Face to Face: A Reader in the World

Don't be fooled. You may at first think you are having a quiet, informal conversation with Ms. Schwartz. You are, in a sense. But the ease with which she "speaks," the depth at which she enters the conversation, and the apparent mundanity of the subject matter belie the profundity. This is one of those conversations--they can occur on a Fall afternoon after enjoying some wine in a cool wine cellar or reuniting after many years one summer morning in a Village cafe with a friend from abroad. As you listen, you know the words you hear are peeling off layers of your long-held intellectual skin.Other reviewers have recounted the content of these essays. That's fine. What matters, though, is the at once soothing and disturbing voice which uproots you from the seat you are occupying,the sleep you are sleeping, the beliefs you are treasuring. Finally, you are grateful.You can probably hear Ms. Schwartz from her works as I did when she signed copies of this book at a New York bookstore. It's an enjoyable, moving experience. It's pale, though in comparison to listening in isolation to her voice as it lifts off the pages into your processing mechanism and turns it once again into a heart.

Ms. Schwartz is an essayist of astonishing perception, skill, and power. She has taken the simple notions of being face to face (and its opposite) and explored them with a thoroughness and thoughtfulness that will probably guide you in all your relationships to make them ever richer. I like books of essays because they provide more diversity of perspective than a nonfiction book or a novel can. This one was exceptionally rewarding in this way. In 'Only Connect', you will learn about the cons and pros (there are mostly cons) of the telephone in Ms. Schwartz's life, along with an interesting description of how our use of the telephone is changing. I share her dislike of telephones, so I was cheered by her thoughts on this subject.'Absence Makes the Heart' is a sensitive discussion of how friendship changes when you are apart, and how it differs when you are reunited again.'On Being Taken by Tom Victor' describes photography sessions with a master who later dies of AIDS. His great gift as a photographer was "to talk . . . to give something." After you received his gift of himself, you would show yourself to the camera.'Found in Translation' is a fascinating story of the author's experience in translating the memoirs of Lana Millu about Ms. Millu's time in Birkenau, the women's part of Auschwitz, during World War II. Since the author's Italian was weak, she found a person to help her who she had first met when the helper was a small child in Italy. The two problems that almost threw Ms. Schwartz turned out to be typos that the publisher was slow to alert her to. As a novelist, she had cooked up some very imaginative solutions that were, alas, all wrong. She wonders how many translations suffer from the same problem. I do too.'The Spoils of War' describes an experience of teaching a Vietnam vet who has an amazing mind. The author cannot make any sense of it. "You write like this and sit in class like a statue?" The man is a parking meter reader. His war experience has left him inhibited in his dealing with people.'Help' is the most deeply affecting essay. It is about the friendship that develops between her family and Mattie, the cleaning lady who also took care of her children. If you don't read any other essays in this book, be sure you read this one. 'Drive, She Said' looks at her ambivalence about driving, and her attempts to develop an independent attitude from those of her parents towards driving. "I am terrified and elated." 'Two Fashion Statements' juxtapose an experience of wearing a new dress while young on a date to Radio City Music Hall with her reaction to house dresses coming back into fashion years later.'Face to Face' recounts her cat-sitting experiences for four months, and her reactions after it was over. "I missed the cat with my heart."'Listening to Powell' is a powerful description of listening to a modern classic book on tape, A Dance to the Music of Time. 'At a Cert

This is an excellent collection of from the author's life. The one that affected me the most was about the relationship between the author and an African American woman she hired as her maid. She always looked down on people who said the maid was "one of the family," she wrote: obviously there were lots of differences. And yet, the two of them got very close. This is a tough issue to write something sensible about, but Ms. Schwartz has written something thought-provoking and moving.