In the Land of Men

November 18, 2019
In this intimate account set amid the New York magazine publishing world of the 1990s and 2000s, Miller (The Coast of Akron) focuses on her time as the literary editor of Esquire, from 1997 through 2006, and on her relationship with David Foster Wallace. In 1994, fresh out of college, Miller got an editorial job at GQ and, three years later, at 25, was hired as Esquire’s first female literary editor. She was “a young woman... trying to get herself taken seriously in a world of men,” which included ego-driven agents, editors, and writers. Miller vividly remembers the “days of paper, days of ink,” the time of the Filofax organizer and the large editorial budget. She recalls briefly working with Dave Eggers pre-McSweeney’s; getting barked at by Norman Mailer (“I loathed Mailer”); publishing the greats (George Saunders, Jeanette Winterson); passing on others (an excerpt from J.M. Coetzee’s Disgrace); and, of course, getting to know Wallace, who contacted Miller in 1998 about a short story submission. The pair dated briefly (Wallace, “a genius,” could be “odd, very pushy, maybe even predatory”) and they eventually became friends. This intriguing memoir about the literary life of a female editor working in the “last-hurrah days” of print magazine publishing will appeal to book nerds and fans of David Foster Wallace.

December 1, 2019

In this sharp blend of memoir and cultural/literary history, Miller (The Coast of Akron) considers her years in the publishing world, most notably as the literary and fiction editor of Esquire. Miller achieved this position at the impressive age of 25, here detailing her experiences at the magazine, including working with literary greats, dodging many unwanted sexual advances, and meeting and later dating writer David Foster Wallace. A good portion of her book centers on her difficult-to-define relationship with Wallace; her excerpts from phone conversations and voicemails and dates with him illustrate a personality that was undefinable yet brilliant. Miller exhibits a particular adroitness in her ability to re-create, with at times biting humor, various events and interactions in her career and relationships. VERDICT A refreshingly relatable memoir from a gifted, intellectual writer. [See Prepub Alert, 7/29/19.]--Stacy Shaw, Denver

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

November 1, 2019
A former Esquire fiction editor recounts her time at the magazine and her working relationship and romance with David Foster Wallace. Miller (The Coast of Akron, 2005) was 25 with three years' experience in editorial assistant roles at GQ when her boss became editor-in-chief at Esquire in 1997 and hired her to be the latter's fiction editor. During her tenure, which ended in 2006, she edited four stories by Wallace, "the fiction writer with whom I'd work the most frequently at the magazine." For a time, they were a couple. In her debut memoir, Miller recounts her years at Esquire, her struggle to grapple with working for a men's publication in which the "representation of women was problematic at best," and her relationship with Wallace. Many passages movingly recount the sexism she endured, such as when, after she got the job, a male literary agent told her, "You don't have any authority to do this job, you know"; or when she discovered that then-unknown Dave Eggers, an Esquire colleague, received twice her salary for similar work. Unfortunately, much of the narrative is unfocused and suffers from weak prose--e.g., "He obviously didn't exactly hold me in terribly high regard"; "my grandfather, who had died six years before, was still dead." Many passages read like lines from a romance novel: "His hand was firm, and soft, and warm"; "David promised he'd call. I hoped he'd call. I needed him to call." Despite her focus on Wallace, we never get a satisfying sense of what made him a unique writer. For the most complete and insightful portrait of Wallace, readers should turn to D.T. Max's Every Love Story Is a Ghost Story. Miller's experience as a woman at a male-dominated magazine is unique, but her rendering is flawed. A scattershot glimpse into the American magazine scene of the late 1990s and early 2000s.

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December 15, 2019
Miller chronicles her infiltration of two men's magazines: GQ, as an editorial assistant right after college, then Esquire, where she was fiction and literary editor, 1997-2006. Miller's description of New York City as perceived by her young, fresh-from-Ohio self is funny and shrewd, and her sensibility snaps into focus when she describes her obsession, at 13, with the movie Amadeus, which made her ravenous for knowledge and understanding and appreciative of mastery. Miller offers a keen and caustic take on the literary universe at a crossroads as the reigning giants, all male, were challenged by Dave Eggers and David Foster Wallace, and as magazines began to be undermined by the first exploratory trickles of the impending digital flood. Her musings on the psychologically intimate" work of an editor are enlightening; her passages recounting blatant and insidious sexism are bracing, and her disclosures about her relationship with Wallace are cathartic. Miller's love for language and faith in the power of art deepen this finely composed, forthright, witty, and involving memoir of one woman's triumph in the competitive literary cosmos.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)