Renata's Fans (3)

Renata Adler

Author profile

born

October 19, 1938

About this author

edit data

Born in Milan, Italy, Adler grew up in Danbury, Connecticut after her parents had fled Nazi Germany in 1933. After attending Bryn Mawr, The Sorbonne, and Harvard, she became a staff writer-reporter for The New Yorker. She later received her J.D. from Yale Law School, and an Honorary Doctorate of Laws from Georgetown University.

Adler’s essays and articles have been collected in Toward a Radical Middle (1969) and A Year in the Dark (1970), Reckless Disregard (1986), and Canaries in the Mineshaft (2001). Renata Adler is also the author of two successful novels Speedboat (1976) and Pitch Dark (1983). Both novels are composed of seemingly unconnected passages that challenge readers to find meaning. Like her nonfiction, Adler's novels examine the...more

combine editions
Books by Renata Adler

Average rating: 4.00 · 197 ratings · 37 reviews · 13 distinct works

	Speedboat 4.08 avg rating — 86 ratings — published 1976 — 9 editions	My rating:
	Pitch Dark 4.04 avg rating — 45 ratings — expected publication 2013 — 10 editions	My rating:
	Gone 3.19 avg rating — 21 ratings — published 1999 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Richard Avedon: Portraits of Power by Renata Adler, Richard Avedon (Photographer), Frank Goodyear 4.58 avg rating — 12 ratings — published 2008	My rating:
	Canaries in the Mineshaft: Essays on Politics and Media 4.30 avg rating — 10 ratings — published 2001 — 2 editions	My rating:
	A Year in the Dark: Journal of a Film Critic 1968-1969 3.83 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 1969	My rating:
	Reckless Disregard 4.00 avg rating — 6 ratings — published 1986 — 2 editions	My rating:
	Irreparable Harm: The U.S. Supreme Court and The Decision That Made George W. Bush President 4.25 avg rating — 4 ratings — published 2004	My rating:
	Toward a Radical Middle : Fourteen Pieces of Reporting and Criticism 4.00 avg rating — 3 ratings	My rating:
	Gone: The Last Days of The New Yorker 2.00 avg rating — 1 rating — published 2011	My rating:

More books by Renata Adler…

Upcoming Events

No scheduled events. Add an event.

Quotes by Renata Adler

“That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all.”
― Renata Adler, Speedboat

4 people liked it

“Bored people, unless they sleep a lot, are cruel.”
― Renata Adler

3 people liked it

“A rowboat, without oars. An outboard motor. As you can sit there for years, forever, with that outboard motor, pulling again, and yet again, that rope, or cord, or wire, or whatever it is, and winding yet again, and each time, every single time, the motor, though it may give a cough or two, will fail to start, though if it starts, and when it starts, you are, at whatever speed you choose, within the engine's limits and the hazards of the course, well on your way, until it starts you are no nearer where you were going on the fifteenth try than on the first; the enterprise may last forever, and never yet quite begin. The fact seems to be, however, that unless some apparently unrelated event should intervene -- a bullet, a heart attack, a cry from shore that dinner's ready, or company has come, or junior's run away -- the engine will eventually start. In the meantime, though, while you have been intensely busy, it is difficult to account for how the time is spent.”
― Renata Adler, Pitch Dark

2 people liked it

See all Renata Adler's quotes »

Is this you? Let us know. If not, help out and invite Renata to Goodreads.