Betsy Lerner
Author of The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers
About the Author
Betsy Lerner is the author of The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers and Food and Loathing: A Lament.
Works by Betsy Lerner
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 20th Century
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Columbia University (MFA|Poetry)
- Occupations
- editor ( at Houghton Mifflin ∙ Ballantine ∙ Simon & Schuster )
Executive editor (at Doubleday)
Agent ( The Gernert Company)
partner (Dunow Carlson and Lerner Literary Agency) - Organizations
- The Gernert Company
Carlson and Lerner Literary Agency - Awards and honors
- an Academy of American Poets Poetry Prize, and was one of PEN’s Emerging Writers in 1987. She also received the Tony Godwin Publishing Prize for Editors Under 35.
Thomas Wolfe Memorial Poetry Award - Short biography
- Betsy Lerner worked as an editor for 16 years at major trade publishers including Simon & Schuster, Houghton Mifflin and Executive Editor at Doubleday. She mostly works with non-fiction writers in the areas of science, psychology, history, cultural studies, biography, current events, memoir and the hard to categorize. Lerner was the recipient of the Tony Godwin Publishing Prize. She holds an MFA from Columbia University and is the author of Food & Loathing and The Forest for the Trees: An Editor's Advice to Writers. Her blog on publishing can be found on www.betsylerner.com. --http://dclagency.com/agents.html
- Nationality
- USA
- Places of residence
- New Haven, Connecticut, USA
Pelham, New York, USA - Associated Place (for map)
- USA
Members
Reviews
This is an enjoyable, engrossing and unfailingly interesting book. The author is an experienced editor who is distilling her years of working with writers into a book about the editing and publishing process. Early chapters are about different types of writers she has encountered and how they get (or don't get) their writing done. Later ones are about different facets of the publishing process, leading inexorably towards the moment when the accepted, edited, jacketed, marketed, sold and show more distributed book sees the light of day. Her writing is economical and marked with deep insight into and respect for the creative process, and the mysterious synergy that is successful editing. At the same time she isn't mealy-mouthed; you are left in no doubt that some agents, editors and writers are creeps of the first order. Her literary preferences and judgements are clearly expressed and occasionally trenchant.
From her account of the publishing process, I get this sense of potential books swimming upstream like salmon to spawn, of which many get eaten, or just end up dead in the water. Yet amid the Darwinian carnage authors do get discovered and books do get published, because enough agents, editors, publishers and sales staff continue to care about writing. show less
From her account of the publishing process, I get this sense of potential books swimming upstream like salmon to spawn, of which many get eaten, or just end up dead in the water. Yet amid the Darwinian carnage authors do get discovered and books do get published, because enough agents, editors, publishers and sales staff continue to care about writing. show less
It's always curious looking at a community from the outside. It's perhaps curiouser to look at a community from the inside. When that community includes your mother and ladies you've known, but not really known in depth, for decades, it is curiouser and curiouser. Betsy Lerner's interesting and warm memoir, The Bridge Ladies, looks at her mother and women she's been playing bridge with for more than half a century. It looks at their lives, the expectations they faced, and how they have show more always interacted together. It also looks at Lerner's relationship with her mother and how her investigations into the game of bridge brings them closer than they have ever been.
Betsy Lerner grew up watching her mother and the four other women of the group meet weekly for their standing bridge game. As a child she was intrigued by the women and that interest reignited when she went to care for her mother after a surgery. She knew what these women had lived through in broad strokes, both historically and locally, but she had no idea of their smaller personal histories. And she had an image in her mind of the way that their longstanding friendship worked, imagining that it was similar to that of her own friendships with peers. But over the course of time, as she was cautiously welcomed into the group, she discovered that her ideas about the ladies, and about her own mother in particular, were in fact quite off the mark. Lerner interviews each of the women about her life and life choices. She wonders at the way that these ladies kept their own council, maintained their reserve, and, most interestingly of all, didn't gossip at the bridge table. This behaviour is in direct contrast to Lerner's own experience with her generation, the Baby Boomers. These five Jewish women, all of whom had married and had children, as was expected of them, had a long history with each other and yet still they didn't share confidences. Over time, as Lerner questioned them, they opened up slightly more to her, especially as it became clear that Lerner had a sincere interest in getting to know them better, to appreciate the lives they chose and led, and to leave judgments aside. Even so, they kept a dignified reticence about certain things. In understanding this dignity in the others, Lerner comes to appreciate it and forgive what she once thought of only as distance in her own mother too.
Lerner uses the game of bridge and the lives of the other ladies as a bridge to understanding and repairing her fraught relationship with her own mother. Chapters where she goes to learn the game herself are interspersed with her interactions with the ladies and her mother. Just as Lerner slowly comes to appreciate the complications and beauty of the game, she comes to appreciate the lives of women who chose to live so very differently than she herself did a generation later. She may not understand their life choices (or exactly how the bidding is a conversation between partners obliquely telling each other what they have in their hands) but she learns to value the lives they've led, to honor the secrets they've kept, and to let go the differences that separated her from her mother (and to at least understand the process of an opening bid). There are many comparisons to her own life, a highlighting of major differences, the contrast between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers evident in so many ways. Lerner also confronts the sadness of aging and decline, acknowledging that growing older necessarily robs a person of independence, diminishing them, and undermining the person they were when they were young. She sees the appeal of the comfort and familiarity of routine that has kept the ladies gathering around the bridge table for so many years. This is a very personal exploration of relationship, family, and friendship. Accessible and interesting, the memoir is a quick read, blending Lerner's experiences with the conventional lives against which she spent her teen and early adult years rebelling. That bridge and the bridge ladies bridged this long divide is both lovely and fitting. The complex game that seems to be restricted to the elderly these days proved a life learning experience and an insight into a very different community for sure. How curious. show less
Betsy Lerner grew up watching her mother and the four other women of the group meet weekly for their standing bridge game. As a child she was intrigued by the women and that interest reignited when she went to care for her mother after a surgery. She knew what these women had lived through in broad strokes, both historically and locally, but she had no idea of their smaller personal histories. And she had an image in her mind of the way that their longstanding friendship worked, imagining that it was similar to that of her own friendships with peers. But over the course of time, as she was cautiously welcomed into the group, she discovered that her ideas about the ladies, and about her own mother in particular, were in fact quite off the mark. Lerner interviews each of the women about her life and life choices. She wonders at the way that these ladies kept their own council, maintained their reserve, and, most interestingly of all, didn't gossip at the bridge table. This behaviour is in direct contrast to Lerner's own experience with her generation, the Baby Boomers. These five Jewish women, all of whom had married and had children, as was expected of them, had a long history with each other and yet still they didn't share confidences. Over time, as Lerner questioned them, they opened up slightly more to her, especially as it became clear that Lerner had a sincere interest in getting to know them better, to appreciate the lives they chose and led, and to leave judgments aside. Even so, they kept a dignified reticence about certain things. In understanding this dignity in the others, Lerner comes to appreciate it and forgive what she once thought of only as distance in her own mother too.
Lerner uses the game of bridge and the lives of the other ladies as a bridge to understanding and repairing her fraught relationship with her own mother. Chapters where she goes to learn the game herself are interspersed with her interactions with the ladies and her mother. Just as Lerner slowly comes to appreciate the complications and beauty of the game, she comes to appreciate the lives of women who chose to live so very differently than she herself did a generation later. She may not understand their life choices (or exactly how the bidding is a conversation between partners obliquely telling each other what they have in their hands) but she learns to value the lives they've led, to honor the secrets they've kept, and to let go the differences that separated her from her mother (and to at least understand the process of an opening bid). There are many comparisons to her own life, a highlighting of major differences, the contrast between the Greatest Generation and the Baby Boomers evident in so many ways. Lerner also confronts the sadness of aging and decline, acknowledging that growing older necessarily robs a person of independence, diminishing them, and undermining the person they were when they were young. She sees the appeal of the comfort and familiarity of routine that has kept the ladies gathering around the bridge table for so many years. This is a very personal exploration of relationship, family, and friendship. Accessible and interesting, the memoir is a quick read, blending Lerner's experiences with the conventional lives against which she spent her teen and early adult years rebelling. That bridge and the bridge ladies bridged this long divide is both lovely and fitting. The complex game that seems to be restricted to the elderly these days proved a life learning experience and an insight into a very different community for sure. How curious. show less
Although this absorbing memoir is about the game of bridge, it is also about bridging gaps – both the generational gap and the “personal gulf” that had defined Lerner’s relationship with her mother. At age 54, Lerner finds herself back in her childhood town of New Haven, CT, and reentering the life of her widowed 83-year-old mother from whom she spent decades avoiding. There she saw something her generation lacked. Facebook was great, but it wouldn’t deliver a pot roast!
This show more delightful memoir revolves around Learner’s mom and the four other elegantly dressed ladies that continue to gather at each other’s homes to play bridge every Monday at noon for 55 years. Lerner tells the stories of this group of suburban Jewish women who grew up determined to form successful Jewish families with beautiful achievement-oriented children despite the fact they themselves may have faced their own personal demons and struggles. Lerner probes marriage, career, motherhood, postpartum depression, aging, death, assisted living, dementia, widowhood, religion, and sex. Their courage and commitment to their families and their determined Jewish way of life are often not fully appreciated or understood by their offspring. Betsy Lerner helps us to better understand these women and provides them with the respect and dignity they fully deserve. Mothers and daughters, bridge players or not, will equally enjoy this beautifully written story of women who came of age in the 1940’s and ‘50s . show less
This show more delightful memoir revolves around Learner’s mom and the four other elegantly dressed ladies that continue to gather at each other’s homes to play bridge every Monday at noon for 55 years. Lerner tells the stories of this group of suburban Jewish women who grew up determined to form successful Jewish families with beautiful achievement-oriented children despite the fact they themselves may have faced their own personal demons and struggles. Lerner probes marriage, career, motherhood, postpartum depression, aging, death, assisted living, dementia, widowhood, religion, and sex. Their courage and commitment to their families and their determined Jewish way of life are often not fully appreciated or understood by their offspring. Betsy Lerner helps us to better understand these women and provides them with the respect and dignity they fully deserve. Mothers and daughters, bridge players or not, will equally enjoy this beautifully written story of women who came of age in the 1940’s and ‘50s . show less
I've never been the biggest fan of biographies, but over the past few months, I've read and enoyed a few great memoirs (Roald Dahl's Boy, Tara Westover's Educated, Trevor Noah's Born a Crime) and throught I might like to continue the trend. To that end, I googled a few "best of" lists online and ordered put five on hold at the library, and this is one of them.
From its description and a few reviews, The Bridge Ladies seemed like it would be a really fun, quirky memoir, and a nice change of show more pace from the harrowing (though interesting) tales of abuse, sexism, racism, and religious fanaticism in the memoirs I've read lately. This book started off well enough, but never really seemed to get going, and by page 46, my interest had waned—and worse, there didn't seem to be any chance of it picking up later.
Part of the problem was that I just couldn't connect with the author. About the time she mentioned spending years in therapy, where she says she "alternately blamed [her] mother for all [her] ills, felt compassion for her, judged her, hated her, and accepted her," I knew this wasn't the book for me (p. 45). The lifestyle where everyone has a therapist and talks about their therapy sessions at cocktail parties is completely foreign to me, and there was nothing about the book that drew me into that world or helped me to understand it. Even though, on the surface, my life is closer to Betsy Lerner's than to Trevor Noah's or Tara Westover's, I felt a much greater connection to their stories than to (what I read of) Lerner's.
To be fair to Lerner, this may have as much to do with my life and relationship with my mother as it does with her writing. I grew up an only child living with my mother, who died when I was eighteen. We were extraordinarily close. I can perfectly understand Trevor Noah's love and respect for his awesome mother, and I can empathize with Tara Westover's painful and complicated relationship with the mother who often failed to protect her or support her, but the idea of not really being close to one's mother, not having much of a relationship with her, baffles me. show less
From its description and a few reviews, The Bridge Ladies seemed like it would be a really fun, quirky memoir, and a nice change of show more pace from the harrowing (though interesting) tales of abuse, sexism, racism, and religious fanaticism in the memoirs I've read lately. This book started off well enough, but never really seemed to get going, and by page 46, my interest had waned—and worse, there didn't seem to be any chance of it picking up later.
Part of the problem was that I just couldn't connect with the author. About the time she mentioned spending years in therapy, where she says she "alternately blamed [her] mother for all [her] ills, felt compassion for her, judged her, hated her, and accepted her," I knew this wasn't the book for me (p. 45). The lifestyle where everyone has a therapist and talks about their therapy sessions at cocktail parties is completely foreign to me, and there was nothing about the book that drew me into that world or helped me to understand it. Even though, on the surface, my life is closer to Betsy Lerner's than to Trevor Noah's or Tara Westover's, I felt a much greater connection to their stories than to (what I read of) Lerner's.
To be fair to Lerner, this may have as much to do with my life and relationship with my mother as it does with her writing. I grew up an only child living with my mother, who died when I was eighteen. We were extraordinarily close. I can perfectly understand Trevor Noah's love and respect for his awesome mother, and I can empathize with Tara Westover's painful and complicated relationship with the mother who often failed to protect her or support her, but the idea of not really being close to one's mother, not having much of a relationship with her, baffles me. show less
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Simon & Schuster (1)
Awards
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Statistics
- Works
- 4
- Members
- 1,735
- Popularity
- #14,819
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 61
- ISBNs
- 37
- Languages
- 1