Table of Contents

Acknowledgments I. The Death of Fred Astaire Becoming Jennie King for a Day Fits and Starts: Notes on (Yet) Another Writer's Beginnings Karl Will Bring a Picnic Dogs and Children II. Andee's Fiftieth and the Way We Live Now Yard Sale Always Someone! Swinging The Third Hottest Pepper in Honduras III. On the Mowing Enough Tupperware Provincetown Breakfast My June Wedding IV. What Can You Do? Wonderlust: Excursions through an Aesthetic Education 1. Dancing Outside the Lines 2. Braking for Beauty 3. On Course(s) 4. A Want 5. Plank 6. Beauty, the Treacherous 7. Wired for Beauty? 8. A More Modest View of the Power of Teachers 9. Me and Georgia O'Keeffe 10. On Beauty and Justice and Becoming a Horse 11. The Good, the Bad, and the Pretty/Beautiful/Wild/Disgusting 12. Rediscovering the Goldbergs 13. Crisscrossing 14. How I Became an English Major 15. Consider the Float, the Glide, the Slash, Dab, Wring 16. Traveling in the Dark 17. Rooms to Dwell In 18. My Digital Age 19. Changing Course Course 20. My Story/Your Story 21. On Beauty and Dying 22. With Sam in Wonderland 23. Like Art, Like Life At the Donkey Hotel Selected Bibliography Questions for Readers

About the Author

Leslie Lawrence is a recipient of fellowships from the Massachusetts Artists Foundation and the National Endowment for the Arts, and has published in a variety of venues, including Prairie Schooner, Fourth Genre, Witness, The Forward, and The Boston Globe Magazine. She lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Reviews

"...a marvelously rendered and insightful journey about living and loving as honestly as possible." - Portland Press Herald "...a beautifully curated collection ... From her own grappling with identity (both gender and sexuality, parenthood, aging, landscape, partnership, etc) to her musings on memory itself (primarily, her father and his connection to Fred Astaire/the art that provides context for her childhood), Lawrence's essay collection glitters with those transitional moments of present becoming memory." - Lambda Literary "Lawrence writes with a mastery that can turn on a dime from lyric grace to clumsy whim." - Solstice "Leslie Lawrence's essays are sympathetic and patiently observed; she ably demonstrates that hard choices call for careful and humane decisions." - John Irving The Death of Fred Astaire assembles a realistic and venturesome portrait of the author-as writer, teacher, partner, mother, grieving partner, perennial seeker-while capturing the complicated texture of the post-1960s decades of American life. Lawrence's reach is wide, her narrative skills highly honed, and her tone is resonant with a sense of truth being told." - Sven Birkerts, author of Changing the Subject: Art and Attention in the Internet Age "The Death of Fred Astaire is warm, wry, and rich in detail. A lovely read!" - Kate Clinton, comedian "In this stirring collection, Lawrence boldly plumbs her many lives-as lesbian mother, writer, widow, teacher, student, border-crosser ... each is rich beyond description. The Death of Fred Astaire is a marvelous book. Read it and rejoice through your tears!" - Hilda Raz, coauthor of What Becomes You "This lively and eclectic collection of personal essays will appeal to a wide range of readers, educating some about an era of American cultural history and for others providing material for an associational romp through their own memories. Additionally, The Death of Fred Astaire will provide useful material for courses in education, nonfiction writing, cultural studies, and women's studies." - Pamela Annas, University of Massachusetts Boston "The Death of Fred Astaire is a smart, thought-provoking collection. Leslie Lawrence is at once a wise, companionable guide, as well as an empathetic narrator who points out and identifies with our collective yearnings and desires, our foibles and idiosyncrasies-which are, after all, the central human qualities that link each of us to one another." - Michael Steinberg, author of Still Pitching: A Memoir