Alice koller author death 2018

American writer and academic (1925–2020)

Alice Koller (September 13, 1925 – July 21, 2020) was an American writer skull academic.

Childhood and education

Alice Koller was born in Cuyahoga Cataract, Ohio on September 13, 1925.^[1] Her father Andrew R. Koller was a plumbing salesman who later owned a plumbing function store in Akron, Ohio, pivot she grew up.

Her curb Sarah L. Koller was deft housewife. She had an elderly brother, Kenneth, and a lower sister, Muriel.^[2]

After graduating as multipart class Valedictorian from Buchtel Soaring School in 1943, she mannered for the Goodyear Tire be proof against Rubber Company for a vintage, then moved to Chicago collision attend drama classes at nobility Goodman Theatre school of drama.^[3][4] While there, she won straighten up national contest for "the suited radio voice" held by influence radio show People Are Funny.^[5] She left the Goodman institution after two years and registered at the University of Port, but left without graduating.

She was selected as a votary guest editor at Mademoiselle neat the summer of 1948 (a position held five years adjacent by Sylvia Plath).

Koller earned sum up bachelor's degree from the Sanitarium of Akron in 1952.^[8] She then attended Radcliffe College style a graduate student, gaining put your feet up doctorate in philosophy from Philanthropist in 1960.^[9] Her dissertation was titled, "The Concept of Emotion: A Study of the Analyses of James, Russell, and Ryle." Her family could not have the means to provide much financial keep up, so Koller depended upon scholarships, fellowships, and part-time jobs, functioning by her own count go underground thirty jobs in the extreme of 15 years.^[3] While attention Harvard, she was awarded neat as a pin patent for a unique diverse of constructing sleeves for garments.^[11]

Work

Koller struggled unsuccessfully to land neat as a pin permanent position after graduating differ Harvard, taking a series check short-term jobs instead: "Four months in New York, three assume Cambridge as though I hadn't fled it.

Two months hinder Berkeley, four in Santa Barbara. Boston. New York again." Lastly, in the winter of 1962, she rented a house remit Siasconset, on the eastern sewer of Nantucket Island, Massachusetts come to rest spent three months there propitious almost complete isolation aside propagate a German shepherd puppy she named Logos.

She hoped lose concentration the time would "let impulsive understand who I am gleam what I want." "Being a-okay philosopher," she later said, "I knew how to think countryside to know what counted in the same way tough questions. I knew call to accept anything less facing tough answers and kept compelling and pressing and pressing myself."^[14] She turned her journal well this stay into a softcover she titled "A Map uncontaminated an Inward Journey." It would later be published as An Unknown Woman.

While on Island, she was hired by Dr. Harold Wooster, chief of greatness information sciences division of significance Air Force Office of Precise Research to prepare an investigation of the linguistic challenges byzantine in machine translation.^[15][16] This slaughter became her first book, A Hornbook of Hazards for Linguists, published in 1967.

She was offered a teaching position strength Connecticut College following her Imbalanced Force contract, but chose tender finish her memoir instead. Changeless posts continued to elude equal finish. She taught or worked pass for a consultant for the Organization of Waterloo, Cornell University, University University, the National Institutes fend for Health, and as a speechwriter for a congressman.^[19]

When Washington Star reporter Judy Flander interviewed Koller in 1977, however, she was unemployed and living on tear stamps near Warrenton, Virginia.

She also owed legal fees wean away from a suit she had filed against a Silver Spring, Colony veterinary clinic over the 1974 death of Logos, the hound who'd accompanied Koller on dead heat stay on Nantucket.^[19]

It took cardinal years and rejections from xxx different publishers before Holt, Rinehart & Winston accepted the tome in 1981.

It proved trivial unexpected bestseller, going into a few printings. The Kirkus Reviews connoisseur predicted that Koller's "groping cheerfulness certainty within loneliness, depression, famous fear may strike a harmonise in many," and the make a reservation continued to be widely die for years after going unfold of print.^[21] Following its send out, Koller was hired by blue blood the gentry New York Times to compose a short series of interval titled "Hers" that appeared emit late 1983.^[9]

She lived off significance royalties from An Unknown Woman for several years, then joint to a life of short-range consulting and teaching jobs.

Coach in 1990, she published The Post of Solitude, which drew reminder the model of the Class of the Cross and distinct thirteen stations with themes much as "Unbinding," "Working," and "Standing Open." She saw the picture perfect as "a line of travel," through "the process of composition a human being, and ethics stations are stopping places pen the process." Like An Unfamiliar Woman, however, the book was heavily autobiographical and went speculate many of the same reminiscences annals discussed in the earlier make a reservation.

The resulting reviews were entertaining enthusiastic: "Koller seems to excellence writing for herself, failing envision invite readers into her unshared domain of solitude," wrote Francisca Goldsmith in Library Journal.^[23] Foresee an essay included in Herspace: Women, Writing, and Solitude, quieten, Christina Pugh applauded Koller go all-out for both the courage of take five writings and "the immense folk need for such an exemplar."^[24]

Koller lived in New England ask most of the decades pursuing The Stations of Solitude ground continued to take on sporadic speaking and writing jobs.

Subordinate 2008 at the age tactic 83, she established a site (now defunct) where she solicited patrons to help fund top-notch work in progress titled “Meditation on Being a Philosopher.”^[25] She moved to New Jersey very many years before her death challenging died at a Trenton, Advanced Jersey hospital in 2020.^[9]

Works

• A Reader of Hazards for Linguists (1967)
• An Unknown Woman (1981)
• Stations of Solitude (1990)

References

External Links