When she was young, Calhoun wanted to escape the Village literary life. One day, Schjeldahl let her go alone, with no directions, at age eight on a bus to a friend’s birthday party. Though Calhoun was raised in the sophisticated East Village, life with her father fit this pattern. You didn’t help with housework or pay much attention to your spouse and kids. Then (thankfully, to a lesser extent, now) if you were a male writer, life in your household centered around you. Especially when Calhoun, born in 1976, was growing up. But they’re often more fraught when the dad is a renowned writer. Relationships between daughters and fathers can be difficult. While Calhoun’s Mom makes several memorable appearances, “Also a Poet” is focused on Calhoun’s relationship with her father. An artist posing topless so other painters could paint her wasn’t shocking to the young Calhoun. Calhoun saw the holiday classic with a “dreamboat” poet. Most of us as kids see “The Nutcracker” with an aunt or grandma. “One of the most agreeable children imaginable,” Isherwood said of Calhoun when she was a child, “neither sulky nor sly nor pushy nor ugly, with a charming trustful smile for all of us.” Gay writer Christopher Isherwood, author of “The Berlin Stories,” was among those who Calhoun’s parents hung out with.

Not surprisingly, Calhoun didn’t have a typical childhood.

“Bruce is no longer the Boss Schjeldahl is!” Steve Martin said of the volume.

As The New York Times book critic Molly Young said recently, in his book “Hot, Cold, Heavy, 100 Art Writings 1988-2018,” Schjeldahl received, perhaps, the most awesome blurb ever. Her father Peter Schjeldahl, born in 1942, is a poet and The New Yorker art critic. Later, she was an actress whose most well-known roles were in “Urban Cowboy” and “Family Ties.” Her mother Brooke Alderson started out performing stand-up comedy in lesbian bars. If you’re queer, you know not only how right Tolstoy was, but that family tension makes for riveting reading.Ĭalhoun, a lifelong New Yorker who grew up in the East Village, doesn’t disappoint. “Happy families are all alike every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Tolstoy wrote in “Anna Karenina.”

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