Thinking Out Loud: On the Personal, the Political, the Public, and the Private - Hardcover

Quindlen, Anna

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0679407111 ISBN 13: 9780679407119

Publisher: Random House, 1993

Synopsis

"A splendid collection...Eloquent, powerful, compassionate and droll. There is considerable variety in the subjects she addresses....Compelling."
THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER
Thinking out loud is what Anna Quindlen does best. A syndicated columnist with her finger on the pulse of women's lives, and her heart in a place we all share, she writes about the passions, politics, and peculiarities of Americans everywhere. From gays in the military, to the race for First Lady, to the trials of modern motherhood and the right to choose, Anna Quindlen's views always fascinate.
More of her views can be found in LIVING OUT LOUD, and OBJECT LESSONS.


From the Trade Paperback edition.

About this title

From the Inside Flap

ndid collection...Eloquent, powerful, compassionate and droll. There is considerable variety in the subjects she addresses....Compelling."<br>THE CLEVELAND PLAIN DEALER<br>Thinking out loud is what Anna Quindlen does best. A syndicated columnist with her finger on the pulse of women's lives, and her heart in a place we all share, she writes about the passions, politics, and peculiarities of Americans everywhere. From gays in the military, to the race for First Lady, to the trials of modern motherhood and the right to choose, Anna Quindlen's views always fascinate.<br>More of her views can be found in LIVING OUT LOUD, and OBJECT LESSONS.<br><br><br><i>From the Trade Paperback edition.</i>

Reviews

Concerned as she is with all manner of conflicts between public and private issues represented in this collection of essays from her syndicated New York Times op-ed column, Quindlen ( Living Out Loud ) admits to viewing even non-feminist topics through "the special lens of her gender." Sensitive to social and political trends and the "shifting sands of geopolitics" that propel events, she points out their cost in human terms, especially as they affect the excluded and abused. Violence, notes the author--sexual, racial or political, performed by individuals or in groups as members of sports teams, gangs, police or the military--is routinely glorified, whether in children's cartoons or adult soap operas. Equally effective are Quindlen's always superbly controled commentaries on lying, bigotry and moral hypocrisy among political, judiciary and religious leaders, and the cynical use of ideals to justify military incursions. Author tour.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

In her second collection of New York Times pieces, Quindlen (Object Lessons, 1991, etc.) lets loose with her trademark intelligence, fervor, and personal focus on topics ranging from the Gulf War through absent fathers to the controversy over abortion. ``But is it really necessary for you to wear your gender on your sleeve?,'' an eager young journalist once asked the author. Citing her role model, editorialist Dorothy Thompson (who when told she had ``the brains of a man'' insisted she was ``altogether female''), Quindlen reiterates her belief that she owes it to herself, to the female reporters who broke ground for her generation at the Times, and to her readers to comment on world events from her underrepresented and valuable female viewpoint. Writing with greater maturity and depth than in her ``Life in the 30s'' column (Living Out Loud, 1988), she confidently proceeds to filter the abortion issue through her own experience as a Catholic mother of three; consider euthanasia from the perspective of a dying man's wife; observe her daughter's second birthday while considering that women as a whole still earn less than men; mull over the premature revelation of Arthur Ashe's case of AIDS from the point of view of a seasoned reporter; and lambast the Times, as a journalist and a woman, for revealing the name of the alleged rape victim in the William Kennedy Smith trial. Whimsical moments appear sporadically (Quindlen predicts the next movie blockbuster, Mom Alone), but rage surfaces more frequently from this woman writing in what she--perhaps optimistically--calls ``a world in which we can wear our gender on our sleeves.'' ``I'd love to run your column, but we already run Ellen Goodman,'' one newspaper editor candidly told Quindlen. Until the quota increases past one, here's a way for more readers to fall in love with at least one woman's very personal brand of passion. -- Copyright ©1993, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times columnist Quindlen introduces this collection of her recent Op-Ed pieces with Dorothy Thompson's comment that her strength as a writer was from being "altogether female." The same is definitely true of Quindlen, who says her husband once asked her, "Could you get up and get me a beer without writing about it?" No, she can't; even though Quindlen no longer writes the intensely personal "Life in the 30s" columns (collected in Living Out Loud , Random, 1988), her new "Public and Private" columns are just that: discussions of world events as seen through her prism as wife, mother, and woman. This dual perspective has both pleased and infuriated readers, who may question whether a discussion of Jo March as heroine deserves to be part of "all the news that's fit to print." Still, Quindlen has offered a welcome human voice to the Times pages, and some of her best columns--her courageous condemnation of her own paper's decision to print the name of the woman in the William Kennedy rape trial, for instance--prove that. Essential for any journalism collection, this will be enjoyed by general readers also. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 12/92.
- Judy Quinn, "Incentive," New York
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Random House
• Publication date: 1993
• ISBN 10: 0679407111
• ISBN 13: 9780679407119
• Binding: Hardcover
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 287