Was ich sonst noch verpasst habe

Zu diesem Buch

Sie gilt als das bestgehütete Geheimnis der amerikanischen Literatur. Lucia Berlin ist die Wiederentdeckung des Jahres und wird verglichen mit Raymond Carver, Richard Yates oder Grace Paley.

Ihre Storys zeugen von einem unsteten Leben voller Brüche. Es sind Frauen wie sie, deren Schicksal sie festhält: alleinerziehende Mütter, Alkoholikerinnen auf Entzug, Haushaltshilfen, Krankenschwestern und Sekretärinnen. Es geht um Mütter und Töchter, scheiternde Ehen und schwangere Mädchen, um Immigranten, Reichtum und Armut, um Einsamkeit, Liebe und Gewalt. Die Orte des Geschehens sind Waschsalons, Caf?s und Restaurants, Krankenhäuser und Arztpraxen. Hier entsteht das Unerwartete, hier zeigen sich die kleinen Wunder des Lebens, entwickeln sich Tragödien, denen Lucia Berlin mal mit feinem Humor, mal voller Melancholie, aber stets mit ergreifender Empathie auf den Grund geht.

Über die Autorin

Lucia Berlin wurde 1936 in Alaska geboren und starb 2004 in Marina del Rey. Ihre Erzählungen, entstanden in den 1960er- bis 1980er-Jahren, wurden in Zeitschriften und später in drei Erzählungsbänden veröffentlicht. Von 1994 bis 2000 war sie Dozentin an der Universität von Boulder, Colorado.

Biografie nach den Informationen auf Berlins Homepage

"Berlin was born Lucia Brown in Alaska in 1936. Her father was a mining engineer and her earliest years were spent in the mining camps and towns of Idaho, Kentucky, and Montana.

In 1941, Berlin's father went off to the war, and her mother moved Lucia and her younger sister to El Paso, where their grandfather was a prominent, but besotted, dentist.

Soon after the war, Berlin's father moved the family to Santiago, Chile, and she embarked on what would become 25 years' worth of a rather flamboyant existence. In Santiago, she attended cotillions and balls, had her first cigarette lit by Prince Ali Khan, finished school, and served as the default hostess for the father's society gatherings. Most evenings, her mother retired early with a bottle.

By the age of 10, Lucia had scoliosis, a painful spinal condition that became lifelong and often necessitated a steel brace.

In 1955 she enrolled at the University of New Mexico. By now fluent in Spanish, she studied with the novelist Ramon Sender. She soon married and had two sons. By the birth of the second, her sculptor husband was gone. Berlin completed her degree and, still in Albuquerque, met the poet Edward Dorn, a key figure in her life. She also met Dorn's teacher from Black Mountain College, the writer Robert Creeley, and two of his Harvard classmates, Race Newton and Buddy Berlin, both jazz musicians. And she began to write.

Newton, a pianist, married Berlin in 1958. (Her earliest stories appeared under the name Lucia Newton.) The next year, they and the children moved to a loft in New York. Race worked steadily and the couple became friends with their neighbors Denise Levertov and Mitchell Goodman, as well as other poets and artists including John Altoon, Diane diPrima, and Amiri Baraka (then LeRoi Jones).

In 1961, Berlin and her sons left Newton and New York, and traveled with their friend Buddy Berlin to Mexico, where he became her third husband. Buddy was charismatic and affluent, but he also proved to be an addict. During the years 1962-65, two more sons were born.

By 1968, the Berlins were divorced and Lucia was working on a master's degree at the University of New Mexico. She was employed as a substitute teacher. She never remarried.

The years 1971-94 were spent in Berkeley and Oakland, California. Berlin worked as a high-school teacher, switchboard operator, hospital ward clerk, cleaning woman, and physician's assistant, while writing, raising her four sons, drinking, and finally, prevailing over her alcoholism. She spent much of 1991 and 1992 in Mexico City, where her sister was dying of cancer. Her mother had died in 1986, a probable suicide. In 1994, Edward Dorn brought Berlin to the University of Colorado, and she spent the next six years in Boulder as a visiting writer and, ultimately, associate professor. She became a remarkably popular and beloved teacher, and in just her second year, won the university's award for teaching excellence.

During the Boulder years she thrived in a close community that included Dorn and wife Jennie, Anselm Hollo, and her old pal Bobbie Louise Hawkins. The poet Kenward Elmslie became, like the prose writer Stephen Emerson, a fast friend.

In 2001, in failing health, she moved to Southern California to be near her sons. She passed away in 2004 in Marina del Rey."

Stephen Emerson

Pressestimmen

"On the evidence of this wonderful collection, she had no need to worry: she missed nothing." Catherine O'Flynn, in: The Guardian, September 30, 2015

"I believe the hype is justified … should reward readers who return to it for months, years, even decades. … Berlin's stories offer few answers, and no easy routes to redemption, but empathy pulses." Max Liu, in: The Independent, September 22, 2015

"Lucia Berlin spent her career in obscurity. Now, she is being hailed as a literary genius" Brigit Katz, in: The New York Times /Women In The World, September 1, 2015

"Lucia Berlin’s stories will be read, anthologized and celebrated in a way that they never were when the author was alive. Popular success can be fickle, and there is no trace of bitterness in these stories – only a brilliant mind grappling with the world around her." Elizabeth Taylor, in: The National Book Review, August 2015