Eileen Pollack

I've read two of Eileen Pollack's essay collections (MAYBE IT'S ME and THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM), both excellent, but IN THE MOUTH: STORIES & NOVELLAS (2008) is my first taste of her fiction, and I loved it. And no, it's not what you think. It contains several linked stories about the Rothstein family from Upstate New York, and the father, Milt, is a DENTIST. He is also a veteran of WWII. Daughter Wendy, forty-something, is a newspaper reporter, who has lived all over the country and been show more in numerous relationships, but remains unmarried and childless. We follow Milt through his retirement, his wife's final illness, his lonely exodus to Florida, and an unexpected and ill-fated romance there. There are tantalizing back stories of both Milt and Wendy throughout. Another unrelated story, "The Bris," about a dying father's final wishes, brought to mind Bernard Malamud's classic novel, THE ASSISTANT. I found all of these stories, about Jewish family life in modern America, to be very real, very human, universal in nature, and often very moving. This was particularly true in the last story, "Beached in Boca." In it, a depressed and terminally ill Milt tells Wendy -

"I have never read a single true word about getting old. Not in any book. Not in any newspaper. The truth about getting old is that every single person you've ever loved dies ... Well let me tell you, when every person you've ever loved dies, you feel like dying with them."

From having read Pollack's other two books - both memoirs in essay form - I can see that her stories are often semi-autobiographical. The father-daughter relationship is a dominant theme. These are wonderful, eloquent tales of family ties and tragedies. I loved all of them. My vey highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir BOOKLOVER show less

I read THE ONLY WOMAN IN THE ROOM mostly because I so enjoyed Eilen Pollack's later memoir, MAYBE IT'S ME, and because she makes me laugh, something that's become increasingly important in today's polarized society. Well this one's A bit more serious, but there were still some chuckles. What's it about? Well, the subtitle is a pretty good clue: Why Science Is Still a Boys' Club. Because Pollack took on that closed club and cracked it, earning, despite numerous obstacles and frequent show more disparagement, a degree in Physics from Yale. Yes,YALE. There's a lot in here about her struggles with upper level, esoteric courses in science and math, which I found extremely interesting. Which surprised me, because math and science are NOT, and have NEVER been my thing. I took ONE Physics class in my senior year of high school. And no more. In college I took one semester of College Algebra, and that was the end of my math. No, wait, in grad school u was required to take a course in Statistics and Probability. Which I hated, never quite caught on, but scraped by. But Pollack makes her adventures in higher science and math INTERESTING. And she also makes very real how lonely it often was, being the only woman in the room, feeling left out and ostracized. But she persevered, got that degree. But then instead of grad school, she took a hard look at he life, then made a hard right turn to become a writer. And I believe it was indeed a RIGHT turn, because Pollack's is an immensely talented writer, or I wouldn't be reading her. There were a few things here I could definitely relate to, like washing dishes in a cafeteria to make a few needed bucks. Me too, Eileen. And scrubbing and waxing floors. But reading about the prejudice and slights she faced for being a woman made me a bit ashamed for my own sex, for being a man. I know that kind of sexist crap went on in college (and in the military too, where I spent eight years), and still does. Pollack spent nearly twenty years running a Creative Writing program at the University of Michigan and has published several books, so she's done okay for herself. And I've just begun reading her 2008 story collection, IN THE MOUTH, and was already laughing by page two. Did I say I just love how this woman writes, whatever the subject? Well I do. Loved this book. Very, very highly recommended. show less

I LOVED this book. An amateurish opening I suppose, but I wanted to be sure I got it in there. Eileen Pollack's MAYBE IT'S ME: ON BEING THE WRONG KIND OF WOMAN might be filed under essays - and every one of the sixteen pieces here are indeed fine stand-alone examples of that difficult form - but it could also just as easily be classified a memoir. Because by the time I finished reading this book, I felt like I knew the author, and - even better - that we could be friends, despite the fact show more that she's unquestionably a helluva lot smarter than I am. A degree in physics from Yale, an MFA from the Iowa Writers Workshop, a dozen books to her name? I mean, yeah, damn smart.

And funny too, which she might owe to her father, a dentist who grew up in the heart of the borscht belt in the Catskills where her grandparents ran a hotel. So her dad naturally acquired an encyclopedic store of dirty jokes which he was never hesitant to share. (In fact, one of Pollack's novels is entitled THE BIBLE OF DIRTY JOKES. I gotta look into that.) Pollack grew up in pretty comfortable circumstances, a custom-built (separate kosher kitchen compartments) ranch house in a predominantly Jewish neighborhood in Liberty, New York. She calls it a small town, but with a population of more than 4,000, it was nearly twice the size of my own hometown in Michigan. And yet her stories of roughhousing with playground friends, riding her bike into town, and other tomboy proclivities (she learned from her brother to "take a punch") all sounded pretty familiar. She was early on frustrated by societal limitations on just what girls were allowed to do. Smarter than her peers, a school psychologist denied her a chance to skip a grade, but she continued to excel and outperform her peers, though she suffered some social ostracism because of her intelligence. Wanting to fit in with the popular girls, she even suffered from bulimia for a few years, until she got to college and discovered more important things like art, music, science, literature - and sex.

Married to a scientist after college, she had a child, but the marriage failed, something she still questions herself about forty years later, having since experienced numerous relationships one of them long-term with a Polish Catholic from Detroit. (She has some hilarious anecdotes about online dating sites and dates.)

There are also a couple of very moving pieces here about her father's descent into dementia, and her mother's last years with Parkinson's. Her description of massaging her mother's "gnarled toes" made me remember my own mother's tearful confession, at 93, that she was unable to put on her socks anymore.

So many things in here that made me chuckle, and then, sometimes even on the same page, something else that would bring tears to my eyes. That's good writing, folks.

I was often reminded of other favorite women writers as I read Pollack's essays - Anne Roiphe, Marge Piercy and Hilma Wolitzer, and the Ephrons too. Roiphe, Piercy and the Ephrons have all penned memoirs and essays, of course, and much of Wolitzer's fiction is highly autobiographical. And there's Margot Singer, a younger, lesser-known fiction writer of stories of modern Israel, who came to mind as I read "All of Us, We All Are Arameans," about Pollack's eventful, sometimes frightening solo trip to Israel.

But enough, I suppose. Loved all of these essays - nuggets of wisdom and wondering from a life well-lived. And she's still learning, still wondering over it all, still writing. Bravo, Ms Pollack. My very highest recommendation.

- Tim Bazzett, author of the memoir, BOOKLOVER show less

The description for this book is a bit misleading. The first half is Pollack's memoir of her own experiences as a student from childhood in public school in a predominantly Jewish area through college at Yale as one of the few female physics majors. The second half of the book is more in line with what I had been expecting given the description, and includes anecdata from other women who Pollack had known or interviewed from her own generation and the later generation of female science show more majors and scientists, as well as recaps of interviews with her former professors and teachers who we had met in the first half of the book.

This is a deeply personal story for Pollack, but at the same time it is also deeply personal for every girl who thought she wasn't smart enough, or every woman who decided to drop out of a science major, or every student who didn't even try for a science degree in the first place. This book was deeply personal for me.

Pollack's experiences are not every woman's or minority's experiences, but they are similar enough that many can relate. One of my criticisms of this book is Pollack's weakness in connecting women's experiences with the similar experiences of minorities and economically disadvantaged students. She does mention that several times, but it is definitely a message that can be strengthened. Towards the end of the book, Pollack noted that some students, even if they enter into college at the top of their high school graduating class, find themselves floundering and behind other students because they were not privileged enough for their schools to offer certain courses. I wish Pollack had highlighted that more because it's a problem that systemically places students from under-served, poorer schools at a disadvantage in college.

I write this review the day after a 14-year-old Muslim boy with brown skin was detained by his school and arrested for bringing in a homemade clock to show off to his science teacher, which another teacher reported as a bomb. That is an extreme case of the educational culture discouraging a minority from entering a STEM field, but it highlights the challenges that some students face by virtue of their sex or ethnicity.

Pollack's story is an important one, and both its strength and weakness is its reliance on anecdotes (what I referred to as "anecdata" earlier) from her own experiences and gleaned from interviews or missives with other women or minorities. She does mention the results of a few studies of bias against women in STEM, but the bulk of the book are anecdata rather than empirical controlled studies. The anecdata bring the problems to life in a way that pure numbers don't, yet at the same time anecdotes are easy for those in the sciences to discount because they are not data (hence why I have been referring to them as "anecdata"; because, well, it can be argued that the plural for anecdote is data).

Given the larger conversation that has been on-going for the past few years of women in the sciences, and the blatant misogyny that I keep running up against from big names (Google "Richard Dawkins women"), The Only Woman in the Room is an important book, and very timely. Remember in June when Nobel Laureate in Physiology or Medicine Tim Hunt said at a science conference in South Korea, "Let me tell you about my trouble with girls. Three things happen when they are in the lab: You fall in love with them, they fall in love with you, and when you criticize them they cry"? Or last November when European Space Agency Rosetta Project scientist Matt Taylor gave public interviews after the Philae space probe landed on a comet while wearing a shirt covered in nearly naked women? It is heartening, I guess, that all of these incidents have lead to huge public outcries and public apologies (in the case of Taylor) or firings (in the case of Hunt). A decade or two earlier, they would have been the status quo.

I hope that Pollack's book inspires change in STEM education at all levels, and I hope that it also inspires women to pursue STEM educations and careers.

Review copy courtesy of the publisher via Netgalley show less