A collection of tributes to Lore Segal
(c) Alisa Douer
“Whether in novels or her long-running book group, [Lore Segal], who died this week at 96, was driven by empathy above all... she was an old hand at seeing the universe in a nutshell. It was one of her great virtues as both a writer and a person... She also possessed extraordinary empathy... She found it hard to hate other people and couldn’t even bring herself to dislike the water bug that lived in her kitchen... This small, witty, white-haired person, whose voice still bore the inflection of her Viennese childhood, was a joy to be around. She laughed a lot, and made you laugh. Her marvelous capacity to pay attention made you feel larger-hearted and a little more intelligent—it was as if you were borrowing those qualities from her... Empathy, rather than analysis, was Lore’s true currency to the very end.”
“Segal describes the abrupt and violent destruction of the comfortable, loving world of her Viennese childhood, yet her writing has a remarkable buoyancy... Her protagonists may sometimes feel lonely, or isolated by events, but they’re rarely alone and are almost all eager for the kind of company that makes life meaningful—and pleasurable... Segal’s last series of stories, many of which appeared in The New Yorker in recent years, revolves around a group of old friends on New York’s Upper West Side who regularly meet for lunch. Segal’s style became ever more distilled in these “Ladies’ Lunch” pieces. As fascinated as ever by social interaction, and the way like-minded people find one another, she no longer felt much need for scene-setting or description. Her women talk—and talk and talk, and then talk some more—and in each exchange the quotidian details of life spark ideas and insight into the human condition.... The title of Segal’s last story is “Stories About Us.” Another title she had in mind was “Still Talking.” You could also say, still thinking, still probing, still questioning.”
“Transported to safe haven in England as a Jewish child in 1938, [Lore Segal] explored themes of displacement with penetrating wit in autobiographical fiction... a virtuosic and witty author of autobiographical novels...Ms. Segal’s themes were deracination and otherness, and in precise and piquant prose she explored the costs, and the benefits, that accrued to outsiders and survivors like herself.”
“A master storyteller... Even as her eyesight faded, Segal adhered to the same routine she kept for nearly the entirety of her 70-year career... It was this practice that allowed her to produce an unparalleled run of wise and funny New Yorker short stories; this practice that yielded five groundbreaking novels, the penultimate of which was named a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. And it was this practice that had driven her to write, between previous surgeries, a popular sequence of stories centered on the lives of a group of elderly writers and artists in Manhattan... “Her First American” is a daring, improbable achievement...”
“[Lore Segal’s] continued output revealed the depth of her love for the activity of writing. She was a prodigious editor of her own work, known to tweak stories even after publication when a stronger word or image came to her. Her tendency to write novels as a series of stories was born in part from this minute focus... As well as being an author of consummate craft she was a writer of joy. “Charm is a word I have never used,” her friend, the writer Vivian Gornick, said over email. “But a few weeks ago I realised that when I think of Lore, the word comes into my head. What I mean by that is this: she loved being alive, she found the world attractive, as a result she found something attractive in almost every person who came her way. This quality irradiated her personality. Not a person to whom I introduced her failed to fall in love with her. This, I think, is the essence of charm.””
“In Segal’s work, [her] piercing honesty exposes everyone... So, what do you conclude?’ This was a question Segal’s friend Vivian Gornick would often ask and to which she would reply: ‘I’m not in the concluding business, I’m in the describing business.’ Just when you think you’ve pinned down one thing, something new happens, undermining your previous ‘facile conclusions’. ... Segal never lost her ability to see both sides of the story...”
“[Lore Segal’s] irresistible accounts of her experiences in Britain set her on course to being a Pulitzer prize finalist... All this and more turned up in a series of works that made for humorous, heartrending and irresistible reading.”
“The Pulitzer-nominated novelist and short story writer was genial but acerbic when I interviewed her 18 months ago; I got the sense that she had no truck with fools...Segal was a writer through and through, still at her desk daily before she died.”