First Loves

May 26, 2003
The loves alluded to in the title of this unflinching but amiable follow-up to the critically lauded Truth Comes in Blows
are both romantic and intellectual. Both loves are imperfect, but with Solotaroff—who founded American Review—as navigator, they are fascinatingly so. The bewitching Marilyn Ringler and Solotaroff met in 1948 when they were working at a Jewish resort on Long Island. "I was nearly twenty, two months out of the navy, and hadn't had much luck with girls whom I didn't pay," Solotaroff declares in a confession that's typical for this public intellectual more bemused than wracked by the recollection of his younger days. There were considerable mistakes and woes early on, although he has crafted another memoir that is admirably shorn of remorse. Solotaroff indulgently embarked on a career as a writer even though the signs were neon-bright that his talent lay in criticism. After Solotaroff and Lynn, as he calls her, married, Lynn began seeing rats and ghosts at night. Moving to New York for the mangy bohemian life he'd fantasized about, Solotaroff became a scrappy laborer as the couple, "so uncannily tuned in to each other" out of the bedroom, were forced to grapple with their sexual incompatibility. They eventually had two children, and Solotaroff settled down to life as a critic. Although he has a tendency to compare nearly everyone in his memoir to major literary figures ("Elizabeth reminded me of Virginia Woolf"; "I was on the way to becoming a younger version of Leopold Bloom"), Solotaroff manages to imbue all of them with full humanity.