Anyone who still believes that old chestnut that you have to endure a miserable childhood to be an affecting novelist needs to consider Meg Wolitzer, the happy daughter of a writer and a school psychologist. She grew up in an idyllic corner of Long Island, rocked in the comforts of suburban bliss, heir to a fascination with language that was indulged, nurtured, even celebrated. She was published by 11, whisked off to the offices of Kids magazine in glittering Manhattan, where she was made a guest editor at an age when some children hardly know how to spell "career."
And yet, if you ask her, she'll say every childhood is filled with sorrow. We are all trapped in our families, held hostage by parents. A child, more than anyone, is not free. According to her, we've all felt the requisite angst of an F. Scott Fitzgerald -- all we need is the genius. All we need is the words.
She is the daughter of Hilma Wolitzer, a "late-blooming domestic writer," as "housewives" turned fabulists were known in the '70s -- best known for a novel called Hearts. Meg's father, the school psychologist, came home with stories about troubled teenagers and family predicaments. Between her father's real-life secrets and her mother's imagined ones, young Wolitzer had plenty of inspiration. She was always copping tales from the dinner table, fitting them into worlds of her own.
She studied creative writing at Smith College under John Irving and Mary Gordon, then transferred to Brown and thrived under the tutelage of John Hawkes. In 1981, the year she graduated from college, she published her first novel, Sleepwalking. Since then, she's written five more -- Hidden Pictures (1986), This Is Your Life (1988), Friends for Life (1994), Surrender, Dorothy (1998) and The Wife (2003). Katha Pollitt called this last a "funny, sad, beautiful novel." Our Book World reviewer said: "Hers is a wholly original voice." Her stories are shot through with humor, but freighted by moral dilemmas. Come March, she will publish The Position, in which a married couple must make peace with their children about their past, rather scandalous lives.
She has taught writing at the University of Iowa's Writers' Workshop and Skidmore College, but today she supports her career via the far more lucrative business of screenplays, even if few of those well-paying scripts have made it to the silver screen (the excesses of Hollywood!). Two films, nevertheless, have been made of her books: "This Is Your Life," scripted by Nora Ephron; and a TV movie coming this spring, "Surrender, Dorothy," starring Diane Keaton.
Does she believe that good writing can be taught? "Not exactly," she says, "but I've done it. Of course, talent needs to be there. But so many beginning writers, even the promising ones, can't tell the difference between a good sentence and a bad one! They'll put a convoluted phrase next to something that's positively brilliant. The secret is to point that out."
-- Marie Arana
