The Miss Dennis School of Writing: And Other Lessons from a Woman’s Life - Hardcover

Steinbach, Alice

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0963124625 ISBN 13: 9780963124623

Publisher: Bancroft Press, 1996

Synopsis

In this collection of her essays and columns, Pulitzer Prize-winning Baltimore Sun journalist Steinbach seeks to "rescue from insignificance some of the small events that make up a life." These pieces thus explore, with quiet grace, the unexpected pleasures that are gleaned from an appreciation of the "ordinary" - a sleeping cat, a blooming garden, a well-cooked meal. Such familiar - even ostensibly mundane - details of our lives, Steinbach maintains, play a far more important part in shaping our identities and our sense of our relationship to the world than do the "exotic encounters" or momentous events to which we attach much significance. Alternately poignant and humorous, sedately contemplative and bristling with emotional energy, Steinbach's various musings on the daily rhythms of her own moods and experiences transform "everyday life" into a rich and meaningful journey.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

This first book by Pulitzer Prize Winner Alice Steinbach is an intimate, personal collection of essays, remembrances, and columns that follows in the creative non-fiction tradition of Anna Quindlen and May Sarton. While it recounts the experiences and observations of a divorced, working mother, it expresses hopes and fears universal to all women. Steinbach focuses on the big and small things of life: the bond between lifelong friends; coming to grips with loss; the quiet, everyday moments between parents and child; the spiritual connection to nature; the realities of being a single parent. She writes of the people who've touched her own life; the influential teacher; the worldly aunt; the writer hero; the woman sees regularly at a bus stop as both head to work. She offers us beautifully written lessons she's learned during a lifetime of changes and challenges.

From Kirkus Reviews:

Journalist Steinbach is a Pulitzer Prize winner, but the award was given for feature articles written for the Baltimore Sun, not for this motley assortment of reflections on ``the small events that make up a life.'' In the footsteps of other essayists and columnists--Erma Bombeck and Steinbach's hero E.B. White among them--Steinbach digs for the universal in the personal, and from time to time, she strikes pay dirt. Among her favorite, and more successful, subjects are her sons, her cats (in particular the charismatic Max), and her late mother. Tired and dated are observations on Gloria Steinem, Martha Stewart, and dieting. The essays are corraled into the usual categories, including relationships, raising children, childhood memories, work and growing older, with each section introduced by a brief commentary. The Miss Dennis of the title was the author's ninth-grade creative-writing teacher, who loved Emily Dickinson and directed her students to ``pay attention'' and to ``find [a] unique voice.'' Steinbach clearly learned how to pay attention--she is, after all, an award-winning reporter--but she is still tuning her rather self- conscious voice. Nevertheless, there are some memorable turns of phrase here. Regarding wishing for the ``world on a string'' vs. small satisfactions like an uninterrupted supper hour, she says: ``Small hopes . . . are a lot like dogs: They tend to come when they're called.'' There are also tender memories of her mother in the garden and her father on vacation. Steinbach's eye for eloquent detail is conveyed in only a few pieces here, among them ``Pioneer Women.'' Overall, Miss Dennis would not be happy. Resurrected from the newspaper morgue, these pieces tend to lose whatever punch they may have initially had. -- Copyright ©1996, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

About this edition

• Publisher: Bancroft Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 0963124625
• ISBN 13: 9780963124623
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 307