Lucia Berlin | |
|---|---|
| Born | Lucia Brown (1936-11-12)November 12, 1936 |
| Died | November 12, 2004(2004-11-12) (aged 68) Marina del Rey,California, U.S. |
| Occupation | Writer |
Lucia Brown Berlin (November 12, 1936 – November 12, 2004) was an American short story writer.[1] 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 hitThe New York Times bestseller list in its second week,[2] and within a few weeks had outsold all her previous books combined.[3]
Berlin was born inJuneau,Alaska, and spent her childhood on the move, following her father's career as a mining engineer. The family lived in mining camps inIdaho,Montana,Arizona, El Paso, Texas andChile, where Lucia spent most of her youth. As an adult, she lived inNew Mexico,Mexico,New York City, Northern and SouthernCalifornia, andColorado.[4]
Berlin began publishing relatively late in life, under the encouragement and sometimes tutelage of poetEd Dorn. Her first small collection,Angels Laundromat, was published in 1981, but her published stories were written as early as 1960. She published seventy-six stories in her lifetime.[5] Several of her stories appeared in magazines such asThe Atlantic and Saul Bellow'sThe Noble Savage. Berlin published six collections of short stories, but most of her work can be found in three later volumes fromBlack Sparrow Books:Homesick: New and Selected Stories (1990),So Long: Stories 1987-92 (1993) andWhere I Live Now: Stories 1993-98 (1999).
Berlin was never a bestseller during her lifetime, but was widely influential within the literary community.[citation needed] She has been compared toRaymond Carver[6] andRichard Yates.[citation needed] Her one-page story "My Jockey," consisting of five paragraphs, won theJack London Short Prize for 1985. Berlin also won anAmerican Book Award in 1991 forHomesick, and was awarded a fellowship from theNational 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.[8][9] It debuted at #18 on theNew York Times bestseller list its first week,[10] and rose to #15 on the regular list the following week.[11] The collection was ineligible for most of the year-end awards (either because she was deceased, or it was recollected material), but was named to a large number of year-end lists, including theNew 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 theLA Times' list.[14] It was also a finalist for theKirkus Prize.[15] In 2024, it was ranked #79 of the 100 Best Books of the 21st century by theNew York Times.[16]
Throughout her life, Berlin earned a living through a series of working class jobs, among them a position as a cleaning woman and one as atelephone receptionist.[17]
Up through the early 1990s, Berlin taught creative writing in a number of venues, including the San Francisco County Jail and theJack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics atNaropa University. She also took oral histories from elderly patients at Mt. Zion Hospital.[18]
She was interested inartist's books and the publishing process. Working withPoltroon Press, she designed some of her own books and typset them. She would revise them as she set the print.[19] She also producedchapbooks.[20]
In the fall of 1994, Berlin began a two-year teaching position as Visiting Writer atUniversity 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.[21] "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.
"Lucia Berlin's stories are "raw" in the sense that they appear to spring directly from life and contain almost no literary pretensions. Their style is declarative and unadorned, casual, sometimes with a bit of self-mocking humor but for the most part simple reportage."[22]
"I would place her somewhere in the same arena asAlice Munro,Grace Paley, maybeTillie 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 storyA Manual for Cleaning Women.[23]
"[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." —Molly Giles, San Francisco Chronicle, onSo Long.[23]
"Berlin's literary model isChekhov, 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, onWhere I Live Now.[23]
Berlin was married three times and had four sons.
Berlin was plagued by health problems, including doublescoliosis. Hercrooked spine punctured one of her lungs, and she was never seen without anoxygen tank beside her from 1994 until her death.[7] She retired when her condition grew too severe to work. She was an alcoholic, as were many of her relatives.[22] She later developedlung cancer. She struggled withradiation therapy, which she said felt like having one's bones ground to dust.[3] As her health and finances deteriorated, Berlin moved into a trailer park on the edge of Boulder. Later, she lived in a converted garage behind her son's house outside Los Angeles.[3] The move allowed her to be closer to her sons, and made breathing easier because of Boulder's elevation. Lucia died in her home inMarina del Rey, on her 68th birthday, with one of her favorite books in her hands.[7]
Adapted from the foreword toA Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories, by Lucia Berlin
