Alison Lurie

Template:Short description Template:For Template:Use mdy dates Template:Use American English Template:Infobox writer Alison Stewart Lurie (September 3, 1926Template:SpndDecember 3, 2020) was an American novelist and academic. She won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction for her 1984 novel Foreign Affairs. Although better known as a novelist, she wrote many non-fiction books and articles, particularly on children's literature and the semiotics of dress.

Life

Alison Stewart Lurie was born on September 3, 1926, in Chicago,Template:Sfn and raised in White Plains, New York. Her father Harry Lawrence Lurie was a sociologist, and her mother Bernice Lurie (née Stewart) was a journalist and book critic.<ref name=":0" /> Her father was born in Latvia and her mother was born in Scotland.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Her father was the first executive director of the National Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> Due to complications with a forceps delivery, she was born deaf in one ear and with damage to her facial muscles.<ref name="WashingtonPost" /> She attended a boarding school in Darien, Connecticut,<ref name="WashingtonPost" /> and graduated from Radcliffe College of Harvard University in 1947 with a bachelor's degree in history and literature.<ref name=":0" />

Lurie met literary scholar Jonathan Peale Bishop while in college,<ref name=":2" /> and they married in 1948.<ref name=":0" /> Bishop later taught at Amherst College and Cornell University, and Lurie moved along with him. They had three sons and divorced in 1984. She then married the writer Edward Hower. She spent part of her time in Hampstead, London;<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> part in Ithaca, New York; and part in Key West, Florida.<ref name=":0" />

In 1970, Lurie began to teach in the English department at Cornell, where she was tenured in 1979. She taught children's literature and writing. In 1976, she was named the F. J. Whiton Professor of American Literature at Cornell,<ref name="CornellChronicle">Template:Cite web</ref><ref name=":1" /> and upon retirement, professor emerita.<ref name=":3">Template:Cite news</ref> In 1981, she published The Language of Clothes, a non-fiction book about the semiotics of dress. Her discussion in Language of Clothes has been compared to Roland Barthes' The Fashion System (1985).Template:Sfn

Lurie died from natural causes while under hospice care in Ithaca on December 3, 2020, at age 94.<ref name=":0">Template:Cite news</ref><ref name=":3" /><ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Lurie's personal papers are archived at Cornell University.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Themes

Lurie's novels often featured professors in starring roles, and were frequently set at academic institutions.<ref>Template:Cite web</ref> With their light touch and focus on portraying the emotions of well-educated adulterers, her works bear more resemblance to some 20th-century British authors (such as Kingsley Amis and David Lodge) rather than to the major American authors of her generation.<ref>Template:Cite news</ref> A 2003 profile of Lurie, styled as a review of her Boys and Girls Forever, a work of criticism, observed that Lurie's works are often "witty and astute comedies of manners".<ref name=":2">Template:Cite news</ref> Lurie noted that her writing was grounded in a "desire to laugh at things".<ref name=":1">Template:Cite news</ref> The author also incorporated some of her own experiences into her fiction. In The Nowhere City, there is a character based on actress Sheree North. "I did have a job answering her fan mail," Lurie recalled. Lurie also used some of Sheree's friends as characters but "tried to change them all a little, so as not to annoy anybody."<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Literary critic John W. Aldridge gave a mixed assessment of Lurie's oeuvre in The American Novel and the Way We Live Now (1983). He notes that Lurie's work "has a satirical edge that, when it is not employed in hacking away at the obvious, is often eviscerating", but also remarks that "there is … something hobbled and hamstrung about her engagement in experience".Template:Sfn<ref>Aldridge, John, "How Good is Alison Lurie?," Commentary, January 1975, retrieved September 3, 2023.</ref>

Although better known as a novelist, she wrote many non-fiction books and articles, particularly on children's literature and the semiotics of dress.Template:Sfn

Bibliography

Novels

• Love and Friendship (1962)<ref name=":0" />
• The Nowhere City (1966)<ref name="TheNowhereCity">Template:Cite news</ref>
• Imaginary Friends (1967)<ref name=":0" />
• Real People (1969)<ref name=":0" />
• The War Between the Tates (1974)<ref name=":0" />
• Only Children (1979)<ref name=":0" />
• Foreign Affairs (1984)<ref name=":0" />
• The Truth About Lorin Jones (1988)<ref name=":0" />
• The Last Resort (1998)<ref name=":0" />
• Truth and Consequences (2005)<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

Short Story Collection

• Women and Ghosts (1994)<ref name=":0" />

Children's collections

• The Oxford Book of Modern Fairy Tales (1975)<ref name="ChildrenCollections">Template:Cite news</ref>
• Clever Gretchen and Other Forgotten Folktales (1980)<ref name=":0" />
• Fabulous Beasts<ref name="ChildrenCollections" />
• The Heavenly Zoo<ref name="ChildrenCollections" />
• The Black Geese<ref name="ChildrenCollections" />
• The Cat Agent (2023)<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>

Non-fiction

• The Language of Clothes (1981)<ref name=":0" />
• Don't Tell the Grown-Ups (1990)<ref name=":0" />
• Familiar Spirits (2001)<ref name=":0" />
• Boys and Girls Forever (2003)<ref name=":0" />
• The Language of Houses: How Buildings Speak to Us (2014):<ref name="Houses">Template:Cite news</ref>
• Words and Worlds: From Autobiographies to Zippers (2019)<ref name="Ithaca" />

Awards and honors

• 1963–1964: Yaddo Foundation fellow<ref name="WashingtonPost">Template:Cite news</ref>
• 1965: Guggenheim Foundation fellow<ref name="Guggenheim">Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1966: Yaddo Foundation fellow<ref name="WashingtonPost" />
• 1967: Rockefeller Foundation fellow<ref name="Ithaca">Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1978: American Academy of Arts and Letters literary award<ref name="Ithaca" />
• 1985: Pulitzer Prize for fiction<ref name="WashingtonPost" />
• 1989: Prix Femina Étranger<ref name="Bookseller">Template:Cite web</ref>
• 1989: elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 2005: elected member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences<ref>Template:Cite web</ref>
• 2006: University of Oxford honorary degree<ref name="TheGuardian">Template:Cite web</ref>
• 2007: University of Nottingham honorary degree<ref name="Nottingham">Template:Cite web</ref>
• 2012–2014: New York State Author<ref>Template:Cite news</ref>

References

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Further reading

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External links

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