The Woman at the Washington Zoo: Writings on Politics, Family, and Fate
| Author | : | |
| Rating | : | 4.17 (716 Votes) |
| Asin | : | 1586484575 |
| Format Type | : | paperback |
| Number of Pages | : | 384 Pages |
| Publish Date | : | 2018-01-28 |
| Language | : | English |
DESCRIPTION:
This splendid collection — at once insightful, funny and sad — digs into the psyche of the nation's capital, revealing not only the hidden selves of the people that run it, but the messy lives that the rest of us lead.. Marjorie Williams was a woman in a man's town, an outsider reporting on the political elite. During the last years of her life, she wrote about her own mortality as she battled liver cancer, using this harrowing experience to illuminate larger points about the nature of power and the randomness of life. She was, like the narrator in Randall Jarrell's classic poem, "The Woman at the Washington Zoo," an observer of a strange and exotic culture. Her essays for these and other publications tackled subjects ranging from politics to parenthood. Marjorie Williams knew Washington from top to bottom. Williams also penned a weekly column for the Post's op-e
Washington, D.C., is a city ruled by insiders, and few writers have broken through the social and public politics that govern it as eloquently as Williams. for the past two decades. (Nov.)Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. . Underlying each representation is Williams's ability to make her characters as complicated on the page as they are in real life. It's that same concern that governs the heartbreaking personal pieces in the last third of the book, which covers Williams's losing battle with cancer. This posthumous collection presents a series of remarkably well-observed and intelligent profiles of the great and minor figures who have made D.C. Williams, a longtime writer for the Washington Post and Vanity Fair, has a fine eye for telling details—the license plates on a bureaucrat's car, the folds of satin in a dying socialite's dress—but
"The Sum Of A Brilliant Career" according to C. Hutton. The title of journalist Marjorie William's posthumous collection of writings, profiles and columns says it all. The first third focuses on her political interviews with the Washington "elite"; the middle portion is her musings on her family; and the final section is heart-rending as she profiles her four year battle against fate & lung cancer which ended her life at the age of The Sum Of A Brilliant Career C. Hutton The title of journalist Marjorie William's posthumous collection of writings, profiles and columns says it all. The first third focuses on her political interviews with the Washington "elite"; the middle portion is her musings on her family; and the final section is heart-rending as she profiles her four year battle against fate & lung cancer which ended her life at the age of 47 earlier this year.From an alcoholic literary family, Ms. Williams was brilliant at Harvard, ambitious in her work with Joni Evans at Viking Press before launching another career in her mid-twenties at The Washington Post, and an exacting words. 7 earlier this year.From an alcoholic literary family, Ms. Williams was brilliant at Harvard, ambitious in her work with Joni Evans at Viking Press before launching another career in her mid-twenties at The Washington Post, and an exacting words. "You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll order more pancakes" according to S. Fox. This book is a great read in about ten different ways, but I think "The Woman at the Washington Zoo" will become one of those books that I return to again & again for inspiration for lines like the one cited in this Washington Post book review by Linda Kulman:()What would you do if you learned you had a short time to live? Though Williams hits on the many levels at which she had to deal -- her doctors' condescension, her treatment, her hope and despair -- what sticks is this: "What you do, if you have little kids, is lead as normal a life as possible, only with more pancakes." (). Could not put it down Christopher Junker Really two books. One, a series of pieces about inside Washington stories, often with characters who are largely off stage but important in how things get done in the seat of empire. Rather than the usual insider's view, Ms. Williams has an extraordinarily keen eye for seeing what is there for all to see, perhaps along the lines of I.F. Stone's insistence on using only attributed sources. The second book is an account of her diagnosis and subsequent experiences with an ultimately fatal cancer, its impact on her life, outlook, work, as well and an account of her medical care.
Marjorie Williams was born in Princeton, NJ in 1958 and died in 2005. She is survived by her husband, Timothy Noah, senior writer at Slate, who edited this volume, and her children, Alice and Will.