Composing a Life » (1 GROVE PR)

Mary Catherine Bateson has been called "one of the most original and important thinkers of our time" (Deborah Tannen). Grove Press is pleased to reissue Bateson's deeply satisfying treatise on the improvisational lives of five extraordinary women. Using their personal stories as her framework, Dr. Bateson delves into the creative potential of the complex lives we live today, where ambitions are constantly refocused on new goals and possibilities. With balanced sympathy and a candid approach to what makes these women inspiring, examples of the newly fluid movement of adaptation--their relationships with spouses, children, and friends, their ever-evolving work, and their gender--Bateson shows us that life itself is a creative process. "Well-formulated and passionate ... Offers nothing less than a radical rethinking of the concept of achievement." -- San Francisco Chronicle "Fascinating ... A masterwork of rare breadth and particularity." -- The Boston Globe

Publishers Weekly

By profiling five highly productive women--herself and four friends--Bateson, daughter of Margaret Mead and Gregory Bateson, and author of With a Daughter's Eye , aims to shed light on personal and career obstacles women face in achieving success. All five women, she claims, have lived life as an improvisational art form. Her friends are Joan Erikson, dancer and craftsperson; Alice d'Entremont, electrical enginer for Skylab equipment and CEO of a high-tech firm; Ellen Bassuk, a psychiatrist who works with the homeless; and Johnnetta Cole, the first black woman president of Spelman College in Atlanta. Loosely intertwined with the subjects' lives are chapters devoted to topics such as marriage, homemaking, commitment, caretaking and the multiple roles women play. While the book's premise is intriguing, the telling is self-indulgent and only sporadically illuminates the author's themes. Author tour. (Oct.)