Lucia Berlin
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Lucia Brown Berlin (November 12, 1936 – November 12, 2004) was an American short story writer. She had a small, devoted following, but did not reach a mass audience during her lifetime. She rose to sudden literary fame in 2015, eleven years after her death, with the publication of a volume of her selected stories, ''A Manual for Cleaning Women''. It hit ''The New York Times'' bestseller list in its second week, and within a few weeks had outsold all her previous books combined.


Early life

Berlin was born in
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,
Alaska Alaska ( ; russian: Аляска, Alyaska; ale, Alax̂sxax̂; ; ems, Alas'kaaq; Yup'ik: ''Alaskaq''; tli, Anáaski) is a state located in the Western United States on the northwest extremity of North America. A semi-exclave of the U.S., ...
, and spent her childhood on the move, following her father's career as a mining engineer. The family lived in mining camps in
Idaho Idaho ( ) is a state in the Pacific Northwest region of the Western United States. To the north, it shares a small portion of the Canada–United States border with the province of British Columbia. It borders the states of Montana and Wyom ...
,
Montana Montana () is a state in the Mountain West division of the Western United States. It is bordered by Idaho to the west, North Dakota and South Dakota to the east, Wyoming to the south, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta, British Columbi ...
and
Arizona Arizona ( ; nv, Hoozdo Hahoodzo ; ood, Alĭ ṣonak ) is a state in the Southwestern United States. It is the 6th largest and the 14th most populous of the 50 states. Its capital and largest city is Phoenix. Arizona is part of the Fou ...
, and
Chile Chile, officially the Republic of Chile, is a country in the western part of South America. It is the southernmost country in the world, and the closest to Antarctica, occupying a long and narrow strip of land between the Andes to the east a ...
, where Lucia spent most of her youth. As an adult, she lived in
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,
Mexico Mexico (Spanish: México), officially the United Mexican States, is a country in the southern portion of North America. It is bordered to the north by the United States; to the south and west by the Pacific Ocean; to the southeast by Guatema ...
,
New York City New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the List of United States cities by population, most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the L ...
, Northern and Southern
California California is a U.S. state, state in the Western United States, located along the West Coast of the United States, Pacific Coast. With nearly 39.2million residents across a total area of approximately , it is the List of states and territori ...
, and
Colorado Colorado (, other variants) is a state in the Mountain West subregion of the Western United States. It encompasses most of the Southern Rocky Mountains, as well as the northeastern portion of the Colorado Plateau and the western edge of t ...
.


Career

Berlin began publishing relatively late in life, under the encouragement and sometimes tutelage of poet
Ed Dorn Edward Merton Dorn (April 2, 1929 – December 10, 1999, aged 70) was an American poet and teacher often associated with the Black Mountain poets. His most famous work is '' ''Gunslinger'. Overview Dorn was born in Villa Grove, Illinois. ...
. Her first small collection, ''Angels Laundromat,'' was published in 1981, but her published stories were written as early as 1960. She published seventy-six stories in her lifetime. Several of her stories appeared in magazines such as ''
The Atlantic ''The Atlantic'' is an American magazine and multi-platform publisher. It features articles in the fields of politics, foreign affairs, business and the economy, culture and the arts, technology, and science. It was founded in 1857 in Boston, ...
'' and Saul Bellow's ''The Noble Savage''. Berlin published six collections of short stories, but most of her work can be found in three later volumes from
Black Sparrow Books Black Sparrow Press is a New England based independent book publisher, known for literary fiction and poetry. History Black Sparrow was founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1966 by John Martin in order to publish the works of Charles Bukowski ...
: ''Homesick: New and Selected Stories'' (1990), ''So Long: Stories 1987-92'' (1993) and ''Where I Live Now: Stories 1993-98'' (1999). Berlin was never a bestseller, but was widely influential within the literary community. She has been compared to
Raymond Carver Raymond Clevie Carver Jr. (May 25, 1938 – August 2, 1988) was an American short story writer and poet. He contributed to the revitalization of the American short story during the 1980s. Early life Carver was born in Clatskanie, Oregon, a mi ...
and Richard Yates. Her one-page story "My Jockey", consisting of five paragraphs, won the Jack London Short Prize for 1985. Berlin also won an
American Book Award The American Book Award is an American literary award that annually recognizes a set of books and people for "outstanding literary achievement". According to the 2010 awards press release, it is "a writers' award given by other writers" and "the ...
in 1991 for ''Homesick'', and was awarded a fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts. In 2015, a compendium of her short story work was released under the title, ''A Manual for Cleaning Women: Short Stories.'' It debuted at #18 on the New York Times bestseller list its first week, and rose to #15 on the regular list the following week. The collection was ineligible for most of the year-end awards (either because she was deceased, or it was recollected material), but was named to a large number of year-end lists, including the
New York Times Book Review ''The New York Times Book Review'' (''NYTBR'') is a weekly paper-magazine supplement to the Sunday edition of ''The New York Times'' in which current non-fiction and fiction books are reviewed. It is one of the most influential and widely rea ...
s "10 Best Books of 2015.". It debuted at #14 on the ABA's Indie bestseller list and #5 on the LA Times' list. It was also a finalist for the Kirkus Prize.


Influences and teaching

Throughout her life, Berlin earned a living through a series of working class jobs, reflected in story titles like "A Manual for Cleaning Women," "Emergency Room Notebook, 1977," and "Private Branch Exchange" (referring to
telephone switchboard A telephone switchboard was a device used to connect circuits of telephones to establish telephone calls between users or other switchboards, throughout the 20th century. The switchboard was an essential component of a manual telephone exchange, ...
s and their operators). Up through the early 1990s, Berlin taught creative writing in a number of venues, including the San Francisco County Jail and the
Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics The Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics is a school of Naropa University, located in Boulder, Colorado, United States. It was founded in 1974 by Allen Ginsberg and Anne Waldman, as part of Chögyam Trungpa Rinpoche’s 100-year experim ...
at
Naropa University Naropa University is a private university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1974 by Tibetan Buddhist teacher Chögyam Trungpa, it is named for the 11th-century Indian Buddhist sage Naropa, an abbot of Nalanda. The university describes itself as B ...
. She also took oral histories from elderly patients at Mt. Zion Hospital. In the fall of 1994, Berlin began a two-year teaching position as Visiting Writer at
University of Colorado, Boulder The University of Colorado Boulder (CU Boulder, CU, or Colorado) is a public research university in Boulder, Colorado. Founded in 1876, five months before Colorado became a state, it is the flagship university of the University of Colorado syst ...
. Near the end of her term, she was one of four campus faculty awarded the Student Organization for Alumni Relations Award for Teaching Excellence. "To win a teaching award after two years is unheard of," the English Chair Katherine Eggert said later in an obituary. Berlin was asked to stay on at the end of her two-year term. She was named associate professor, and continued teaching there until 2000.


Critical praise

Berlin has been called one of America's best kept secrets. "I would place her somewhere in the same arena as
Alice Munro Alice Ann Munro (; ; born 10 July 1931) is a Canadian short story writer who won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. Munro's work has been described as revolutionizing the architecture of short stories, especially in its tendency to move f ...
,
Grace Paley Grace Paley (December 11, 1922 – August 22, 2007) was an American short story author, poet, teacher, and political activist. Paley wrote three critically acclaimed collections of short stories, which were compiled in the Pulitzer Prize and Na ...
, maybe
Tillie Olsen Tillie may refer to: __NOTOC__ Places in the United States * Tillie, Kentucky, an unincorporated community * Tillie, Pennsylvania, a former populated place * Tillie Creek, California People * Tillie (name), a given name and surname Animal * Tilli ...
. In common with them, she writes with a guiding intelligent compassion about family, love, work; in a style that is direct, plain, clear, and non-judgmental; with a sense of humor and a gift for the gestures and the words that reveal character, the images that reveal the nature of a place." —Lydia Davis, New Ohio Review, on the story ''A Manual for Cleaning Women'' " he storiesare told in a conversational voice and they move with a swift and often lyrical economy. They capture and communicate moments of grace and cast a lovely, lazy light that lasts. Berlin is one of our finest writers and here she is at the height of her powers." —Molly Giles, San Francisco Chronicle, on ''So Long'' "Berlin's literary model is
Chekhov Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (; 29 January 1860 Old Style date 17 January. – 15 July 1904 Old Style date 2 July.) was a Russian playwright and short-story writer who is considered to be one of the greatest writers of all time. His career ...
, but there are extra-literary models too, including the extended jazz solo, with its surges, convolutions, and asides. This is writing of a very high order." —August Kleinzahler,
London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review of ...
, on ''Where I Live Now'' "In the field of short fiction, Lucia Berlin is one of America's best kept secrets. That's it. Flat out. No mitigating conditions. End of review. Well, not quite…
t is T, or t, is the twentieth letter in the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''tee'' (pronounced ), plural ''tees''. It is der ...
characteristic of all Berlin's stories, a buoyancy: however grim and 'unworthy' her characters, she enters and explores their lives with unfailing high spirits.... A drug rehab center in New Mexico; a story called 'Electric Car, El Paso' ('It was very tall and short, like a car in a cartoon that had run into a wall. A car with its hair standing on end.')... The Christmas party at the dialysis center. 'The machine makes a humming sucking sound with an occasional slurp.' Hundreds of bubble lights on the Christmas tree that gurgle and flow. The man who had had a cadaver transplant. The man who looks like a sweaty manatee. The girl who looks like an albino dinosaur, or an anorexic whippet.... And it goes on, relentless. We're in the West Oakland detox, the residents in the TV pit, watching '' Leave It to Beaver''.... ''Dust to Dust'': 'There are things people just don't talk about. I don't mean the hard things, like love, but the awkward ones, like how funerals are fun sometimes....' In more ways than one, this book is Lucia Berlin." —Paul Metcalf, Conjunctions: 14, on ''Safe & Sound'' "This remarkable collection occasionally put me in mind of
Annie Proulx Edna Ann Proulx (; born August 22, 1935) is an American novelist, short story writer, and journalist. She has written most frequently as Annie Proulx but has also used the names E. Annie Proulx and E.A. Proulx. She won the PEN/Faulkner Award fo ...
's Accordion Crimes, with its sweep of American origins and places. Berlin is our
Scheherazade Scheherazade () is a major female character and the storyteller in the frame narrative of the Middle Eastern collection of tales known as the ''One Thousand and One Nights''. Name According to modern scholarship, the name ''Scheherazade'' deri ...
, continually surprising her readers with a startling variety of voices, vividly drawn characters, and settings alive with sight and sound." —Barbara Barnard, American Book Review, on ''Where I Live Now''


Personal life

Berlin was married three times and had four sons. Berlin was plagued by health problems, including double
scoliosis Scoliosis is a condition in which a person's spine has a sideways curve. The curve is usually "S"- or "C"-shaped over three dimensions. In some, the degree of curve is stable, while in others, it increases over time. Mild scoliosis does not t ...
. Her
crooked spine Scoliosis is a condition in which a person's Vertebral column, spine has a sideways curve. The curve is usually "S"- or "C"-shaped over three dimensions. In some, the degree of curve is stable, while in others, it increases over time. Mild sco ...
punctured one of her lungs, and she was never seen without an oxygen tank beside her from 1994 until her death. She retired when her condition grew too severe to work, and she later developed
lung cancer Lung cancer, also known as lung carcinoma (since about 98–99% of all lung cancers are carcinomas), is a malignant lung tumor characterized by uncontrolled cell growth in tissue (biology), tissues of the lung. Lung carcinomas derive from tran ...
. She struggled with
radiation therapy Radiation therapy or radiotherapy, often abbreviated RT, RTx, or XRT, is a therapy using ionizing radiation, generally provided as part of cancer treatment to control or kill malignant cells and normally delivered by a linear accelerator. Radia ...
, which she said felt like having one's bones ground to dust. As her health and finances deteriorated, Berlin moved into a trailer park on the edge of Boulder, and later, a converted garage behind her son's house outside Los Angeles. The move allowed her to be closer to her sons, and made breathing easier (Boulder's elevation had exacerbated her lung problems). Lucia died in her home in
Marina del Rey Marina del Rey (Spanish language, Spanish for "Marina of the King") is an unincorporated area, unincorporated seaside community in Los Angeles County, California, with an eponymous harbor that is a major boating and water recreation destination ...
, on her 68th birthday, with one of her favorite books in her hands.


Works and publications


Bibliography

* ''A Manual for Cleaning Ladies.'' Illustrations by Michael Myers. Washington, D.C. .e. Healdsburg, California Zephyrus Image, 1977. * ''Angels Laundromat: Short Stories.'' Cover art and illustrations by Michael Shannon Moore. Berkeley, CA: Turtle Island for the Netzahaulcoyotl Historical Society, 1981. * ''Legacy.'' Berkeley, CA: Poltroon Press, 1983. Illustrated by Michael Bradley. * ''Phantom Pain: Sixteen Stories.'' Bolinas, CA: Tombouctou Books, 1984. * ''Safe & Sound.'' Berkeley, CA: Poltroon Press, 1988. Illustrated by Frances Butler. * ''Homesick: New & Selected Stories.'' Santa Rosa CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1990. * ''So Long: Stories, 1987-1992.'' Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1993. * ''Where I Live Now: Stories, 1993-1998.'' Santa Rosa, CA: Black Sparrow Press, 1999. * ''A Manual for Cleaning Women: Selected Stories.'' Edited by Stephen Emerson. Foreword by
Lydia Davis Lydia Davis (born July 15, 1947) is an American short story writer, novelist, essayist, and translator from French and other languages, who often writes short (one or two pages long) short stories. Davis has produced several new translations of ...
. New York, NY: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2015. * ''Evening in Paradise: More Stories.'' Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018. *''Welcome Home: A Memoir with Selected Photographs and Letters''. Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2018.


In periodicals (posthumous)

* Berlin, Lucia. 2005.
Letters to August Kleinzahler.
''
The London Review of Books The ''London Review of Books'' (''LRB'') is a British literary magazine published twice monthly that features articles and essays on fiction and non-fiction subjects, which are usually structured as book reviews. History The ''London Review o ...
.'' Vol. 27, No. 15: pp. 33–34. * Berlin, Lucia. 2015.
B.F. and Me.
''
The 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, Philip ...
.'' No. 213: Summer 2015. pp. 269–269.


Multimedia

* Berlin, Lucia, Yasunari Kawabata, and Amy Hempel. ''Lucia Berlin: Summer 1991.'' Naropa Institute, 1991. 3 audio cassettes. Audio of two classes held at Naropa Institute in Boulder, Colorado during Summer 1991. Naropa Audio Archive: 20051107, 20051111. * Berlin, Lucia. ''Lucia Berlin Reading 12 Nov 93 at Lincoln Lecture Hall, Naropa.'' Naropa Institute, 1993. 1 audio cassette. Lucia Berlin reading at Naropa Institute November 12, 1993. Naropa Audio Archive: 20051208. * Berlin, Lucia, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Molly Giles, and Lorna Dee Cervantes. ''W&P Reading Cervantes; Hawkins; Giles, Berlin.'' Naropa Institute, 1997. 2 audio cassettes. Writing and poetics reading featuring Lorna Dee Cervantes, Bobbie Louise Hawkins, Molly Giles, and Lucia Berlin. Naropa Audio Archive: 20060118, 20060119.


Other

* Berlin, Lucia. ''Rigorous.'' Oakland, CA: Mark Berlin, 1992. * Berlin, Lucia. ''From Luna Nueva.'' Boulder, CO: Kavyayantra Press at Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, November 1993. * Berlin, Lucia. ''The Moon: There's No Moon Like on a Clear New Mexico Night.'' Boulder, CO: Kavyayantra Press at Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics, 1997.


References


Further reading

*


External links


Lucia Berlin
at
Black Sparrow Press Black Sparrow Press is a New England based independent book publisher, known for literary fiction and poetry. History Black Sparrow was founded in Los Angeles, California, in 1966 by John Martin in order to publish the works of Charles Bukowski ...

Lucia Berlin's impact on a bestselling author
Vanity Fair
"Sex on the Roof" A discussion of Lucia Berlin's life and two new works.
London Review of Books, December 2018 {{DEFAULTSORT:Berlin, Lucia 1936 births 2004 deaths American women short story writers American short story writers Naropa University faculty University of Colorado faculty Writers from Alaska American Book Award winners 20th-century American women 20th-century American people American women academics 21st-century American women