Late Work
A Literary Autobiography of Love, Loss, and What I Was Reading
Curious, ruminative, and wry, this literary autobiography tours what Rachel Kushner called "the strange remove that is the life of the writer." Frank’s essays cover a vast spectrum—from handling dismissive advice, facing the dilemma of thwarted ambition, and copying the generosity that inspires us, to the miraculous catharsis of letter-writing and some of the books that pull us through. Useful for writers at any stage of development, Late Work offers a seasoned artist’s thinking through the exploration of issues, paradoxes, and crises of faith. Like a lively conversation with a close, outspoken friend, each piece tells its experience from the trenches.
Questioning her assumptions (and ours as well), this vastly well-read author takes us through the slings and arrows of the literary life, arriving at a place of wisdom and sanity.
Joan Frank’s assessment of lateness asa conduit of possibility—by which, reading and writing, we record the subtle and continuous miracle of being alive—makes this a wise and moving book.
Late Work gets to the heart of how a mature writer makes work that matters. At once wry, generous, and brutally honest, it is an essential guide for serious writers and readers of all ages.
The work of the writer, late and soon, is life itself…it’s that simple, that difficult. Through analogy and example, Joan Frank’s essays take us with her into a dimming world: to look, to feel, to cherish and forgive. This is a rich, real collection.
Late Work is one of the best books on writing and the writing life I have ever read. It contains wonderful pages about the covenant between writer and reader along with advice for writers on how to use one’s own ‘skinlessness’ as a creative tool. It is above all a book about art and the role, both tempering and freeing, that aging plays in an artist’s life and work.
Joan Frank is the award-winning author of twelve books of literary fiction and essays including Because You Have To: A Writing Life and Try to Get Lost: Essays on Travel and Place (UNM Press). She lives with her husband, playwright Bob Duxbury, in the North Bay Area of California.
Acknowledgments
Introduction
What Would John Williams Do?
The Late Work Bylaws
Lifeness Itself: Divining the Details
I Say It’s Spinach
Another Art
Your Baby’s Ugly
The Lonely Voice in Its Bathrobe: A Life of Letters
You’ve Made It
Make It Go Away
Naked Emperors
Ready or Not
What Are We Afraid Of?
It Seemed Important at the Time: The New Doubt
The Action Figures Collection
Coda: Someone Is Reading
