Alison Stewart Lurie was born on September 3, 1926, in Chicago,[1] and raised inWhite Plains, New York. Her father Harry Lawrence Lurie was a sociologist, and her mother Bernice Lurie (née Stewart) was a journalist and book critic.[2] Her father was born in Latvia and her mother was born in Scotland.[3] Her father was the first executive director of the National Council of Jewish Federations and Welfare Funds.[4] Due to complications with aforceps delivery, she was born deaf in one ear and with damage to her facial muscles.[5] She attended a boarding school inDarien, Connecticut,[5] and graduated fromRadcliffe College ofHarvard University in 1947 with abachelor's degree in history and literature.[2]
Lurie met literary scholar Jonathan Peale Bishop while in college,[6] and they married in 1948.[2] Bishop later taught atAmherst College andCornell University, and Lurie moved along with him. They had three sons and divorced in 1984. She then married the writer Edward Hower. She spent part of her time inHampstead, London;[7] part inIthaca, New York; and part inKey West, Florida.[2]
In 1970, Lurie began to teach in the English department at Cornell, where she was tenured in 1979. She taughtchildren's literature and writing. In 1976, she was named the F. J. Whiton Professor of American Literature at Cornell,[8][9] and upon retirement,professor emerita.[10] In 1981, she publishedThe Language of Clothes, a non-fiction book about thesemiotics of dress. Her discussion inLanguage of Clothes has been compared toRoland Barthes'The Fashion System (1985).[11]
Lurie died from natural causes while under hospice care in Ithaca on December 3, 2020, at age 94.[2][10][12]
Lurie's personal papers are archived at Cornell University.[13]
Lurie's novels often featured professors in starring roles, and were frequentlyset at academic institutions.[14] With their light touch and focus on portraying the emotions of well-educated adulterers, her works bear more resemblance to some 20th-century British authors (such asKingsley Amis andDavid Lodge) rather than to the major American authors of her generation.[15] A 2003 profile of Lurie, styled as a review of herBoys and Girls Forever, a work of criticism, observed that Lurie's works are often "witty and astutecomedies of manners".[6] Lurie noted that her writing was grounded in a "desire to laugh at things".[9] The author also incorporated some of her own experiences into her fiction. InThe Nowhere City, there is a character based on actress Sheree North. "I did have a job answering her fan mail," Lurie recalled. Lurie also used some of Sheree's friends as characters but "tried to change them all a little, so as not to annoy anybody."[16]
Literary criticJohn W. Aldridge gave a mixed assessment of Lurie's oeuvre inThe American Novel and the Way We Live Now (1983). He notes that Lurie's work "has a satirical edge that, when it is not employed in hacking away at the obvious, is often eviscerating", but also remarks that "there is … something hobbled and hamstrung about her engagement in experience".[17][18]
Although better known as a novelist, she wrote many non-fiction books and articles, particularly on children's literature and the semiotics of dress.[1]
Waxman, Barbara Frey (2002). "A New Language of Aging: "Deep Play" in Carol Shields'sThe Stone Diaries and Alison Lurie'sThe Last Resort".South Atlantic Review.67 (2):25–51.doi:10.2307/3201960.JSTOR3201960.
