Author Hortense Calisher died 13 January 2009. Born in Manhattan, New York, on 20 December 1911, she had a long career as a novelist who defied genre or stylistic labels. Her first short stories appeared in The New Yorker in 1948, and collections and novels soon followed. Her New York Times obituary says her “unpredictable turns of phrase, intellectually challenging fictional situations, and complex plots captivated and puzzled readers.”
Many of her books discussed failure and isolation, but her use of language—”her filigreed sentences and bold stylistic excursions”—was a key ingredient to her success.
The Times quotes a critic about her 1965 novel Journal from Ellipsia: “a science-fiction comedy of otherworldly manners.”
Calisher received a degree in English composition from Barnard College in 1932, and later worked as a sales clerk, model, and social worker. After her 1935 marriage, she wrote poetry, but didn’t publish anything. In 1972, she said it was due to “a lack of self-confidence. I’d been fed on the best of literature, and I wanted to reach the summit.” Her first book was a collection of short stories, titled In the Absence of Angels (1951). Her first novel, False Entry—about a man whose exceptional memory allows him to make false entry into other people’s lives—came ten years later. It was a finalist for the National Book Award.
She was also a NBA finalist for Herself (1972) and Collected Stories (1975). She won the Kafka Prize for The Bobby-Soxer (1987). In 1989, the National Endowment for the Arts gave her its Lifetime Achievement Award. Calisher was the president of PEN American Center (1986-87) and of the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1987-90).
She divorced her first husband in 1958 and married Curtis Harnack, another writer, in 1959.
Calisher is survived by her second husband, her son Peter Heffelfinger (from her first marriage), and three grandchildren.