Hortense Calisher
Hortense Calisher was an American writer of fiction and the second female president of the American [Academy of Arts and Letters].
Biography
Personal life
Born in New York City, and a graduate of Hunter College High School and Barnard College, Calisher was the daughter of a young German Jewish immigrant mother and a somewhat older Jewish father from Virginia whose family she described as "volcanic to meditative to fruitfully dull and bound to produce someone interested in character, society, and time".In 1972, she was a part of the Ms. magazine campaign: “We Have Had Abortions.” The campaign called for an end to "archaic laws" limiting reproductive freedom and encouraged women to share their stories and take action.
Writing style
Calisher involved her closely investigated, penetrating characters in complicated plotlines that unfold with shocks and surprises in allusive, nuanced language with a distinctively elegiac voice, sometimes compared with Eudora Welty, Charles Dickens, Jane Austen, and Henry James. Critics generally considered Calisher a type of neo-realist and often both condemned and praised her for her extensive explorations of characters and their social worlds. Her writing was at odds with the prevailing minimalism typical of fiction writing in the 1970s and 1980s that employed a spartan, nonromantic style without undue expressionism.The New York Times opined that her "unpredictable turns of phrase, intellectually challenging fictional situations and complex plots captivated and puzzled readers for a half-century. Failure and isolation were themes that ran through her 23 novels and short-story collections: failure of love, marriage, communication, identity. She explored the isolation within families that cannot be avoided yet cannot be faced, isolation imposed by wounds inflicted even in the happiest of households, wounds that shape events for generations. But her peers seemed most intrigued by her distinctive way of telling a story, her filigreed sentences and bold stylistic excursions... Throughout her career as a novelist, opinion tended to split evenly among critics who found her prose style and approach to narrative better suited to short stories were mesmerized by her idiosyncratic language and imaginative daring."
Honors and awards
Calisher became the second female president of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1987. From 1986 to 1987 she was president of PEN America, the writers' association.She was a finalist for the National Book Award three times, won O. Henry Awards and the 1986 Janet Heidinger Kafka Prize, and was awarded Guggenheim Fellowships in 1952 and 1955. She was elected a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1997.
Death
Calisher died on January 13, 2009, aged 97, in Manhattan. She was survived by her husband, Curtis Harnack, and her son, Peter Heffelfinger, from her first marriage to Heaton Bennet Heffelfinger. Calisher was predeceased by her daughter, Bennet Heffelfinger.Fiction
- In the Absence of Angels
- False Entry
- Tale for the Mirror
- Textures of Life
- Extreme Magic
- Journal from Ellipsia
- The Railway Police and The Last Trolley Ride
- The New Yorkers
- Queenie
- Standard Dreaming
- Eagle Eye
- The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher
- On Keeping Women
- Mysteries of Motion
- Saratoga, Hot
- The Bobby-Soxer
- Age
- The Small Bang
- In the Palace of the Movie King
- In the Slammer with Carol Smith
- The Novellas of Hortense Calisher
- ''Sunday Jews''
Non-fiction
- Herself
- Kissing Cousins: A Memory
- ''Tattoo for a Slave''
Short stories and novellas
| Title | Publication | Collected in |
| "The Middle Drawer" | The New Yorker | In the Absence of Angels |
| "Point of Departure" | Harper's Bazaar | In the Absence of Angels |
| "The Pool of Narcissus" | The New Yorker | In the Absence of Angels |
| "A Box of Ginger" | The New Yorker | In the Absence of Angels |
| "One of the Chosen" | Harper's Magazine | In the Absence of Angels |
| "The Watchers" | The New Yorker | In the Absence of Angels |
| "The Woman Who Was Everybody" | Mademoiselle | In the Absence of Angels |
| "In Greenwich There Are Many Graveled Walks" | The New Yorker | In the Absence of Angels |
| "Old Stock" | The New Yorker | In the Absence of Angels |
| "Heartburn" | New American Mercury | In the Absence of Angels |
| "In the Absence of Angels" | The New Yorker | In the Absence of Angels |
| "A Wreath for Miss Totten" | Mademoiselle | In the Absence of Angels |
| "Night Riders of Northville" | Harper's Magazine | In the Absence of Angels |
| "Letitia, Emeritus" | In the Absence of Angels | In the Absence of Angels |
| "The Sound of Waiting" | In the Absence of Angels | In the Absence of Angels |
| "The Hollow Boy" | Harper's Magazine | Tale for the Mirror |
| "The Seacoast of Bohemia" | Charm | Tale for the Mirror |
| "Saturday Night" | Discovery #1, ed. Vance Bourjaily | Tale for the Mirror |
| "So Many Rings to the Show" | The New Yorker | Tale for the Mirror |
| "The Coreopsis Kid" | Charm | Tale for the Mirror |
| "The Rabbi's Daughter" | Charm | Extreme Magic |
| "A Christmas Carillon" | Harper's Magazine | Extreme Magic |
| "If You Don't Want to Live I Can't Help You" | Mademoiselle | Extreme Magic |
| "The Night Club in the Woods" | Discovery #5 | Tale for the Mirror |
| "Tale for the Mirror" | Harper's Bazaar | Tale for the Mirror |
| "Il Plœ:r Dã Mõ Kœ:r" | The New Yorker | Extreme Magic |
| "Time, Gentlemen!" | Harper's Bazaar | Tale for the Mirror |
| "Two Colonials" | Harper's Bazaar | Extreme Magic |
| "What a Thing, to Keep a Wolf in a Cage!" | Mademoiselle | Tale for the Mirror |
| "The Rehabilitation of Ginevra Leake" | New World Writing #12 | Tale for the Mirror |
| "Songs My Mother Taught Me" a.k.a. "The Geste Courteous" | Harper's Bazaar | Extreme Magic |
| "Mrs. Fay Dines on Zebra" | Ladies' Home Journal | Tale for the Mirror |
| "May-ry" | The Reporter | Tale for the Mirror |
| "The Scream on Fifty-Seventh Street" | Harper's Bazaar | Tale for the Mirror |
| "Little Did I Know" | Saturday Evening Post | Extreme Magic |
| "The Gulf Between" | Gentlemen's Quarterly | Extreme Magic |
| "Extreme Magic" | Extreme Magic | Extreme Magic |
| "Gargantua" | Harper's Bazaar | Saratoga, Hot |
| "The Railway Police" | The Railway Police and the Last Trolley Ride | The Railway Police and the Last Trolley Ride |
| "The Last Trolley Ride" | The Railway Police and the Last Trolley Ride | The Railway Police and the Last Trolley Ride |
| "Fathers and Satyrs" | Evergreen Review | - |
| "The Summer Rebellion" a.k.a. "A Summer Psychosis" | Harper's Bazaar | The Collected Stories of Hortense Calisher |
| "Real Impudence" | Saratoga, Hot | Saratoga, Hot |
| "The Library" | Saratoga, Hot | Saratoga, Hot |
| "The Sound Track" | Saratoga, Hot | Saratoga, Hot |
| "The Passenger" | Saratoga, Hot | Saratoga, Hot |
| "The Tenth Child" | Saratoga, Hot | Saratoga, Hot |
| "Survival Techniques" | Saratoga, Hot | Saratoga, Hot |
| "Saratoga, Hot" | Saratoga, Hot | Saratoga, Hot |
| "The Gig" | Confrontation | - |
| "The Eversham's Willie" | Southwest Review | - |
| "The Man Who Spat Silver" | Confrontation | - |
| "The Nature of the Madhouse" | Story | - |
| "What Country Is This?" | American Short Fiction #1 | - |
| "The Iron Butterflies" | Southwest Review | - |
| "Blind Eye, Wrong Foot" | American Short Fiction #10 | - |
| "Women Men Don't Talk About" | The Novellas of Hortense Calisher | The Novellas of Hortense Calisher |