1974

The veteran author gets deeply personal in this revealing memoir.

Now 76 and channeling Hitchcock’s Vertigo, Prose, the author of more than 20 books of fiction as well as a number of biographies, recalls a turbulent year in San Francisco, where the movie was set. She left her husband and dropped out of school in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to work on writing her third novel and spend time with a rebellious, charismatic man named Tony—i.e., Tony Russo who, with Daniel Ellsberg, leaked the Pentagon Papers. In this year of tarot cards, the I Ching, and Gravity’s Rainbow, the young Prose sought “spiritual aridity,” to “feel the thrill of not knowing or caring where I was going or what I was supposed to be doing.” She admired Tony and what he had done, calling him “antiwar royalty.” The author was wavering between recklessness and terror, safety and disaster. Prose also recalls the Cambridge days, when she and her husband weren’t getting along, smoking pot—over the years she did a number of drugs—ordering Chinese takeout, wondering what she was going to do. They lived in Bombay for a time, and she read a lot, especially García Márquez and Dinesen, and wrote her first novel: “It was like being in love and better.” After traveling widely, Prose returned home, rewrote the novel and found a publisher. She wrote another and headed off to San Francisco, often visiting key places in Vertigo like a destination tourist. The author goes into great detail about Tony and his background with RAND and the complexities of their relationship. Writing about herself, she has learned things she doesn’t necessarily want to know. Some readers might wish there had been more about her books and her development as a writer. Maybe later?

Joyful and sad nostalgia offered up in spades.