Linda Rosenkrantz (born May 26, 1934) is an American writer, known for her innovations in the realm of “nonfiction fiction,” most prominently in her novel ''Talk'', a

New York Review Books New York Review Books (NYRB) is the publishing division of ''The New York Review of Books''. Its imprints are New York Review Books Classics, New York Review Books Collections, The New York Review Children's Collection, New York Review Comics, Ne ...

classic.

Life and career

Linda Rosenkrantz was born and raised up in

the Bronx, New York The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New York ...

, the daughter of Samuel, a garment industry executive, and Frances, an artist. She is a graduate of the High School of Music and Art in Manhattan and the

University of Michigan , mottoeng = "Arts, Knowledge, Truth" , former_names = Catholepistemiad, or University of Michigania (1817–1821) , budget = $10.3 billion (2021) , endowment = $17 billion (2021)As o ...

. After college, she joined the Editorial and Publicity Department of Parke-Bernet auction galleries. She was the founding editor of ''Auction'' magazine, published first by Sotheby-Parke-Bernet, and then by Institutional Investor, from 1967 to 1972, featuring original cover art by such artists as

Salvador Dalí Salvador Domingo Felipe Jacinto Dalí i Domènech, Marquess of Dalí of Púbol (; ; ; 11 May 190423 January 1989) was a Spanish surrealist artist renowned for his technical skill, precise draftsmanship, and the striking and bizarre images in ...

and

Peter Hujar Peter Hujar (October 11, 1934 – November 26, 1987) was an American photographer best known for his black and white portraits. He has been recognized posthumously as a major American photographer of the late-twentieth century. Yet Hujar's work r ...

, and articles by eminent art critics and antiques experts. In 1975, Rosenkrantz was the subject of an early

Chuck Close Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very l ...

color-grid painting, ''Linda'', now owned by the Akron Art Museum. Around this time, Rosenkrantz was a part of the New York art world, her immediate circle including such artists as Hujar,

Joseph Raffael Joseph Raffael (born February 22, 1933 in Brooklyn, NY - July 12, 2021 Cagnes-sur-Mer) was an American contemporary realist painter. His paintings, primarily watercolors, are almost all presented on a very large scale. Early life Raffael was ...

Paul Thek Paul Thek (November 2, 1933 – August 10, 1988) was an American painter, sculptor and installation artist. Thek was active in both the United States and Europe, exhibiting several installations and sculptural works over the course of his life. Po ...

and Susan Brockman, being a charter member of

Ray Johnson Raymond Edward "Ray" Johnson (October 16, 1927 – January 13, 1995) was an American artist. Known primarily as a collagist and correspondence artist, he was a seminal figure in the history of Neo-Dada and early Pop art and was described as

’s New York Correspondence School, as well as attending

Warhol Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the Art movement, visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore th ...

parties at the Factory. In 1986, Rosenkrantz began writing a weekly column, Contemporary Collectibles, which was widely syndicated by Copley News Service for 25 years. In 1990, she relocated to

Los Angeles Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, sec ...

with her husband, writer Christopher Finch, and daughter Chloe. Linda Chuck 1975

''Talk''

In 1968, Rosenkrantz’s novel ''Talk'', based on the taped conversations of herself and two friends in East Hampton, Long Island, was published by Putnam’s in New York and by

Anthony Blond Anthony Bernard Blond (20 March 1928 – 27 February 2008) was a British publisher and author, who was involved with several publishing companies over his career, including several he established himself, or in partnerships, from 1952. Biograp ...

in London two years later, followed by a

New American Library The New American Library (also known as NAL) is an American publisher based in New York, founded in 1948. Its initial focus was affordable paperback reprints of classics and scholarly works as well as popular and pulp fiction, but it now publish ...

paperback edition. ''Talk'' was the subject of a double-page spread in the fledgling '' New York'' magazine and garnered feature reviews in, among others, ''

The New York Times ''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid d ...

'', ''

Washington Post ''The Washington Post'' (also known as the ''Post'' and, informally, ''WaPo'') is an American daily newspaper published in Washington, D.C. It is the most widely circulated newspaper within the Washington metropolitan area and has a large na ...

'', American ''Vogue'' and in British ''Vogue'', which picked it as one of its Books of the Year. Talkcover

Nearly half a century later, ''Talk'' was reissued as a

Classic, receiving positive attention in ''

'', ''

New Statesman The ''New Statesman'' is a British Political magazine, political and cultural magazine published in London. Founded as a weekly review of politics and literature on 12 April 1913, it was at first connected with Sidney Webb, Sidney and Beatrice ...

'', ''

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Gu ...

'', ''

Paris Review ''The Paris Review'' is a quarterly English-language literary magazine established in Paris in 1953 by Harold L. Humes, Peter Matthiessen, and George Plimpton. In its first five years, ''The Paris Review'' published works by Jack Kerouac, Phil ...

'' (whose then-editor

Lorin Stein Lorin Hollister Stein (born April 22, 1973) is an American critic, editor, and translator. He was the editor in chief of '' The Paris Review''Dave Itzkoff (March 5, 2010)"Paris Review Names New Editor" ArtsBeat, '' The New York Times''. but resi ...

, picked ''Talk'' as his #1 summer book of 2015), '' New Republic'',

The Nation ''The Nation'' is an American liberal biweekly magazine that covers political and cultural news, opinion, and analysis. It was founded on July 6, 1865, as a successor to William Lloyd Garrison's '' The Liberator'', an abolitionist newspaper t ...

'' Harper's'', ''

The Village Voice ''The Village Voice'' is an American news and culture paper, known for being the country's first alternative newspaper, alternative newsweekly. Founded in 1955 by Dan Wolf (publisher), Dan Wolf, Ed Fancher, John Wilcock, and Norman Mailer, th ...

'' (”a favorite of the year”), and other periodicals. An excerpt appeared on

Literary Hub Literary Hub is a daily literary website that launched in 2015 by Grove Atlantic president and publisher Morgan Entrekin, American Society of Magazine Editors Hall of Fame editor Terry McDonell, and Electric Literature founder Andy Hunter. Conte ...

, and Rosenkrantz was featured on

NPR National Public Radio (NPR, stylized in all lowercase) is an American privately and state funded nonprofit media organization headquartered in Washington, D.C., with its NPR West headquarters in Culver City, California. It differs from other ...

’s Bookworm show and ''New York'' magazine’s Sex Lives podcast. ''Talk'' has been translated into Spanish, ''La Charla'', published by Editorial Anagrama, Barcelona 2017 and into Italian, ''Talk!'', 8tto Edizioni, Milano 2019.

''Peter Hujar’s Day''

In 1974, Linda Rosenkrantz embarked on another tapecentric project. She asked a number of her friends and acquaintances, including artist

and photographer

, to write down everything they did on one particular day, then to meet with her to report and record in conversation the events of their day. Forty years later, in 2021, a transcript of the Hujar chapter was published in book form by Magic Hour Press as ''Peter Hujar’s Day.'' Articles about and by Rosenkrantz appeared in such international publications as '' i-D'', Frieze.com,

El Pais EL, El or el may refer to: Religion * El (deity), a Semitic word for "God" People * EL (rapper) (born 1983), stage name of Elorm Adablah, a Ghanaian rapper and sound engineer * El DeBarge, music artist * El Franco Lee (1949–2016), American p ...

and

Baby Names

In 1988, Rosenkrantz co-wrote with

Pamela Redmond Satran Pamela Redmond Satran (born April 10, 1953), now known as Pamela Redmond, is an American entrepreneur and author of fiction and nonfiction. Her novel ''Younger,'' published in 2005, is the basis for a TV series of the same name created by Dar ...

, ''Beyond Jennifer and Jason: An Enlightened Guide to Naming Your Baby'', ( St. Martin’s Press), a book that is considered to have revolutionized the naming of children in the US and beyond, the first name guide to organize names into lists, identify style trends, calculate name popularity, and analyze the effects of pop culture on naming trends. This was followed by a series of nine more books on such specialty areas as British names, Irish names, Jewish names, and Cool Names and the encyclopedic ''Baby Name Bible''. In 2008, the website nameberry.com was launched by Rosenkrantz and Satran, based on their ten books on the subject. Nameberry has become the world's leading website devoted to baby names. It is widely recognized as the international authority on baby name style, history, and trends, attracting six million unique monthly visitors and 25 million page views from virtually every country around the world, and is still growing.

''Ex''

In 2018, five sections of Rosenkrantz’s taped work-in-progress, ''Ex'', were excerpted and published in comix form on the

Lena Dunham Lena Dunham (, born May 13, 1986) is an American writer, director, actress, and producer. She is known as the creator, writer, and star of the HBO television series ''Girls (TV series), Girls'' (2012–2017), for which she received several Emmy ...

/ Jenni Konner website lennyletter. The concept of this book was to invite a number of old boyfriends for dinner, one by one, serve each of them the same menu, and have a tape recorder running from the moment they entered her Upper East Side apartment to the moment they left. The resultant edited transcripts display not only a diversity of male personalities but shifting versions of Rosenkrantz herself.

Bibliography

*''Talk'', G. P. Putnams, 1968 *''Gone Hollywood: The Movie Colony in the

Golden Age The term Golden Age comes from Greek mythology, particularly the '' Works and Days'' of Hesiod, and is part of the description of temporal decline of the state of peoples through five Ages, Gold being the first and the one during which the G ...

'' (with Christopher Finch), Doubleday, 1979 *''

Soho Soho is an area of the City of Westminster, part of the West End of London. Originally a fashionable district for the aristocracy, it has been one of the main entertainment districts in the capital since the 19th century. The area was develo ...

'' (novel written with Christopher Finch under pseudonym C. L. Byrd),

Doubleday (publisher) Doubleday is an American publishing company. It was founded as the Doubleday & McClure Company in 1897 and was the largest in the United States by 1947. It published the work of mostly U.S. authors under a number of imprints and distributed th ...

, 1983 *''Beyond Jennifer & Jason'' (with Pamela Redmond Satran), St. Martin’s Press, 1988 *'' Sotheby’s Guide to Animation Art'' (with Christopher Finch), Henry Holt & Co, 1998 *''My Life as a List: 207 Things about My

Bronx The Bronx () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Bronx County, in the state of New York. It is south of Westchester County; north and east of the New York City borough of Manhattan, across the Harlem River; and north of the New Y ...

Childhood'', Clarkson Potter, 1999 *''Telegram: Modern History as Told Through More Than 400 Witty, Poignant and Revealing Telegrams'',

Henry Holt & Co Henry Holt and Company is an American book-publishing company based in New York City. One of the oldest publishers in the United States, it was founded in 1866 by Henry Holt and Frederick Leypoldt. Currently, the company publishes in the fields ...

, 2003 *''Cool Names for Babies'' (with Pamela Redmond Satran), St. Martin’s Press, 2003 *''The Baby Name Bible'' (with Pamela Redmond Satran), St. Martin’s Press, 2007 *''Talk'',

Classics, 2015 *''

’s Day'', Magic Hour Press, 2021

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosenkrantz, Linda Women writers (modern period) University of Michigan alumni Writers from the Bronx 1934 births Living people