Vivian Gornick

Gornick on V. S. Naipaul, James Baldwin, George Gissing, Randall Jarrell, H. G. Wells, Loren Eiseley, Allen Ginsberg, Hayden Carruth, Saul Bellow, and Philip Roth and the intimate relationship between emotional damage and great literature....

Elizabeth Cady Stanton was one of the most important leaders of the movement to gain American women the vote. But, as Vivian Gornick argues in this passionate, vivid biographical essay, Stanton is also the greatest feminist thinker of the 19th century. Endowed with a philosophical cast of mind...

"Gornick's portraits demonstrate the driving force behind science." (The Philadelphia Inquirer) "Women in science stir the contemporary imagination. In their hyphenated identity is captured the pain and excitement of a culture struggling to mature." (The Washington Post) In this revised...

Writer and critic Vivian Gornick's long-unavailable classic exploring how Left politics gave depth and meaning to American life....

In her introduction to this year’s The Best American Essays, guest editor Vivian Gornick states that her selections “contribute materially to the long and honorable history of the personal essay by way of the value they place on lived experience.” Provocative, daring, and honest at a time...