Journalist, critic and novelist Renata Adler (Canaries in the Mineshaft), now 76, was a literary star for decades, a staff writer for the New Yorker and the New York Times and the author of eight books. Eventually she offended so much of the literary world that she was effectively blackballed. But thanks to recent reprints of her novels and the high standards of her writing, Adler's work has been enjoying a healthy revival.
After the Tall Timber provides an overview of her nonfiction from 1963 to 2001 in 20 essays, including some previously uncollected pieces. For two of the most contentious, Adler has written commentaries to answer her attackers.
Controversies aside, there are few writers with this depth of political, legal and cultural knowledge, prose of this quality and such a sharp, sometimes self-deprecating, sense of humor. Adler investigates stories with an open and intensely critical mind. She has her own angles on the Selma march, Watergate, Biafra, The Starr Report, film reviewing and the Supreme Court. Her criticisms of journalistic practices remain unfortunately relevant. From 2001: "Once television reporters became celebrities, it was perhaps inevitable that print reporters would want at least their names known; and there were, especially at first, stories one did well to read on the basis of a trusted byline. There still existed what Mary McCarthy, in another context, called 'the last of the tall timber.' But the tall timber in journalism is largely gone--replaced, as in many fields, by the phenomenon of celebrity." --Sara Catterall