Wise words

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This article was published 01/11/2025 (296 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

American author Susan Orlean, who turned 70 on October 31, has done no other job but writing since she graduated in 1978 from the University of Michigan. In her new book, she cleverly interweaves her autobiographical details with the highlights of the books and articles she has worked on. The title reflects her belief that her life has been a joyride.

While enjoying being a staff writer for the New Yorker magazine since 1992, Orlean has written several books that have become popular for both their choice of topic and the writer’s lively style. She says, “I’m surprised over and over again by how solitary the experience of writing is — how the big conversation the writer conducts with the public… comes down, finally, to quiet moments alone.”

What makes her memoir a joy to read is Orlean’s ability to show how she determined the kind of writing she wanted to do, how she uncovered aspects of topics that were not obvious but were excitingly three-dimensional. Tirelessly, she’d pursue the kinds of details she wanted, often travelling. Somehow, she balanced all this with her personal life, which could be discouraging at some times and happily fulfilling at others.

In an appendix, Orlean offers five articles that appeared in five different periodicals early in her career. These are presented not as her best works, but rather as examples of the wide variety of her work.

After graduating from Michigan, Orlean moved out west with her boyfriend, John Culver, to Portland, Ore., where she became “a real writer” with the newsweekly Willamette Week. Editor Ron Buel preached three steps: “Report, then think, then write,” believing his staff “should aim for fairness and truthfulness rather than strict objectivity.” Orlean adds “there is no such thing as true objectivity once you add the human element to the process.”

In 1982, Orlean and her new boyfriend Peter Sistrom moved east so he could go to law school in Boston. They married in 1983. She wrote long features for the Boston Globe Sunday magazine and became interested in writing a book about Saturday nights in America. Soon Orlean was visiting many different cities, gathering material for the project.

Orlean and Sistrom moved to New York and, in 1986, she was attracted to the New Yorker. One of the editors invited her to discuss writing for the Talk of the Town column. Her first New Yorker article ran on May 25, 1987. She was often lonely but never afraid. “When I’m working on a story, I have enormous courage,” she says.

Orlean’s book Saturday Night appeared in 1990 to positive reviews, but her party celebrating the book was spoiled by Sistrom telling her he was “seeing someone.”

That only made her work harder. She stayed with Sistrom, travelled a lot, and had her own affair with a guy who wasn’t interested in a long-term relationship. “Writers fall into two categories,” she says. “There are those who have something they want to say to the world, and there are those who believe the world has something to tell them. I’m wholly of the second sort.”

Orlean’s book The Orchid Thief was published in late 1998 and, around the same time she and Sistrom divorced. She became involved with Adaptation, a film adaptation of The Orchid Thief, with Meryl Streep playing Orlean. Soon, there was a new man in her life, John Gillespie; they planned a wedding for Sept. 15, 2001, only to have everything changed by 9/11. They would eventually marry two months later.

Orlean had always wanted a child and in spring, 2004, she enlisted the help of a fertility specialist. When he called to tell her that her pregnancy test was positive, the “flood of feelings was disorienting — disbelief, relief, ecstasy, terror… I approached pregnancy the way I approached my stories: I wanted to dive in and figure it out on the spot rather than do a lot of book learning in advance.” This led to much last-minute anxiety, but she gave birth to a boy they named Austin. At the time Orlean was 49 years old.

After Austin’s birth, Orlean continued to produce articles and books, many about animals and exotic experiences that took her to a variety of places. She, John and Austin lived much of the time in the Hudson Valley, but also settled into Los Angeles.

Joyride is a positive and colourful book, loaded with details of Susan Orlean’s life experiences and creative suggestions on how to write.

Dave Williamson is a Winnipeg writer and founder of the Creative Communications program at Red River College.