Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: MONDAY, October 3, 1994 TAG: 9411120011
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: DEBBIE CENZIPER FORT LAUDERDALE SUN-SENTINEL
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Hang in there, it read. We need you. Don't go.
Anna Quindlen, heralded as the voice of today's working woman, a sellout?
No way, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist thought as she read the letter from a women's rights activist last week. Just someone who wants to make a career change. No guilt, no pressure.
Quindlen, 42, shocked the journalism community and a national following of readers earlier this month by announcing plans to leave her position as the only woman writing a regular column on the op-ed page of the New York Times. She wants to pursue a fiction-writing career.
Her new novel, ``One True Thing'' (Random House, $22), is about a young woman accused of the mercy killing of her ailing mother.
``I understand that there is going to be some reaction that I'm letting people down,'' she says from her hotel room in Philadelphia, where she is promoting the new book. ``I like to think that I was a strong voice for feminist concerns, and I think there are people who are afraid that will be diluted by my leaving. But this was an important thing for me to do.''
``One True Thing'' is Quindlen's fifth book. She has written two books that featured collections of her columns, one best-selling novel called ``Object Lessons'' and a children's book called, ``The Tree That Came to Stay.''
Since she started at the Times in 1977, she has been on the fast-track, primed for top management positions at a paper that has been criticized for its staff of mostly male leaders.
Her columns, considered liberal, perceptive and unusually personal, explored everything from abortion to war, children to sexual harassment, using tales from her own life and the lives of the people she's met to illustrate broader issues.
Professional women found a hero in Quindlen when she set up a home office to write columns so she could be closer to her three children, now aged 11, 9 and 5, juggling deadlines and diapers in Hoboken, N.J.
Feminists, too, turned to Quindlen, who had the power and platform to bring women's issues into the journalism mainstream via one of the country's most prestigious newspapers.
Quindlen is the oldest of five children in an Irish and Italian-American family from outside Philadelphia.
Just after graduation from Barnard College, she worked at the New York Post before moving to the Times in the late '70s, where she wrote the ``About New York'' column. After that, she became the deputy metropolitan editor.
Before the birth of her second son, she decided to leave the Times to raise her children. Her editors didn't want her to go, so they struck a compromise: Quindlen would work from home and write a column about her life as a mother, career woman and wife (she is married to defense attorney Gerry Krovatin), called ``Life in the 30s.''
After that, she started the twice-weekly, syndicated ``Public and Private'' column for the Times, crafting her own softer and more personal brand of opinion-writing.
She is the third woman in the history of the Times to have a column on the op-ed page, and won the Pulitzer for her work in 1992.
Still, while Quindlen's columns about social issues and homelife drew praise and national recognition, her op-ed career was somewhat more controversial.
``When Anna Quindlen wrote about babies and motherhood, everyone loved it,'' says Howard Kurtz, the media writer at The Washington Post. ``When she tried to write about crime and war on the Times op-ed page, she attracted a lot more criticism. It's a tougher trick for a woman to pull off, fairly or unfairly. To break new ground, it's harder to bring a feminine voice to issues that are traditionally batted around in male circles.''
Quindlen was criticized in this month's Vanity Fair, called timid and girlish in her column writing, afraid to take strong stances or stray from traditional liberal values. ``It is true that women are still woefully underrepresented at the top ranks of news and opinion journalism,'' wrote Marjorie Williams. ``But it is telling that Quindlen is the Times' answer to this problem. For she is an incorrigible nice girl: a powerful 60ish white man's idea of a feminist writer. A woman's voice, Quindlen's work suggests, is ladylike. Tidy. Careful.''
The article also quoted anonymous sources who said Quindlen works hard to portray herself as a Superwoman, frustrating mortal women who have found it is just about impossible to do it all.
Quindlen laughs when she hears comments like that, especially when she looks around her house and sees dishes in the sink and Power Rangers scattered on the floor.
There's always a lost shoe in their five-bedroom brownstone; there's always a stray basketball. White couches are out.
Quindlen says she doesn't like the Supermom perception of her, not because it puts pressure on her but because it puts pressure on other women.
``I remember a day about six months into the `Public and Private' column when both my daughter and sitter came down with some sort of flu on the day the column was due,'' she says. ``I remember finally getting my daughter down for a nap and looking at her and thinking, [Columnist William] Safire never has to deal with this. There's all kinds of reasons why you just can't hold it all together all the time.''
Her supporters are angered by the criticism.
``That article was naive journalism,'' says Howell Raines, editorial page editor of the Times. ``It is impossible to look at the body of Anna's work and say that she's not a tremendous and distinguished thinker. One of the things that she did was give expression to a portion of the population that was not familiar or accustomed to seeing its concerns in a major forum.''
Quindlen was the first columnist to suggest that nurse practitioners should be allowed to perform early-term abortions because of the shortage of doctors. She also was one of the first to write about the need for an women's clinic access bill.
Fiction, Quindlen says, gives her an opportunity to explore the human condition on a grander scale. And on a less dramatic note: she likes the idea of making stuff up for the first time in her career.
But will she able to survive the crossover from journalism to fiction, a move others have failed?
Reviews on ``One True Thing'' have been mixed. Some critics and authors call the writing stiff and contrived, the main characters weak; others say it is a powerful insight into family life, love and loss.
For its part, the Times hasn't announced a successor to Quindlen when she leaves at the end of the year.
``The door is open and the light is on in the window around here if she ever wants to come back, that's our view,'' editorial page editor Raines says.
Quindlen meanwhile is sketching out her third novel, contracted with Random House, and says she doesn't have plans to return to the newspaper business.
Much to the disappointment of fans, who consider Quindlen's departure a blow to the women's movement. And to her readers.
``This is really hard for us,'' says Marie Wilson, president of the New York City-based MS Foundation. ``Very few women have the power to bring the private concerns of women into the public and apply them to public policy.''
But Quindlen says she deserves to think about herself at this point in her life. She'd like to escape from the public spotlight, and write stories instead of appearing in them.
``It's so strange when I read things about myself because 99 percent of the time, I'm just this person in sweatpants pounding it out in this tiny little office,'' she says. ``And then the other 1 percent of the time, I become what my sons call, `The Anna Quindlen doll.' I put on makeup and a business suit.''
by CNB