Tillie Olsen: One Woman, Many Riddles

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S In the more than a decade I have spent writing about the long and complicated life of Tillie Olsen, I have accumulated many debts. The first is to my husband, John Irwin Fischer, who has been inconvenienced by but marvelously supportive of this project. As always, he is my very best, most meticulous reader and advisor. I also appreciate the help of my son Reid Broughton, the attorney who drew up my contract with Tillie Olsen, and my daughter, Hannah Fischer, of the Congressional Research Service, who uncovered some really obscure bits of information for me. I am deeply indebted to the National Endowment for the Humanities for my 1999–2000 Fellowship for University Teachers, awarded to write this biography and edit a collection of Tillie Olsen’s letters. And I thank the College of Arts and Sciences and the English Department at Louisiana State University, which cooperated with the Endowment to free me of academic duties for an entire year to work on these projects. I owe much to Tillie Olsen herself. Since 1997, she willingly endured my visits, letters, and phone calls and responded eagerly to my queries. Somewhat less eagerly she gave me permission to quote excerpts from and use information gleaned from her unpublished papers. Julie Olsen Edwards officially granted me access to all materials in the Tillie Olsen Archives. Julie Olsen Edwards, Kathie Olsen Hoye, and Laurie Olsen Margolis have sent me photos, shared memories, clarified details, and answered my almost endless queries. Tillie’s eldest daughter Karla Lutz chose not to be involved in this book. I respect her choice but regret not having her assistance. I am grateful for help from her daughter Jessica Lutz, from Julie’s husband and daughter Rob and Rebekah Edwards, and especially from Laurie’s husband Mike Margolis, who showed extraordinary patience with Tillie and with me. Among Tillie’s siblings, Gene Lerner assisted me in the task of uncovering the European family background of the Lerners and Goldbergs. After interviewing his sisters in 2000, he shared their recollections with me; in 2001, he wrote “From Czarist Russia to Omaha, Nebraska, and Beyond: The Story of the Lerner Family Over More Than One Hundred Years,” now at Stanford. I spoke once with Jann Lerner Brodinsky, and she wrote ix x acknowledgments me what may have been her last letter. Harry Lerner died before I began this work, but his children Howard and Susan have been most helpful. I exchanged many letters with Lillian Lerner Davis and interviewed her early in 2002 and have visited and corresponded with her daughters Caroline Eckhardt and Rivka Davis. Vicki Lerner Richards Bergman answered many questions and sent me copies of the letters, inscriptions on books, and articles on Tillie Olsen that Tillie sent her. Her son Cory Richards has also shared his recollections with me. Gretchen Spieler, great-niece of Abraham Jevons Goldfarb, has been most helpful in tracing family records and finding photographs. My very special thanks go to William McPheron, William Saroyan Curator for British and American Literature at Stanford University Libraries. He and I cooperated on getting friends and family to donate their letters from Tillie to Stanford, letters on which I rely here and will use to edit the Selected Letters of Tillie Olsen. Over the years, McPheron answered my countless questions with care and grace and facilitated my access to the Tillie Olsen Papers and the Lerner Family Papers at Stanford. Writers, artists, and friends who have been especially generous with their time include Sandy Boucher and Mary Anne Ferguson, who carefully annotated Tillie’s letters to them; Ann Hershey, who shared her experiences while she was filming Tillie Olsen: A Heart in Motion; Edith Konecky, who consulted old letters and diaries to help me date Tillie’s activities; Alice Walker, who entertained me and shared vivid recollections; Diane Wood Middlebrook, who gave me Tillie’s mark-up of her chapter on Anne Sexton and Tillie Olsen; Ruth Vance who drove me around San Francisco to view the many places where Tillie settled in her peripatetic life there; Ann Goette, who read several chapters with wit and insight; Leonda and Arnold Finke, who entertained me and my family with a sculpture tour. Three extraordinary women have been wonderfully supportive professionally and personally: Rosalie Siegel, my agent; Lisa Jerry, my copyeditor; and Leslie Mitchner, editor-in-chief at Rutgers University Press...