My Life at the Wheel: Toward a Memoir

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Description

In this collection of impeccably written essays, Schwartz tells us early on that she never thought of her life as a "continuous line" but rather a series of intertwined interrupted experiences. Hers is a life that has been bumped, tumbled, and smoothed by an endless stream of travel, fascinating people, and books: writing them, pondering them, translating them. Her essays range from musings about the art of translation, the tribulations of major surgery dissected with biting wit, a quest for recovery from the 9 /11 attacks at a music school, and hours spent with friends arguing, drinking and smoking in a neighborhood bar. Her personal narratives range from humorous childhood (an 8-year-old writer) and troubled revelations to learning to be an adult facing the difficulties of simultaneously writing and raising children. We see her as a daughter struggling to understand her parents through adolescent eyes, a mother startled at the all-consuming demands of motherhood and writing, and as an older adult grappling with mortality. Throughout, she is painfully honest, funny, and unafraid of difficult truths. Relentlessly candid, subjecting herself to her own sharp scrutiny, Schwartz is willing to confront the confusions of maturing in a changing world.

Reviews

Written with wit and humor, these personal essays cover a wide spectrum of human experience, from childhood curiosity and teen angst to the give-and-take of adulthood.The New York Times Book Review

Author Bio

Lynne Sharon Schwartz is the author of twenty-eight books of fiction, essays, and poetry, including her 2021 story collection, Truthtelling, as well as the novels Disturbances in the Field, Leaving Brooklyn, a finalist for the PEN/Faulkner Award, and Rough Strife, a finalist for the National Book Award. She has also published two memoirs, Ruined by Reading and Not Now, Voyager, and has translated from the Italian. Schwartz is the recipient of fellowships from the Guggenheim Foundation, the National Endowment for the Arts in Fiction and, separately, for Translation, and the New York State Foundation for the Arts Fellowship. She has taught widely, most recently at the Bennington College Writing Seminars and the Columbia University School of the Arts.