Review by Booklist Review
Calhoun (Why We Can't Sleep, 2020) has shared some aspects of her bohemian childhood in her previous books, especially in her vital work of New York City history, St. Marks Is Dead (2015). Here, in this fluidly morphing, magnetically candid chronicle, she ends up scrutinizing her often bewildering relationship with her father, the New Yorker art critic and poet Peter Schjeldahl (Hot, Cold, Heavy, Light, 2019). When Calhoun discovered recorded interviews her father conducted with people who knew the poet Frank O'Hara, whom Schjeldahl and his peers revered, she learned that he intended to write a biography until O'Hara's younger sister, Maureen, stood in the way. Discouraged, the habitually reckless Schjeldahl abandoned the project. Believing herself to be his opposite--reliable, productive, determined--Calhoun decides to complete the project. She dives in, sharing riveting excerpts from the tapes, profiling each interviewee, and bringing O'Hara into ever-sharper focus. But each foray resurrects distressing memories; she runs into the same unbreachable fortress surrounding the O'Hara archive; and she is assailed by a staggering run of emergencies, from cancer to a fire to COVID-19. Ultimately, Calhoun offers an arresting and provocative carousel of family dynamics, creative paradoxes, literary history, unnerving dilemmas, thorny questions of inheritance and legacy, wry humor, and love.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
A quest to capture the life of poet Frank O'Hara prompts a sweeping investigation of familial bonds in this mesmerizing work from journalist Calhoun (Why We Can't Sleep). When, in 2018, Calhoun discovered a trove of cassette tape interviews that her father, New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl, recorded in the 1970s for an authorized biography of O'Hara that went unfinished, she set out to resurrect the project. What follows is less a straightforward chronicle of one misunderstood genius's life, and more a prismatic account about "writing and books and Frank O'Hara," three interests that tie Calhoun to her vexing yet fascinating father, a brilliant writer, erstwhile bohemian poet, and disinterested dad whose "flashes of affection" she sought throughout her life like a drug: "I mimicked my father's O'Hara reverence the way a boy learns how to shave from watching his father's face in the bathroom mirror." As she attempts to course-correct Schjeldahl's shortcomings--which she details at length (in the book and to his face)--she crafts a masterpiece entirely her own, tapping into the "perpetual wonder" that imbued O'Hara with an "enlightened, saintlike quality" to radiantly explore her knotty relationship with her father, "the saddest part of my childhood and the greatest gift of my life." It's a dazzling thing to behold. (June)
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Review by Library Journal Review
Calhoun (Why We Can't Sleep), the only child of New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl, writes a memoir about their relationship. She's published three successful books by her mid-forties but feels like she can't get her father's attention. When she discovers a cache of taped interviews dated 1976--77, leftovers from Schjeldahl's unfinished project to memorialize the poet Frank O'Hara (1926--66), Calhoun resolves to write the book for her father, about a singular poet who more than any other captured what it was like to live in New York at mid-century. But O'Hara's sister, executor of his estate, won't let Calhoun study his personal papers; then the pandemic hits, Calhoun's grandmother dies, her father is diagnosed with cancer, and her parents' apartment burns down--whew! So instead of the O'Hara biography, Calhoun writes this odd memoir, partly about the poet but mostly about her own complicated relationship with a father she loves but finds exasperating, even hurtful, and who will too soon be gone. VERDICT Deeply moving and exceptionally well written, this offbeat memoir will please anyone interested in the NYC art scene from the 1950s on. Every father should have a daughter as loving, perceptive and honest as Calhoun.--David Keymer
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
Art critic Peter Schjeldahl's daughter takes a shot at finishing her father's derailed biography of Frank O'Hara and ends up writing a fascinating memoir. Calhoun, author of the excellent St. Marks Is Dead, was looking for a childhood toy when she found the cassettes of her father's interviews with O'Hara's associates, recorded in preparation for writing an authorized biography in the late 1970s. Due to circumstances revealed gradually, support for the work was withdrawn by Maureen O'Hara, the poet's sister and executor. Calhoun began blithely, certain she could resurrect the project, but what ensues turns out to be both somewhat less and very much more. As her husband, Neal, puts it in one of many adept formulations, "this is two successive generations of writers trying to say something of value about a wonderful, talented, funny young man who wrote lovely poetry and died in a freak accident. What a series of dying stars all collapsing in on each other: your dad's book, Maureen's machinations, your dad's poetry career, your attempts to win the scenario, your relationship with your dad, your relationship with Maureen." In Neal's view, even the difficulties are "amazing and beautiful," and surprisingly, given the number of resentments and disillusions cataloged here (Larry Rivers, watch out!), he is right. Even the title of the book comes from the off-base headline on O'Hara's obituary in the New York Times: "EXHIBITIONS AIDE AT MODERN ART DIES--ALSO A POET." The most powerful of the misapprehensions lies between the author and her father: "Perhaps my role as a writer who is not the best writer in my family is the cost of paying attention to my family," she submits, a typically loaded remark. One imagines her father, who was diagnosed with lung cancer in 2019 but has lived to read this work, is at last returning the long-withheld favor. A wonderfully convoluted, catty, candid, and clever piece of work. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
