Vogue: The Best Books of 2022 So Far
It’s a complicated thing, the father-daughter relationship, particularly when the two share a profession. So it’s fitting that Ada Calhoun’s Also a Poet is a complicated, difficult-to-encapsulate book: Labeled a memoir, it’s also Calhoun’s attempt to finish a biography of the New York School poet Frank O’Hara abandoned by her father, the longtime New Yorker art critic Peter Schjeldahl. The book is composed of unpublished interview transcripts, domestic scenes from her childhood on the Lower East Side (see Calhoun’s masterly St. Mark’s Is Dead for an expanded disquisition on the site of her youth), and a sweetly personal reckoning with the anxiety of influence. All this sounds like a pretty heady brew, but Calhoun’s voice is clear and cogent, a winning and personable guide. —C.S.
