Lucia Berlin

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Lucia Berlin
Born
Lucia Brown

(1936-11-12)November 12, 1936
Juneau, Alaska, U.S.
DiedNovember 12, 2004(2004-11-12) (aged 68)
Marina del Rey, California, U.S.
OccupationWriter

Lucia Brown Berlin (November 12, 1936 – November 12, 2004)[1] was an American short story writer.[2] She had a small, devoted following, but did not reach a mass audience during her lifetime. She rose to sudden literary fame in 2015, eleven years after her death, with the publication of a volume of her selected stories, A Manual for Cleaning Women. It hit The New York Times bestseller list in its second week,[3] and within a few weeks had outsold all her previous books combined.[4]

Early life

Berlin was born in Juneau, Alaska, and spent her childhood on the move, following her father's career as a mining engineer. The family lived in mining camps in Idaho, Montana, Arizona, El Paso, Texas and Chile, where Lucia spent most of her youth. As an adult, she lived in New Mexico, Mexico, New York City, Northern and Southern California, and Colorado.[5]

Career

Berlin began publishing relatively late in life, under the encouragement and sometimes tutelage of poet

Black Sparrow Books
: Homesick: New and Selected Stories (1990), So Long: Stories 1987-92 (1993) and Where I Live Now: Stories 1993-98 (1999).

Berlin was never a bestseller, but was widely influential within the literary community.[

American Book Award in 1991 for Homesick, and was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts.[7]

In 2015, a compendium of her short story work was released under the title, A Manual for Cleaning Women: Short Stories.

New York Times Book Reviews "10 Best Books of 2015.".[12] It debuted at #14 on the ABA's Indie bestseller list[13] and #5 on the LA Times' list.[14] It was also a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.[15]

Influences and teaching

Throughout her life, Berlin earned a living through a series of working class jobs, reflected in story titles like "A Manual for Cleaning Women," "Emergency Room Notebook, 1977," and "Private Branch Exchange" (referring to telephone switchboards and their operators).

Up through the early 1990s, Berlin taught creative writing in a number of venues, including the San Francisco County Jail and the

Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics at Naropa University
. She also took oral histories from elderly patients at Mt. Zion Hospital.

In the fall of 1994, Berlin began a two-year teaching position as Visiting Writer at

University of Colorado, Boulder. Near the end of her term, she was one of four campus faculty awarded the Student Organization for Alumni Relations Award for Teaching Excellence.[16] "To win a teaching award after two years is unheard of," the English Chair Katherine Eggert said later in an obituary.[7]
Berlin was asked to stay on at the end of her two-year term. She was named associate professor, and continued teaching there until 2000.

Critical praise

Berlin has been called one of America's best kept secrets.[17]

"I would place her somewhere in the same arena as Alice Munro, Grace Paley, maybe Tillie Olsen. In common with them, she writes with a guiding intelligent compassion about family, love, work; in a style that is direct, plain, clear, and non-judgmental; with a sense of humor and a gift for the gestures and the words that reveal character, the images that reveal the nature of a place." —Lydia Davis, New Ohio Review, on the story A Manual for Cleaning Women

"[The stories] are told in a conversational voice and they move with a swift and often lyrical economy. They capture and communicate moments of grace and cast a lovely, lazy light that lasts. Berlin is one of our finest writers and here she is at the height of her powers." —Molly Giles, San Francisco Chronicle, on So Long

"Berlin's literary model is

Chekhov
, but there are extra-literary models too, including the extended jazz solo, with its surges, convolutions, and asides. This is writing of a very high order." —August Kleinzahler, London Review of Books, on Where I Live Now

"In the field of short fiction, Lucia Berlin is one of America's best kept secrets. That's it. Flat out. No mitigating conditions. End of review. Well, not quite… [It is] characteristic of all Berlin's stories, a buoyancy: however grim and 'unworthy' her characters, she enters and explores their lives with unfailing high spirits.... A drug rehab center in New Mexico; a story called 'Electric Car, El Paso' ('It was very tall and short, like a car in a cartoon that had run into a wall. A car with its hair standing on end.')... The Christmas party at the dialysis center. 'The machine makes a humming sucking sound with an occasional slurp.' Hundreds of bubble lights on the Christmas tree that gurgle and flow. The man who had had a cadaver transplant. The man who looks like a sweaty manatee. The girl who looks like an albino dinosaur, or an anorexic whippet.... And it goes on, relentless. We're in the West Oakland detox, the residents in the TV pit, watching Leave It to Beaver.... Dust to Dust: 'There are things people just don't talk about. I don't mean the hard things, like love, but the awkward ones, like how funerals are fun sometimes....' In more ways than one, this book is Lucia Berlin." —Paul Metcalf, Conjunctions: 14, on Safe & Sound

"This remarkable collection occasionally put me in mind of Annie Proulx's Accordion Crimes, with its sweep of American origins and places. Berlin is our Scheherazade, continually surprising her readers with a startling variety of voices, vividly drawn characters, and settings alive with sight and sound." —Barbara Barnard, American Book Review, on Where I Live Now

Personal life

Berlin was married three times and had four sons.

Berlin was plagued by health problems, including double

Marina del Rey, on her 68th birthday, with one of her favorite books in her hands.[7]

Works and publications

Bibliography

In periodicals (posthumous)

Multimedia

Other

References

  1. ^ "Lucia B Berlin - United States Social Security Death Index". FamilySearch. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
  2. ^ Williams, John (August 16, 2015). "Lucia Berlin's Roving, Rowdy Life Is Reflected in a Book of Her Stories". The New York Times. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
  3. ^ "Best Sellers - The New York Times". The New York Times. Retrieved 2015-09-12.
  4. ^ a b c Cullen, Dave (11 September 2015). "11 Years After Her Death, Lucia Berlin Is Finally a Bestselling Author". Vanity Fair. Retrieved 2015-09-12.
  5. ^ Davis, Lydia (August 12, 2015). "The Story Is the Thing: On Lucia Berlin". The New Yorker. Retrieved August 17, 2015. Adapted from the foreword to A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories, by Lucia Berlin
  6. ^ "READ THIS — A Manual for Cleaning Women". The National Book Review. Retrieved 2018-09-04.
  7. ^ a b c d Ensslin, John C. (November 18, 2004). "Lucia Berlin, 68, acclaimed fiction writer". Rocky Mountain News. Archived from the original on 4 December 2018. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
  8. ^ Franklin, Ruth (August 12, 2015). "'A Manual for Cleaning Women,' by Lucia Berlin". The New York Times. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
  9. ^ "A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories (starred review)". Publishers Weekly. April 6, 2015. Retrieved August 17, 2015.
  10. ^ "Best Sellers - The New York Times". The New York Times. Retrieved 2015-09-22.
  11. ^ "Best Sellers - The New York Times". The New York Times. Retrieved 2015-09-22.
  12. ISSN 0362-4331
    . Retrieved 2015-12-05.
  13. ^ "National Indie Bestsellers - Hardcover Fiction | American Booksellers Association". www.bookweb.org. Retrieved 2015-09-22.
  14. ^ "Bestsellers". Retrieved 2015-09-22.
  15. ^ "2015 Finalists: fiction | Kirkus Reviews". Kirkus Reviews. Retrieved 2015-12-05.
  16. The Daily Camera
    . Retrieved August 17, 2015.
  17. ^ Greenblatt, Leah (August 7, 2015). "A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin: EW Review". Entertainment Weekly. Retrieved August 17, 2015.

Further reading

External links
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