When Ada Calhoun stumbled upon old cassette tapes of interviews her father, celebrated art critic Peter Schjeldahl, had conducted for his never-completed biography of poet Frank O'Hara, she set out to finish the book her father had started forty years earlier. As a lifelong O'Hara fan who grew up amid his bohemian cohort in the East Village, Calhoun thought the project would be easy, even fun, but the deeper she dove, the more she had to face not just O'Hara's past, but also her father's, and her own. The result is a memoir that weaves compelling literary history with a moving, honest, and tender story of a complicated father-daughter bond. Also a Poet explores what happens when we want to do better than our parents, yet fear what that might cost us; when we seek their approval, yet mistrust it. In reckoning with her unique heritage, as well as providing new insights into the life of one of our most important poets, Calhoun offers a brave and hopeful meditation on parents and children, artistic ambition, and the complexities of what we leave behind.
[A] grand slam ... Also a Poet began as Calhoun’s attempt to finish what her dazzling, absent-minded father couldn’t ... But it turned into something much less dutiful, and more interesting, a story about both the impossibility of reconstructing another person’s life and the importance of trying ... Calhoun’s through-her-teeth hisses at her father’s fumbling are great, as are the tapes: snatches of poetry unto themselves ... A big valentine to New York City past and present, and a contribution to literary scholarship, molten with soul.
... moving ... her book isn’t 'strange,' as she fears: it’s engrossing and deft in its juggling of multiple genres ... A project marked equally by honesty and warmth, it closes on a note of reconciliation, with Calhoun transcribing a recording she found amid the O’Hara tapes of Schjeldahl and her then two-year-old self singing nursery rhymes—a testament to the moments of togetherness they have managed, despite it all, to share.
... breezy, whip-smart ... a scintillating work of personal quest and cultural history ... an irresistible Day-Glo portrait of O’Hara and his circle, although the interviewees (and Calhoun) tend more toward gossip than analysis of his oeuvre ... She writes with bracing vulnerability and a dreamy sweetness about her adolescence, light of touch but long on skill, exonerating her mother and demanding 'amends' exclusively from Schjeldahl...Her ambivalence fuels the narrative, but also raises disquieting questions about male achievement and how women should respond to it ... shares a propulsive energy with such vivid oral histories as Gillian McCain and Legs McNeil’s trippy Please Kill Me and Jean Stein’s stylish Edie. As Calhoun’s earlier books attest, she’s a hell of an observer, writing with flair and putting herself on a tightwire, a high-risk gamble that mostly results in high rewards.
