Monday’s Muse: Renata Adler

“Fear… is forward. No one is afraid of yesterday.”

I’ve never met author, journalist and film critic, Renata Adler, and I think it’s safe to say; nor will I ever get the chance. However, after reading through an interview by Rachel Cooke for The Guardian, who beautifully dismantles the gritty novelist, it is as if I’ve been granted access to the writer in the flesh. It gives insight to her personality and what it feels like to be in her physical presence.

“…it takes me a while to get over the surprise of her tiny handbag, her loose trousers, her soft sneakers and her red anorak. Apart from her famous plait, a dramatic grey rope that falls just shy of her waist and almost cries out to be stroked – or perhaps yanked – she looks to me much like any other country mouse come up to the city for the day.”

She continues…

“Described as Joan Didion’s younger and slightly more pugnacious sister. Clever, beautiful, opinionated and ever watchful, she was a meteor: dazzling and unstoppable. Everyone wanted her, even Richard Avedon, who photographed her in 1978, and made her look every bit as charismatic and sexy as Katharine Hepburn. (Not that she sees it that way. “I look like a terrorist,” she says. “Or at least, like a hijacker, and they were the only terrorists in those days.” A pause. “He [Avedon] had gone from fashion to freaks.” Another pause. “I seemed to be the first in his freak series.”).

–

Read the full story [here]

Image above RICHARD AVEDON (1923-2004)
RENATA ADLER, WRITER, NEW YORK CITY, 7-31-69