon Oswald Bruton, a journalist whom she married on June 5, 1993, live in France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...
; they have two children.
Her sixth book, a novel called RAT, was published by Alfred A. Knopf in March 2010. RAT tells the story of a 15-year-old girl who set off on a journey from rural France to London, with her adopted brother in search of her birth father and a better life. It received very good reviews with Booklist calling it "mythic, gritty and unforgettable".