Goldberg, Natalie

PERSONAL: Born in the United States; divorced; companion of Michelle Huff (a lawyer).

ADDRESSES: Home—Northern NM, and St. Paul, MN. Agent—c/o Author Mail, HarperSanFrancisco, 353 Sacramento St, San Francisco, CA 94111.

CAREER: Writer, poet, educator, and painter. Teaches writing workshops.

WRITINGS:

Chicken and in Love (poems), Holy Cow Press (Minneapolis, MN), 1980.

Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within (nonfiction), Shambhala (Boston, MA), 1986.

Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life (nonfiction), Bantam (New York, NY), 1990.

Long Quiet Highway: Waking up in America (nonfiction), Bantam (New York, NY), 1993.

Banana Rose (novel), Bantam (New York, NY), 1995.

Living Color: A Writer Paints Her World (autobiography; self-illustrated), Bantam (New York, NY), 1997.

Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer's Craft (nonfiction), Bantam (New York, NY), 2000.

Top of My Lungs: Poems and Paintings, and the Essay "How Poetry Saved My Life," Overlook Press (Woodstock, NY), 2002.

The Great Failure: A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth (memoir), HarperSanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA), 2004.

Contributor of articles to periodicals, including Writer's Digest.

SIDELIGHTS: Natalie Goldberg is a teacher of writing and conductor of numerous writing workshops, who shares her love of writing and seeks to inspire and instruct aspiring writers in her books, Writing Down the Bones: Freeing the Writer Within, Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life, and Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer's Craft. Interwoven among Goldberg's instructions are autobiographical portions that reveal her own methods and struggles as a writer, as well as other more spiritual aspects of her life, especially the effect that Goldberg's study of Zen Buddhism has had on her life.

Laced with quotations from Zen masters, Writing Down the Bones, Goldberg's 1986 writer's guide, encourages others to look within themselves to find their own creative voice. Sewanee Review reviewer George Garrett was somewhat critical of the work, and stated: "Not much practical advice for dealing with publishers or the big bad world here; but there are some helpful thoughts about creative flexibility and process. Most of what she says has to do with poetry, but it is more or less transferable wisdom." Goldberg, however, received praise for her 1990 book, Wild Mind in which she shares more personal, intimate glimpses of her own life than in Writing Down the Bones, and demonstrates to reluctant writers how she integrates writing into her busy life. Bloomsbury Review contributor Kay Marie Porterfield found Wild Mind a "cause for celebration," and commented that Goldberg "provides both novice and seasoned writers with inspiration and insight into the process of writing from the heart."

In her 1993 publication, Long Quiet Highway: Waking up in America, Goldberg reveals more details of her life as a woman, writer, and teacher. At the heart of Long Quiet Highway, in particular, is Goldberg's relationship with Zen master Katagiri Roshi, whose life and teachings changed Goldberg's view of life and of writing. Although highly personal in nature, Long Quiet Highway is rife with insight for writers and other artists. Critically well-received, Long Quiet Highway elicited praise from Mark Gerson, writing in Quill and Quire, who noted: "From the classrooms of her suburban childhood to her painful acceptance of Roshi's death, Goldberg writes from the heart of her experience, with an honest simplicity that is compelling." Bloomsbury Review contributor Judith K. Mahrer also applauded Long Quiet Highway, proclaiming: "I was deeply touched by this book. I felt I had been privileged to share, in very special ways, in the life of someone who has worked diligently to make sense of her life and to give it meaning." Mahrer added: "Unlike her two earlier books, this is not a book on writing technique, though writing is one of the major themes. This book is really about waking up and living a conscious life."

Goldberg issued Banana Rose, her first novel, in 1995. The novel is set in the 1960s and opens in Taos, New Mexico, where Goldberg lives. Nell Schwartz, a frustrated artist from Brooklyn, New York, has come to Taos to live in a commune. She renames herself Banana Rose, and soon falls in love with Gauguin, a Minnesotan musician whose real name is George Howard. The two leave the commune for an adobe hut with no indoor plumbing, where they spend time making love, preparing vegetarian meals, and smoking marijuana with their friends, who have names such as Happiness and Neon. But, as the magic of their lives meets reality, their friends return to the more conventional world one by one. Banana Rose and Gauguin, too, leave Taos for Minneapolis, and quickly assimilate into the average American lifestyle, marrying, taking jobs, and reclaiming their original names. Ultimately, they divorce. Older and wiser, Nell moves back to New Mexico, where her artistic creativity blossoms.

Goldberg's depiction of the New Mexico landscape impressed reviewer Georgia Jones-Davis, who remarked in the Los Angeles Times that the author "allows [New Mexico's] raw, panoramic splendor to function like a living, breathing character in the story." Jones-Davis continued: "The spiritual quality of the place, the colors of the earth and sky, the smell of rain, the forked lightning, the shadows on Taos Mountain—none of this is lost on her characters." Commenting on the novel as a whole, Jones-Davis added: "Banana Rose is a problematic yet touching novel, awkward in places, poetic and amazingly powerful in others."

In addition to writing and teaching, Goldberg has been an avid painter since the 1970s, although she has always considered this art subordinate to her writing. She gave up painting for a time during the writing of Banana Rose, then came back to it after she realized that painting was "a deep source" of her writing. "When I cut out painting, I cut off that underground stream of mayhem, joy, nonsense, absurdity," she writes in Living Color: A Writer Paints Her World, which contains autobiographical essays accompanied by her fanciful, cartoon-like paintings. This book shows that painting "is the secondary art that feeds and nurtures her primary creative work," related Donn Fry in the Seattle Times. Fry expressed disappointment that "Goldberg never probes too deeply into the connection between visual and verbal images," but concluded: "Goldberg's easy candor and engaging art ultimately outweigh these concerns." Booklist reviewer Donna Seaman found the work "lovely and inspiring" in its illustration, in words and pictures, of Goldberg's life and art.

Goldberg returned to the art for which she is best known, providing guidance to writers, in Thunder and Lightning. Reviewing this work for Booklist, James O'Laughlin remarked that for admirers of Goldberg's previous works, Thunder and Lightning would be of much interest, showing once again the writer's "commitment to 'writing practice.'" Similarly, a reviewer for Publishers Weekly noted that Goldberg delves into her own experiences as a writer to guide others through the tough process of creation, writing "as someone who has been there and back." In a profile of Goldberg for the Advocate, Victoria Price reported that this book "takes on the tough practicalities of the writing life." She quoted Goldberg as saying: "What I want to tell people is that it's great that you want to write, but get real about it. Writing is pleasurable—at the beginning, anyway. But it's also hard, like a marriage or any kind of relationship. You fall madly in love, and then you move in. It's hard, but you stay in it, hopefully."

In The Great Failure: a Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth, Goldberg presents a memoir that focuses largely on her father, her late Zen teacher Dainin Katagiri Roshi, and her belief that she was betrayed by both. According to Goldberg, for many years she was unaware that her father had been adulterous and that her Zen teacher had numerous sexual liaisons with his students. In the process of exploring her feelings about these two men, Goldberg examines her precarious relationship with her father and grapples with the idealistic view she once held of her former Zen teacher. Janet St. John, writing in Booklist, noted that Goldberg reveals "her dogged determination to get at the truth and to come clean about personal failings." A Psychology Today contributor noted Goldberg's "spare, graceful prose." Carolyn M. Craft commented in the Library Journal that the author "writes with feeling, so that the betrayals are almost palpable."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Goldberg, Natalie, Long Quiet Highway: Waking up in America, Bantam (New York, NY), 1993.

Goldberg, Natalie, The Great Failure: A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth, HarperSanFrancisco (San Francisco, CA), 2004.

PERIODICALS

Advocate, August 29, 2000, Victoria Price, "Goldberg Variations," p. 65.

Bloomsbury Review, March, 1991, Kay Marie Porter-field, review of Wild Mind: Living the Writer's Life, p. 16; March-April, 1993, Judith K. Mahrer, review of Long Quite Highway, pp. 12, 22.

Booklist, September 1, 1997, Donna Seaman, review of Living Color: A Writer Paints Her World, p. 48; August, 2000, James O'Laughlin, review of Thunder and Lightning: Cracking Open the Writer's Craft, p. 2098; November 15, 2000, Nancy Spillman, review of Long Quiet Highway, p. 656; August, 2004, Janet St. John, review of The Great Failure: A Bartender, a Monk, and My Unlikely Path to Truth, p. 1891.

Library Journal, March 1, 2000, review of Thunder and Lighting, p. S10; September 15, 2004, Carolyn M. Craft, review of The Great Failure, p. 63.

Los Angeles Times, January 31, 1995, Georgia Jones-Davis, review of Banana Rose, p. E5.

New York Times Book Review, April 16, 1995, Susan Simon, review of Banana Rose, p. 16.

Publishers Weekly, December 28, 1992, review of Long Quiet Highway, p. 52; January 9, 1995, review of Banana Rose, p. 54; June 5, 2000, review of Long Quiet Highway, p. 63; July 31, 2000, review of Thunder and Lightning, p. 87.

Psychology Today, July-August, 2004, review of The Great Failure, p. 34.

Quill and Quire, July, 1993, Mark Gerson, review of Long Quiet Highway, pp. 51-52.

Seattle Times, October 2, 1997, Donn Fry, review of Living Color.

Sewanee Review, summer, 1988, George Garrett, review of Writing down the Bones, pp. 516-525.