Rosenblatt, Roger 1940-

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ROSENBLATT, Roger 1940-

PERSONAL: Born September 13, 1940, in New York, NY; son of Milton B. (a physician) and Mollie (a teacher; maiden name, Spruch) Rosenblatt; married Virginia Jones (a teacher), June 15, 1963; children: Carl Becker, Amy Elizabeth, John Milton. Education: New York University, A.B. (honors), 1962; Harvard University, A.M., 1963, Ph.D., 1968.

ADDRESSES: Home—Quogue and Manhattan, NY. Offıce—Southampton College, Long Island University, 239 Montauk Hwy., Southampton, NY 11968-4196. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER: Journalist and author. Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, assistant professor of English and American literature, 1968-73; National Endowment for the Humanities, Washington, DC, director of education, 1973-75; New Republic, Washington, DC, literary editor and author of column "The Back of the Book," 1975-78; Washington Post, Washington, DC, editorial writer and author of weekly column, 1978-80; Time, senior writer, 1980-88; U.S. News and World Report, began as senior writer, became editor, 1988-89; Southampton College, Long Island University, professor of English and holder of the Parsons Family Chair, 1995—. Regular contributor, Atlantic. Essayist and commentator for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, Public Broadcasting System (PBS).

MEMBER: National Book Critics Circle (former member of board of directors), Century Club, Cosmos Club.

AWARDS, HONORS: Fulbright scholar in Ireland, 1965-66; Polk Award in Journalism, Robert F. Kennedy Book Award, and National Book Critics Circle award nomination, all 1983, for The Children of War; Polk Award for reporting, 1988, for work in Time magazine; Frederick G. Melcher Book Prize, 1992, for Life Itself: Abortion in the American Mind; recipient of Peabody and Emmy awards for his television essays for the NewsHour with Jim Lehrer; named "Best Columnist in Washington" by Washingtonian magazine for his Washington Post columns. Received honorary doctorates from five universities.

WRITINGS:

Black Fiction, Harvard University Press (Cambridge, MA), 1974.

The Children of War, Anchor/Doubleday (New York, NY), 1983.

Witness: The World since Hiroshima, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1985.

Life Itself: Abortion in the American Mind, Random House (New York, NY), 1992.

The Man in the Water: Essays and Stories, Random House (New York, NY), 1994.

Coming Apart: A Memoir of the Harvard Wars of 1969, Little, Brown (Boston, MA), 1997.

(Editor) Consuming Desires: Consumption, Culture, and the Pursuit of Happiness, Island Press (Washington, DC), 1999.

Rules for Aging: Resist Normal Impulses, Live Longer,Attain Perfection, Harcourt (New York, NY), 2000.

Where We Stand: Thirty Reasons for Loving OurCountry, Harcourt (New York, NY), 2002.

Anything Can Happen: Notes on My Inadequate Life and Yours, Harcourt (Orlando, FL), 2003.

Creator of comic, one-person off-Broadway show Free Speech in America, 1992, and Bibliomania, 1993; author of introduction to A Year in Chautauqua by Laurie A. Watters, Park Bench Press (New York, NY), 2000; Contributor to popular magazines, including Harper's and Saturday Review, professional journals, and newspapers.

SIDELIGHTS: An award-winning journalist, Roger Rosenblatt has been a columnist, editor, and writer for such periodicals as the New Republic, Washington Post, Time, and U.S. News and World Report. Rosenblatt's nonfiction books have also won awards, including The Children of War, an investigation of what life is like for children in five war-torn nations, which won the Polk Award in Journalism and the Robert F. Kennedy Book Award in 1983. In addition, this title drew a nomination from the National Book Critics Circle, a group Rosenblatt once served as a board member.

Children of War chronicles Rosenblatt's tour of Ireland, Israel, Lebanon, Cambodia, and Vietnam to interview the children for whom war has been a prevailing condition of life. Though many of his subjects expressed strong anti-war feelings informed by their experiences of grief and loss, others had firmly decided that violence was the best response to enemies and dissenters. The cover article Rosenblatt produced for Time from this material was "magazine journalism at its best," Sam Hall Kaplan remarked in the Los Angeles Times Book Review. Naming what she felt was the best feature of the book, Helen Epstein commented in the Washington Post Book World, "Rosenblatt is a fluent writer with an evident respect and affection for kids. He describes their pictures and poems, their manner and dress without ever appearing to patronize them." The larger portrait in the book, however, is that of the author coming to terms with his findings, noted Epstein. She explained, "This is indeed a book about childhood rent by war, but its main character, perhaps inadvertently, is an upper middle-class New York journalist who at times recalls the Ugly American, at times the Innocent Abroad, at times the best of the Peace Corps Volunteers."

Reviewers observed that because the book maintains a journalistic immediacy, it relates the views of the children more clearly than the author's. Rosenblatt's conclusions about the apparent inevitability of war and the effects it has on children are complex, and therefore more difficult to articulate, they remarked. In New York Times Book Review contributor Robert Jay Lifton's view, Rosenblatt "leaves us with more agitation than clarity. But . . . he has the courage to see and listen. He brings back a message of the pained wisdom and fragile strength of children, a message of infinite value to us in our own efforts to ward off our destruction. Mr. Rosenblatt knows that such a journey cannot leave him unchanged. The same will be true of his readers."

Rosenblatt was commissioned by Random House editor Peter Osnos to write a survey of attitudes toward abortion beginning from 5000 B.C. and to arrive at a discussion of American thinking on the controversial topic. He told Charles Trueheart of the Washington Post that though the practice of abortion is not by any means new to American society, all the aspects of the abortion issue are matters of public debate for the first time in the 1980s and 1990s. Though abortion was widely practiced before the mid-nineteenth century, physicians pressed legislators to restrict it, Rosenblatt reports. Since the debate has been taken up again by the courts, he said, "America now has the opportunity to discover its true mind on the matter—a mind likely to be troubled . . . by abortion's complexities, but which has also shown itself capable of living with unresolved tensions before." About this title a Publishers Weekly critic represented one end of the spectrum of comments, calling Life Itself: Abortion in the American Mind a "reasoned historical and cross-cultural discussion." Several other reviewers decried what they considered a pro-abortion bias on Rosenblatt's part.

In 1996 Rosenblatt served up Coming Apart: A Memoir of the Harvard Wars of 1969, in which he describes the student protests at Harvard University in 1969 and his role, as a member of the faculty, in disciplining the offenders. This critical time in the nation and Harvard University's history also proved to be a turning point in Rosenblatt's life, for it led to his disenchantment with academia and his eventual departure from Harvard to become a journalist and pundit. The work garnered varying reviews. While Rosenblatt explains much about his thoughts and feelings during these times, according to a Queen's Quarterly contributor, he "makes an inadequate effort to put these university troubles in military or political context." Yet this reviewer pointed to one area in which he believed Rosenblatt makes a contribution to the literature on the period: "He discusses another important area of controversy; black studies also had their start at Harvard in 1969, and for those who would like the background to the growth of political correctness in universities, Coming Apart would be an excellent place to start." Booklist's Bill Ott remarked that Rosenblatt "tells us little we haven't heard before," and Commentary's Elliott Abrams wrote, "Though Rosenblatt's appraisal of student attitudes is somewhat off pitch, he is correct in his assessment that the faculty acted reprehensibly." National Interest contributor Guenter Lewy was less kind in his appraisal, asserting, "Besides lacking sharp emotion, the book's analysis of events, actors, and motives is often shallow and superficial." Conversely, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt found value in Rosenblatt's recreation of that confused time. "This book provides a way of sorting out mixed feelings not only about Harvard and the more visible student upheavals at campuses like Berkeley and Columbia," he wrote in the New York Times Book Review, concluding, "By dramatizing a time of ideological crisis and knitting into it his own conflicted inner development, Mr. Rosenblatt has revealed new subtleties about all of our pasts."

Rosenblatt edited the 1999 publication Consuming Desires: Consumption, Culture, and the Pursuit of Happiness, a "hard-hitting and perspicacious collection of essays" about capitalism, noted Spirituality & Health reviewers Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat. Rosenblatt asserts that American consumerism has been driven by desire that is based on the Western idea of individualism, and twelve other essayists treat such topics as ecology, advertising, status, consumption habits, work, and leisure. Library Journal's Paula Dempsey cited for special praise the "thoughtful essays" by contributors William Greider, Alex Kotlowitz, Jane Smiley, Martin Marty, and Stephanie Mills.

As one would expect from a columnist, Rosenblatt has published several collections of essays, including The Man in the Water: Essays and Stories, Where We Stand: Thirty Reasons for Loving Our Country, and Anything Can Happen: Notes on My Inadequate Life and Yours. In the first title, Rosenblatt gives readers sixty human interest sketches, using his "distinctive, sophisticated voice" to focus on the "human enigma" of each subject, as Booklist's Gilbert Taylor noted. While some of these pieces in this "wholly engaging collection," take the form of interviews, others are essays, reviews, and autobiographical reflections, noted a Publishers Weekly contributor.

In contrast, in the wake of the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks, Where We Stand contains very personal reflections about America. Rosenblatt wrote: "This book is about love of country—not unalloyed love, or unwary, unquestioning love, or infatuated, one-night, wink-in-the-bar love. But love, pure, steady, and complicated. I wrote it in a time when I found it useful to dredge up feelings about America that for a long time lay inside me. These feelings gave me comfort and resolve, and they are offered to you in hopes of the same." Reviews of the work ran the gamut from appreciative to dismissive. For example, Booklist's Margaret Flanagan, representing one end of the spectrum, predicted wide appeal for the "delightful gems" contained in the collection, while on the other hand, New Yorker's Louis Menand cringed at what he called "mushiness to make Goodnight Moon [a beloved classic children's picture book] seem a shade too contentious."

With his 2003 Anything Can Happen, Rosenblatt gives readers another sixty short meditations, this time about powerlessness—political, economic, and other. Booklist's Ilene Cooper dubbed the book "a hit-and-miss affair." The best pieces in the collection, according to a Publishers Weekly critic, are "significantly more scathing, and more offhandedly probing" than Rosenblatt's essays for PBS television.

After eschewing the academic world for two decades, Rosenblatt returned to the classroom in 1995, teaching English at Southampton College of Long Island University. At the Southampton College Web site he explained his teaching goals: "I teach students to learn to read creatively and appreciatively. It may not mean much now at age twenty, but it will mean more at age forty when it will hit them. I want young people to understand reading is their way to writing. They need to take serious books seriously. . . . I'm not sure if I'm preparing students for the 'real world,' which is that over-commercial, mega-corporation world . . . but maybe we're looking at the superior world, one where writers go about the business of preparing something worthwhile."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

BOOKS

Rosenblatt, Roger, Where We Stand: Thirty Reasons for Loving Our Country, Harcourt (New York, NY), 2002.

PERIODICALS

America, October 29, 1983, review of Children ofWar, p. 259; November 20, 1999, review of Consuming Desires: Consumption, Culture, and the Pursuit of Happiness, p. 27.

American Literature, January, 1976, Blyden Jackson, review of Black Fiction, pp. 652-654.

American Spectator, December, 1983, review of Children of War, p. 37.

Best Sellers, November, 1985, review of Witness: TheWorld since Hiroshima, p. 314.

Booklist, July, 1983, review of Children of War, p. 1368; March 15, 1992, review of Life Itself, p. 1322; January 1, 1994, Gilbert Taylor, review of The Man in the Water: Essays and Stories, p. 801; February 15, 1997, Bill Ott, review of Coming Apart: A Memoir of the Harvard Wars of 1969, p. 981; June 1, 1999, Vanessa Bush, review of Consuming Desires, p. 1752; June 1, 2002, Margaret Flanagan, review of Where We Stand, p. 1673; April 15, 2003, Ilene Cooper, review of Anything Can Happen: Notes on My Inadequate Life and Yours, p. 1443.

Bookwatch, October, 1999, review of Consuming Desires, p. 1.

Boston Book Review, June, 1999, review of Consuming Desires, p. 6.

Children Today, November, 1983, review of Children of War, p. 35.

Christian Science Monitor, August 17, 1983, review of Children of War, p. 11.

Commentary, June, 1997, Elliott Abrams, review of Coming Apart, pp. 71-72.

Commonweal, June 19, 1992, review of Life Itself, p. 24.

Conscience, fall, 1996, review of Life Itself, p. 35.

Cresset, April, 1998, review of Coming Apart, p. 38.

E Magazine, November, 1999, review of ConsumingDesires, p. 55.

Family Planning Perspectives, September-October, 1992, Frances Kissling, review of Life Itself, pp. 229-230.

Horn Book, February, 1984, review of Children ofWar, p. 91.

Journal of American & Comparative Cultures, winter, 2000, review of Consuming Desires, pp. 114-115.

Kirkus Reviews, June 1, 1983, review of Children ofWar, p. 654; June 15, 1983, review of Children of War, p. 670; February 1, 1992, review of Life Itself, p. 169; December 15, 1993, review of The Man in the Water, p. 1577; February 1, 1997, review of Coming Apart, pp. 205-106; May 15, 1999, review of Consuming Desires, pp. 783-784.

Kliatt, July, 1993, review of Life Itself, p. 34.

Library Journal, August, 1983, review of Children ofWar, p. 1469; March 15, 1992, review of Life Itself, p. 114; January, 1993, review of Children of War, p. 170; January, 1994, review of The Man in the Water, p. 134; April 1, 1997, review of Coming Apart, p. 108; July, 1999, Paula Dempsey, review of Consuming Desires, p. 117.

Los Angeles Times Book Review, September 18, 1983, review of Children of War, p. 3; June 14, 1992, review of Life Itself, p. 1; September 18, 1983.

Maclean's, October 10, 1983, review of Children ofWar, p. 64.

Middle East Journal, spring, 1984, review of Children of War, p. 351.

Nation, May 25, 1992, review of Life Itself, p. 718; May 12, 1997, Katha Pollitt, review of Coming Apart, p. 10.

National Interest, fall, 1997, Guenter Lewy, review of Coming Apart, pp. 109-112.

National Review, June 22, 1992, Hadley Arkes, review of Life Itself, pp. 47-50.

New Directions for Women, July, 1992, review of LifeItself, p. 31.

New England Quarterly, March, 1998, Norman Pettit, review of Coming Apart, pp. 134-136.

New Republic, August 29, 1983, review of Children ofWar, p. 27; May 18, 1992, review of Life Itself, p. 39.

Newsweek, September 26, 1983, review of Children ofWar, p. 88.

New Yorker, September 16, 2002, Louis Menand, "Faith, Hope, and Clarity," review of Where We Stand.

New York Times, March 12, 1992, review of Life Itself, p. C22; March 9, 1994, review of The Man in the Water, p. C22; April 10, 1997, review of Coming Apart, p. C16.

New York Times Book Review, August 28, 1983, review of Children of War, p. 1; September 30, 1984, review of Children of War, p. 46; August 4, 1985, review of Witness, p. 3; August 28, 1983; March 15, 1992, review of Life Itself, p. 7; May 31, 1992, review of Life Itself, p. 21; February 7, 1993, review of Life Itself, p. 28; March 6, 1994, review of The Man in the Water, p. 16; April 10, 1997, Christopher Lehmann-Haupt, "Echoes of '69 Reverberate at Harvard and Beyond," review of Coming Apart, p. 16; April 20, 1997, review of Coming Apart, p. 21; July 7, 2002, Michael Lind, "Their Country 'Tis of Them," review of Where We Stand.

Progressive, October, 1992, review of Life Itself, p. 38.

Publishers Weekly, June 17, 1983, review of Children of War, p. 64; February 3, 1992, review of Life Itself, p. 72; December 20, 1993, review of The Man in the Water, p. 56; February 10, 1997, review of Coming Apart, p. 73; May 24, 1999, review of Consuming Desires, p. 57; May 6, 2002, review of Where We Stand, p. 45; April 21, 2003, review of Anything Can Happen, pp. 53-54.

Queen's Quarterly, spring, 1998, review of ComingApart, pp. 58-63.

Reference & Research Book News, December, 1992, review of Life Itself, p. 17.

Time, April 21, 1997, review of Coming Apart, p. 118; June 10, 2002, "Our Contributors," p. 70.

Times Educational Supplement, February 10, 1984, review of Children of War, p. 24.

Times Literary Supplement, August 1, 1997, Francis X. Rocca, "The Decade of Radical Disaster," review of Coming Apart.

Tribune Books (Chicago, IL), February 14, 1993, review of Life Itself, p. 2; April 27, 1997, review of Coming Apart, p. 7.

Voice of Youth Advocates, April, 1984, review of Children of War, p. 49.

Wall Street Journal, April 15, 1997, review of ComingApart, p. A16.

Washington Monthly, June, 1992, Alissa Rubin, review of Life Itself, pp. 57-58.

Washington Post, August 16, 1989; October 14, 1989.

Washington Post Book World, September 11, 1983, review of Children of War, p. 10; August 11, 1988; January 16, 1994, review of The Man in the Water, p. 13; July 6, 1997, review of Coming Apart, p. 8.