Fans of V.I. Warshawski -- Chicago's most famous fictional detective -- may feel as if they know the tough-talking, whiskey-drinking private eye.
April 24, 2007 (Press Release) --
But until now, Warshawski's alter ego and creator has largely been a mystery.
Sara Paretsky has penned 12 crime novels featuring Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski, but Writing in an Age of Silence is her first memoir. It's the first time Paretsky has been so personal with readers, detailing an oppressive childhood in rural Kansas where she was raised in a violent, hyper-intellectual Jewish family. Her mother was an alcoholic, her father a sexist who saw the young Sara as his caretaker. Paretsky spent much of her childhood cleaning house and looking after two of her four brothers. Her parents refused to pay for her college education or let her attend anywhere other than the University of Kansas, where her father taught.
"I still find the past a very difficult place to think about," Paretsky says of her childhood. "So there's a lot of stuff I didn't talk about because it was so much more specific about the two youngest ones. They are the ones I raised from puppies. I felt it was their privacy to guard. We grew up in such a violent household. I think everybody needed some place to escape to. I turned to stories."
Paretsky, 59, wasn't convinced her story was all that compelling and only agreed to write the book, largely a collection of her essays and public speeches interwoven with personal details, at her publisher's behest. "They thought it would be more interesting if I made it more personal. It was not easy," she admits, especially since the publisher required her to write it in a matter of months last fall. Paretsky wishes she'd had more time to "sort it all out."
The truncated details reveal a woman of insecure intellect yearning for acceptance, from a father who accused her of having a "second-rate mind" to male professors who treated her as a "body"; from teenage stepsons who discounted her ability to mother to her readers, whom she fears disappointing.
Paretsky's story in Chicago began in 1966, when she came to help run a summer day camp in Gage Park. The racial violence and hatred she witnessed shocked her and she joined civil rights marches. By 1968, Paretsky had exchanged her oppressive home life for the equally misogynistic environment at the University of Chicago history department. She was the only female doctoral candidate who returned her second year. One professor taught that women were not capable of producing original work but could only parrot others' brilliance. That's when Paretsky became a feminist.
"I became angry at my powerlessness -- my personal powerlessness in my patriarchal family and my patriarchal history department -- and the powerlessness that society bestowed on all women," she writes in the book.
Despite the university's chauvinism, Paretsky persevered, earning an MBA and a doctorate in history from the illustrious Hyde Park institution. She met her husband, Courtenay Wright, a U. of C. physics professor who retired in 1993, at a Chinese restaurant in Hyde Park, where the couple has lived for 31 years.
Though she is effusive about Wright in the book -- "I have never known his equal" -- their early years were chaotic. Wright -- 23 years her senior -- was a widower with three teenage boys when they married.
"I was young and stupid," Paretsky admits.
Now her stepsons confide in her, she is quick to say, but then it was a different story. "We had some turbulent years. I wasn't enough older than [the boys] for them ever to feel confident that I could be a surrogate mother in their lives." As in her childhood, Paretsky turned inward. "Writing was my refuge. It was where I went to escape."
The boys didn't resent Paretsky's absences, she says. "I think they were glad I wasn't paying attention to them and what was going on in the basement. We'll just pretend we don't know what that smoke smell is."
One night early in her marriage, Paretsky came home and found a government car parked outside her family's house with a spotlight shining on the front door. "I went into this dark house, and I found one of my stepsons there with his dopehead friends all huddled in the dark. They were sure it was a raid."
"You see, V.I. didn't exist then," she explained. "If I was V.I., I would have marched up and confronted [the agents in the car] but I was huddled and scared, too." Only when her husband came home and questioned the agents, did they learn that Secretary of Treasury George Shultz was visiting friends a few houses down. "They [the stepson and pals] had flushed so much crap down the toilet, it was the only time I was really in love with Richard Nixon because he cleaned out my house for a week," Paretsky says, laughing.
Source: http://www.msn.com
Posted by Cheryl
Sara Paretsky has penned 12 crime novels featuring Victoria Iphigenia Warshawski, but Writing in an Age of Silence is her first memoir. It's the first time Paretsky has been so personal with readers, detailing an oppressive childhood in rural Kansas where she was raised in a violent, hyper-intellectual Jewish family. Her mother was an alcoholic, her father a sexist who saw the young Sara as his caretaker. Paretsky spent much of her childhood cleaning house and looking after two of her four brothers. Her parents refused to pay for her college education or let her attend anywhere other than the University of Kansas, where her father taught.
"I still find the past a very difficult place to think about," Paretsky says of her childhood. "So there's a lot of stuff I didn't talk about because it was so much more specific about the two youngest ones. They are the ones I raised from puppies. I felt it was their privacy to guard. We grew up in such a violent household. I think everybody needed some place to escape to. I turned to stories."
Paretsky, 59, wasn't convinced her story was all that compelling and only agreed to write the book, largely a collection of her essays and public speeches interwoven with personal details, at her publisher's behest. "They thought it would be more interesting if I made it more personal. It was not easy," she admits, especially since the publisher required her to write it in a matter of months last fall. Paretsky wishes she'd had more time to "sort it all out."
The truncated details reveal a woman of insecure intellect yearning for acceptance, from a father who accused her of having a "second-rate mind" to male professors who treated her as a "body"; from teenage stepsons who discounted her ability to mother to her readers, whom she fears disappointing.
Paretsky's story in Chicago began in 1966, when she came to help run a summer day camp in Gage Park. The racial violence and hatred she witnessed shocked her and she joined civil rights marches. By 1968, Paretsky had exchanged her oppressive home life for the equally misogynistic environment at the University of Chicago history department. She was the only female doctoral candidate who returned her second year. One professor taught that women were not capable of producing original work but could only parrot others' brilliance. That's when Paretsky became a feminist.
"I became angry at my powerlessness -- my personal powerlessness in my patriarchal family and my patriarchal history department -- and the powerlessness that society bestowed on all women," she writes in the book.
Despite the university's chauvinism, Paretsky persevered, earning an MBA and a doctorate in history from the illustrious Hyde Park institution. She met her husband, Courtenay Wright, a U. of C. physics professor who retired in 1993, at a Chinese restaurant in Hyde Park, where the couple has lived for 31 years.
Though she is effusive about Wright in the book -- "I have never known his equal" -- their early years were chaotic. Wright -- 23 years her senior -- was a widower with three teenage boys when they married.
"I was young and stupid," Paretsky admits.
Now her stepsons confide in her, she is quick to say, but then it was a different story. "We had some turbulent years. I wasn't enough older than [the boys] for them ever to feel confident that I could be a surrogate mother in their lives." As in her childhood, Paretsky turned inward. "Writing was my refuge. It was where I went to escape."
The boys didn't resent Paretsky's absences, she says. "I think they were glad I wasn't paying attention to them and what was going on in the basement. We'll just pretend we don't know what that smoke smell is."
One night early in her marriage, Paretsky came home and found a government car parked outside her family's house with a spotlight shining on the front door. "I went into this dark house, and I found one of my stepsons there with his dopehead friends all huddled in the dark. They were sure it was a raid."
"You see, V.I. didn't exist then," she explained. "If I was V.I., I would have marched up and confronted [the agents in the car] but I was huddled and scared, too." Only when her husband came home and questioned the agents, did they learn that Secretary of Treasury George Shultz was visiting friends a few houses down. "They [the stepson and pals] had flushed so much crap down the toilet, it was the only time I was really in love with Richard Nixon because he cleaned out my house for a week," Paretsky says, laughing.
Source: http://www.msn.com
Posted by Cheryl
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