Kramer, Jane 1938-

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KRAMER, Jane 1938-

PERSONAL: Born August 7, 1938, in Providence, RI; daughter of Louis (a physician) and Jessica (Shore) Kramer; married Vincent Crapanzano (an anthropologist, professor, and writer), April 30, 1967; children: Aleksandra. Education: Vassar College, B.A. (with honors), 1959; Columbia University, M.A., 1961.

ADDRESSES: Home—New York, NY. Office—New Yorker, 25 W. 43rd St., New York, NY 10036. Agent—Lynn Nesbit, International Creative Management, 40 W. 57th St., New York, NY 10019.

CAREER: Morningsider, New York, NY, founder and writer, 1961-62; Village Voice, New York, NY, writer, 1962-63; New Yorker, New York, NY, writer, including the regular feature "Letter from Europe," 1963—. City University of New York—Bernard M. Baruch College, Sidney Harmon writer in residence, 1999; University of California—Berkeley, Regents Professor; Princeton University, visiting professor. Member of Council on Foreign Relations and New York Institute for the Humanities; Journalists Human Rights Committee (also known as Committee to Protect Journalists), founding board member; associate of Environmental Defense Fund; consultant to German Marshall Fund, 1981.

MEMBER: Writers Guild of America East (board member, 1963-65), Authors League of America, Authors Guild, PEN, American Academy of Arts and Sciences (fellow), Book Critics Circle, Phi Beta Kappa.

AWARDS, HONORS: Emmy Award, National Academy of Television Arts and Sciences, 1966, for documentary, "This Is Edward Steichen"; named woman of the year, Mademoiselle, 1968; Front Page Award, best magazine feature, New Yorker, 1977, for "The Invandrare"; award from Overseas Press Club of America, 1979; American Book Award, 1981, for Unsettling Europe; National Book Awards, best paperback nonfiction book, 1981, for The Last Cowboy, and feature writing category, 1993, for Whose Art Is It?; Prix Européen de l'Essai Charles Veillon, for German edition of Europeans; President's Medal, Vassar College; Mary McCarthy Award, Bard College.

WRITINGS:

Off Washington Square: A Reporter Looks at Greenwich Village, Duell, Sloan & Pearce (New York, NY), 1963.

Allen Ginsberg in America, Random House (New York, NY), 1969, published as Paterfamilias, Gollancz (London, England), 1970.

Honor to the Bride Like the Pigeon That Guards Its Grain under the Clove Tree, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1970.

The Last Cowboy, Harper (New York, NY), 1978.

Unsettling Europe, Random House (New York, NY), 1980.

Europeans, Farrar, Straus & Giroux (New York, NY), 1988.

Whose Art Is It?, Duke University Press (Durham, NC), 1994.

The Politics of Memory: Looking for Germany in the New Germany, Random House (New York, NY), 1996.

Lone Patriot: The Short Career of an American Militiaman, Pantheon Books (New York, NY), 2002.

Contributor to periodicals, including the New Yorker, New York Times Book Review, and New York Review of Books.

The book Europeans was published in German.

SIDELIGHTS: "In her thirty years at the New Yorker Jane Kramer has written shrewd profiles of Italian peasants, Moroccan teenagers, Texas cowboys, German skinheads, New York City artists, and European heads of state," wrote John J. Pauly in the Dictionary of Literary Biography. "Reviews of her books in popular magazines and newspapers have praised the grace and clarity of her writing. Yet this cosmopolitan body of work, with an intellectual depth unmatched in contemporary journalism, has received almost no scholarly attention. Such recognition is long overdue, for Kramer has written eloquently about the politics of cultural identity . . . that have characterized the late twentieth century."

Kramer's first widely reviewed book, Allen Ginsberg in America, met with a mixed reception. Some critics observed that Kramer's biographical portrait was too sketchy and admiring. Malcolm Muggeridge in the Observer called the author "sentimental, whimsical, sprawling" and explained that what the book "is lacking is any serious critical estimate of Ginsberg and his work." Similarly, Steve Lerner of the Village Voice observed "that while the book is an up, easy-flowing, often informative narrative about a colorful man, it lacks the tension and deep, often uncomfortable probing that a good biography requires in order to adequately depict a public figure." Lerner added, however, that even though Kramer "is repetitious of the flower-bedecked caricature we all know and love, she also manages to present enough new information, describe enough scenes that the television cameras missed, and hear enough good words that were inaudible to the masses to piece together a living Ginsberg. This, in itself, is enough of a recommendation to make the book worth reading for an audience of post beat-early hip generation who have missed the real article in person."

Honor to the Bride Like the Pigeon That Guards Its Grain under the Clove Tree is about the kidnapping and violation of a thirteen-year-old girl from her Arab family living in Meknes, Morocco. She is the family's most valuable asset, for her virginal state will bring in a substantial bride price. Therefore, when she is returned to her relatives, her family comically endeavors to legally reestablish her virginity. Martha Duffy of Time praised Honor to the Bride. It "is an excellent example of the 'nonfiction novel,'" she commented. "Beyond its entertainment value, the book offers a remarkable glimpse into . . . Arab attitudes toward justice, money and women. . . . Thanks to the author's effortless narrative, the reader hurtles through an exotic world, not realizing until the end that he has been taken on a fascinating trip through the Arab mind."

The Last Cowboy is the story of Henry Blanton, a cowboy who lives and works on a ranch in the Texas panhandle. With motion picture star Glenn Ford as his model, Blanton has embodied the image of the proud cowboy to such a degree that he has become a caricature. Henry McDonald of the Washington Post explained that Blanton is seen "as an anomaly, not so much because he seems bigoted, chauvinistic and unpredictably violent. Rather, his oddity stems from his determination to live out a fantasy of himself as a rugged and heroic cowboy in a land which devalues such qualities." In the New York Times, John Leonard complimented the author on her portrait of Blanton and remarked: "It is a measure of Jane Kramer's immense skill that we come to like Henry almost in spite of himself. . . . We aren't poked in the tearducts; we merely watch and eavesdrop. . . . She [Kramer] is incapable of contempt, although the sadness has spurs." McDonald described The Last Cowboy as an "insightful, unsentimental and handsomely crafted work."

Unsettling Europe also received favorable reviews from critics. Irving Howe in the New York Times Book Review explained that "this accomplished book consists of four social-historical sketches—suavely but sturdily composed—about people in Europe who have been uprooted from their natural communities and thrust into alien, sometimes hostile settings." Featured are a Yugoslav family living in Sweden, French Algerians living in Provence, Ugandan Muslims dwelling in a London ghetto, and Italian Communists who feel their Party has forsaken them and the revolution. In the Nation, Thomas Flanagan assessed that "Kramer's intention is to break down the exhausted, conventional categories in which sociology and journalism solicit us to consider contemporary Europe, by creating for us the bitter, absurd, fractured lives of 'people who fell into the cracks of history.'" James N. Baker of Newsweek noted that Kramer's "is no-nonsense journalism at its best: direct, finely detailed portraits of four troubled families . . . by a writer who combines the skills of a social historian with those of a novelist."

Kramer deepened her portrait of Europe and its people in her book Europeans, which is made up of New Yorker pieces written between 1978 and 1988. It includes sketches of cities, descriptions of ordinary people, long stories about controversial news events, obituaries and sketches of famous citizens, and comic and serious reflections. "Reviewers reported that Europeans was a superb piece of writing," reported Pauly. "They called it 'masterful,' 'exquisite,' 'polished,' 'distinguished,' and 'brilliant.'" Pauly wrote that "Europeans interprets politics of cultural identity as it is played out in national policy, cultural mythology, news coverage, local prejudice, and family history. Kramer understands European politics as a symbolic drama and treats political events as cultural texts. Particularly new and notable are the book's ambitious profiles of five major cities—Hamburg, Paris, Zurich, London, and West Berlin. These city essays are among the most accomplished and opinionated pieces Kramer has ever written."

For Whose Art Is It?, Kramer turned her attention back to the United States. The book, originally published as a long article in the New Yorker, details a conflict that arose over publicly funded sculpture in the Bronx. Internationally known sculptor John Ahearn was awarded a commission from New York City's Percent for Art Program to install three statues in front of a police station. He chose to depict a man with a pit bull, a man with a basketball and a boom box, and a girl on roller skates. Protests arose on the grounds that the figures were stereotypes, demeaning to Bronx residents, and Ahearn voluntarily removed the statues less than a week after they were installed. Pauly called it "a stylistic tour de force . . . [that] displays the dense, graceful, complex narrative that Kramer has spent years perfecting." He further commented that "ultimately, Whose Art Is It? examines the social conflicts often referenced by shorthand terms such as multiculturalism and political correctness."

In appreciation of Kramer's body of work, Pauly declared: "Over three decades she has developed one of the most elegant and distinctive voices in American literary journalism. She has written with depth and sophistication about an extraordinary range of topics. She has earned the admiration of careful readers and other professional writers. She has refused to traffic in celebrity, speculation, or shallow controversy. She writes eloquently of her subjects' virtues and vices, regardless of their social standing. Yet for all the praise of her beautiful writing style, Kramer remains under-appreciated as a reporter and analyst." Pauly conjectured that if Kramer were a man, if she wrote "in a more ponderously theoretical style . . . if she promoted herself as shamelessly as others do, she would find herself being heralded by the newsweeklies as a 'public intellectual.'"

Pauly concluded: "The profession of journalism is mythically devoted, in equal measure, to objectivity and publicity, to detachment and fame, and journalists, like women, struggle to make themselves visible. The worst journalists settle for notoriety, serving as television pundits, currying favor with the powerful, surfing the tides of public opinion. The best, like Kramer, cherish their independence but want something more. They seek to make their presence felt, to serve as witnesses rather than remain just observers."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Dictionary of Literary Biography, Volume 185: American Literary Journalists, 1945-1995, First Series, Thomson Gale (Detroit, MI), 1997.

McAuliffe, Kevin M., The Great American Newspaper: The Rise and Fall of the Village Voice, Scribner (New York, NY), 1978, pp. 71-73.

PERIODICALS

Booklist, May 15, 2002, Bryce Christensen, review of Lone Patriot: The Short Career of an American Militiaman, p. 1559.

Books and Culture, January, 1998, review of The Politics of Memory: Looking for Germany in the New Century, p. 45.

Christian Science Monitor, July 17, 1969.

Nation, May 31, 1980.

New Statesman, August 13, 1971.

Newsweek, June 9, 1980, James N. Baker, review of Unsettling Europe.

New York Review of Books, August 14, 1980.

New York Times, May 17, 1969; January 24, 1978, John Leonard, review of The Last Cowboy; June 16, 2002, Timothy Egan, review of Lone Patriot, pp. 7-6.

New York Times Book Review, May 11, 1969; May 18, 1980, Irving Howe, review of Unsettling Europe.

Observer, February 8, 1970, Malcolm Muggeridge, review of Allen Ginsberg in America.

Publishers Weekly, May 27, 2002, review of Lone Patriot, p. 48.

Time, August 8, 1969; January 4, 1971, Martha Duffy review of Honor to the Bride Like the Pigeon That Guards Its Grain under the Clove Tree.

Village Voice, September 4, 1969, Steve Lerner, review of Allen Ginsberg in America.

Washington Post, April 1, 1978, Henry McDonald, review of The Last Cowboy.