Paula Fox

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Paula Fox (born April 22, 1923 in New York City , † March 1, 2017 ) was an American writer who lived in New York. It was forgotten for a long time, today it is seen as a modern classic.

Life

Her father, Paul Fox, a screenwriter of Irish descent, and mother Elsie Fox, nee de Sola, a moderately successful Cuban actress, did not care about her. A few days after their birth, the very young parents gave the baby to a foundling house. At the age of five months, Paula was taken in by the Congregational Rev. Elwood Corning, with whom she lived until shortly before her sixth birthday. He became her most important point of reference, gave her education and gave her support.

At the age of six, Paula was sent to a children's home in California. Two years later, at her own request, she moved to live with her mother's family in Cuba, where she lived with her grandmother and learned Spanish. There she shared a very simple life, mostly with the staff of a sugar cane plantation. In 1933 she returned to New York with her grandmother because of the unrest in Cuba.

By the age of 12, Paula Fox had already attended nine different schools. She lived alternately in California, New York, Cape Cod and Florida.

She had a daughter (who would later become the mother of the singer Courtney Love ) at the age of 20, but she gave her up for adoption at the age of three. Courtney Love later referred in several interviews to the fact that her mother's research on Marlon Brando was the father, who at the time was still unknown, was the roommate of Fox and her friend, his future agent Stella Adler , who remained good friends for life . In the last chapter of her autobiography In Stranger Clothes , she describes the search for Linda, the daughter, and the moving first meeting with her when she was a young woman. Most recently, Fox was married to the literary critic and translator Martin Greenberg in third marriage. They lived in Brooklyn, New York.

In 2004 she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Letters .

Paula Fox had three children and several grandchildren. She died in a Brooklyn hospital in March 2017, aged 93.

Awards

Works (selection)

In addition to children's books, for which she was awarded the Hans Christian Andersen Prize in 1978 , she wrote novels. In Germany, the following are mainly known:

  • What remains in the end ( Desperate Characters , 1970); CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2000, ISBN 3-406-46060-7
  • California Years ( The Western Coast , 1973); CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2001, ISBN 3-406-47152-8
  • Laura's Silence ( The Widow's Children , 1976); CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2002, ISBN 3-406-48703-3
  • Luisa ( A Servant's Tale , 1984); CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-406-53549-6
  • The God of Nightmares ( The God of Nightmares , 1990); CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2007, ISBN 978-3-406-55614-2
  • In strange clothes: story of a youth ( Borrowed Finery: a memoir , 2001) CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-406-50271-7 ; Autobiography
  • A picture of Ivan ( Portrait of Ivan , 1969); Boje Verlag, Cologne 2007, ISBN 978-3-414-82059-4 ; youth book
  • The cigarette and other stories ( News from the World: stories and essays , 2011), from the American by Karen Nölle and Hans-Ulrich Möhring, CH Beck Verlag, Munich 2011, ISBN 978-3-406-61289-3
  • The Coldest Winter ( The Coldest Winter: A Stringer in Liberated Europe , 2005) CH Beck, Munich 2006, ISBN 978-3-406-54208-4 ; Autobiography 1946–1947

In her 153-page memoirs, The Coldest Winter , Paula Fox described her experiences as a young woman in post-war Europe in 1946. She traveled on behalf of a British news agency and used the year-long trip to research the post-war misery and her own roots.

In her masterful novel What remains in the end , she described how the fragile coexistence of a well-to-do, childless American couple is transformed into everyday horror by a small thing, a cat bite.

With In Stranger Clothes Paula Fox told autobiographically about her childhood and youth. Another novel that deals with childhood is Paul without Jacob .

Her most respected book in the US is the teenage novel The Slave Dancer (1973), about slavery ; German slave freight for New Orleans (Reinbek near Hamburg: Rowohlt , 1979) and Jessie's Melodie (Cologne: Boje , 2013; ISBN 978-3-414-82249-9 ).

literature

Web links

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ A qualified optimist . In: The Guardian . June 21, 2003 ( theguardian.com ).
  2. ^ Members: Paula Fox. American Academy of Arts and Letters, accessed March 28, 2019 .
  3. ^ Paula Fox, Novelist Who Chronicled Dislocation, Dies at 93 . In: The New York Times . March 3, 2017 ( nytimes.com ).
  4. ↑ Overview of reviews of The Coldest Winter in Perlentaucher .
  5. ↑ Review of the coldest winter broken glass in hand in domradio 2006.
personal data
SURNAME Fox, Paula
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Phox, Pola (pseudonym)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer
DATE OF BIRTH April 22, 1923
PLACE OF BIRTH New York City
DATE OF DEATH 1st March 2017
Place of death Brooklyn