How do you sum up one's life that spanned over a century? That was born into a world during the Spanish flu and the final months of WW1, lived through the Depression, served during WW2, and a hundred years later, survived another pandemic?
Celebrated author and literary critic, NY Yankees fanatic, a friend of nearly three decades, a mean martini mixer, someone who would indulge me with her stories of friend Studs Terkel, a surprise lunch with Gypsy Rose Lee, her semester in Mexico City as a young college student whose chaperone was surreptitiously attending the political meetings of Diego Rivera and guests - and how she pleaded to go along but was denied, her biggest professional "mistake" as a young proofreader for Mademoiselle magazine in the 1940s, when she was asked to read and review a manuscript, of which she thought very little and tossed into the wastepaper basket, telling me she wished she had read more than the first few pages (she laughed when she said it was Ayn Rand's The Fountainhead).
Grumbach was a prolific writer; the author of seven novels and six memoirs, a biography on Mary McCarthy, and a children's book. Her novels often explored the social hardships of women and lesbian characters, all during a time when uncommon in mainstream fiction. She also worked as a literary critic, contributing to publications including the New York Times and the Saturday Review. She acted as literary editor of the New Republic, a book reviewer for NPR's "Morning Edition" and PBS's "The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour," and wrote book reviews and literary criticism for The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The American Scholar and other publications.
I was one of the fortunate ones to call Doris a friend, and had a frequent invitation to join her for cocktails in her sitting room in Maine. However, it was her stories I'd relish during the cocktail hour at 5:00 sharp, and dependent on month and sunset, could be as early as 4:00, or as many Mainers would say, "when the sun is over the yardarm," which I tended to be after one of Doris' concoctions.
Although a wine drinker, when I was invited to have drinks with Doris, there was never any question as to what would be served - gin martinis only, the "real" martini - and only Boodles gin. She'd drink no other. Doris had fine-tuned the art of martini mixing to something that was equal parts cocktail, alchemy, and rust remover. As she was many decades older than I, and had been drinking and mixing martinis for well over 60 years, she made a formidable one; the kind that kick-boxes your tonsils in the way that makes you inadvertently giggle.
She and I would sit at her picture window overlooking Billings Cove, Eggemoggin Reach, the pine trees, and depending on season, either tall grasses filled with lupine, or blankets of snow that gently gave way to the pink granite shore. It was not unusual to see an osprey or eagle alight in one of the pines. We'd talk about books, politics, travel, and at times, her beloved New York Yankees. Doris, for all of her years as academic, writer, intellectual, knew more Yankee stats than most Yankees - she could rattle off a statistic from decades earlier, and, if crosschecked, was always correct. She could have coached the team.
One early evening while having martinis she told me that her old friend, the author Studs Terkel, had paid her a visit not long before. Studs, even older than Doris, was a long-standing martini buddy. Her story goes, she had mixed him a cocktail, he took a long pull from the chilled glass, smiled and said, "Doris, that's the best martini I've ever had!" Conversation ensued, and not long after, he requested another. He took a sip from the rim, closed his eyes, smiled and said, "Doris, that's the best martini I've ever had!" When he asked for a third, his assistant followed Doris to the bar in her library. "I'd make this one a lot weaker," he said. Doris filled the glass with ice water, an extra olive. Studs, now very relaxed, took the pull, swallowed, smiled and said, "Doris, that's the best martini I've ever had!"
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