Hot Desk: A Novel - 25

The New York Times

NONFICTION · A ROAR OF ONE’S OWN

By Cadbury Andrews

Nov. 26, 2023

“Inside the Lion’s Cage” by Rose Bergesen Adams and Jane Kinloch Blume

When someone as monumental as Edward David Adams dies, the world braces itself for the inevitable onslaught of posthumous work—the unpublished diaries, self-serving correspondence with notable intellectuals of the day, perhaps a wisely abandoned first attempt at fiction, or the last musings of a mind not only in decline but dangerously out of step with contemporary life. Which is why seeing how Rose Bergesen Adams, Edward David Adams’s widow, has managed his estate and, consequently, his legacy, has been astounding. Under her direction, Avenue Publishing has reissued four of Adams’s novels so far, with another four scheduled over the next two years. Cover designs featuring vivid paintings from some of the most prominent mid-century women artists seem designed to widen Adams’s mostly male fan base, but the truly revolutionary act is that each novel is introduced by a notable female critic. Far from the usual fare, these introductions don’t function as a hagiography but rather actively interrogate Adams’s work.

Reckoning with a writer who has become synonymous with postwar male malaise in a world thankfully now more interested in the power dynamics that allowed such narcissism to be possible, it would be easy to dismiss Adams. But these introductions manage the near impossible—to celebrate the beauty of Adams’s sentences, and his almost unrivaled ability to plumb the pathos of the American male, while at the same time taking him to task for his casual misogyny and arrogant assumptions about institutional power. Never has such a major writer been so thoroughly contextualized, his undeniable genius balanced so carefully with his blind spots. The recent #liontalk and LionTok phenomenon on social media feature mostly young women reading profound passages from Adams’s fiction and crying in recognition but also laughing at the clumsy, dated lines that mar other sections of his work. The trend has not only launched all four of these reissues onto the best-seller list, but also, since each introduction takes pains to measure his work against less commercially successful but no less important women writers working contemporaneously, the sales of Vivian Gornick, Paula Fox, and Doris Lessing have seen a welcome boost.

But by far the most exciting literary event surrounding Adams’s legacy is the publication of “Inside the Lion’s Cage” (Hawk Mills), the joint memoir by Rose Bergesen Adams and Jane Kinloch Blume, who met as young women reading the slush pile at Adams’s famed East River Review. Fast friends, and giddy with being at the center of such an intoxicating literary scene, the women eventually take divergent tracks. Rose becomes Adams’s third wife, and Jane returns to her home in Philadelphia, channeling her ambitions into raising a family. I won’t reveal here the incident that set them on their respective paths and paused their friendship for four decades, but it has all the power and dramatic flair of a Douglas Sirk movie, even more stunning for being true.

“Inside the Lion’s Cage” is told in alternating chapters. We see Rose, caught up in the cyclone of Adams’s fame, her own writing and publishing career pushed to the side so she can play hostess, wife, and, eventually, nurse to the difficult man she married. As for Jane, her traumatic exit from New York reverberates for years in her quiet suburban life, her accomplishments as a wife and mother at times overshadowed by the unrealized promise of her literary talent. Ingeniously woven throughout are journal entries, the women’s letters, and snippets of prose from Rose and Jane, making “Inside the Lion’s Cage” a brilliant tapestry of thwarted ambition, a moving portrait of friendship interrupted, and an unparalleled examination of the sacrifices women of a certain era felt compelled to make for the men in their lives. Sensitively and masterfully edited, this book draws the cage around Adams a little tighter. We can still admire his majestic beauty, but the danger and the neediness and roaring self-regard are kept at a necessary distance.

What transpired to keep these two women silent for so long is a familiar, unacceptable devastation. But it is thrilling to learn that Jane Kinloch Blume’s first novel will be published next year by Hawk Mills. Her editor? Rose Bergesen Adams, who is now, at the age of 66, an editor at large for the venerable publishing house. Forty years in the making and not a moment too soon.