Lynn Steger Strong, Freelance Journalist Profile

Articles

Joan Didion Wouldn't Have Wanted 'Notes to John' Published

3 weeks ago | theatlantic.com | Lynn Steger Strong

In the 37 years that I knew my grandmother, I could count on one hand the number of times I saw her without her makeup on. Celebrated for her beauty in her teenage years and beyond, my grandma took great pride in her appearance. She never left the house without her lipstick on and her hair high, curled and stiff. Once, when my grandpa was very sick, my husband and I drove from New York to Florida overnight with our new baby and arrived at my grandparents’ house on very short notice.
Joan Didion Wouldn’t Have Wanted This

3 weeks ago | flipboard.com | Lynn Steger Strong

2 hours ago ‘Notes to John’ Is Heartbreaking, Strange, and Unlike Anything Else Joan Didion Wrote It has a great first line; most Joan Didion books do: “Re not taking Zoloft, I said it made me feel for about an hour after taking it that I’d lost my organizing principle, rather like having a planters’ punch before lunch in the tropics.” That could be the dry, lambent utterance of any one of … 1 hour ago Peeking Into Joan Didion’s Years of Psychological Thinking Drawn from her previously...
The Float Test | Bookreporter.com

3 weeks ago | bookreporter.com | Lynn Steger Strong

Four siblings grow up emotionally unattended in a rich family in Florida and then go off to different corners of the world to make their own way --- Jenn to a life of martyred motherhood, Jude to corporate lawyerdom, Fred to a midlist writer’s hell, and George, the youngest, to living as a fat man with a little boy’s heart.
Lynn Steger Strong on the Importance of Imaginative Truth in Fiction and Nonfiction

1 month ago | lithub.com | Lynn Steger Strong

Thomas Bernhard’s biographer claimed that he masturbated in front of the mirror. True or not, it’s a great image. Bernhard wrote what might, at first glance, feel like the same thing over and over—what might, lord help us all, be referred to as autofiction—misanthropic ranting men, purportedly like him. Most have lung diseases; Bernhard almost died of a lung disease.
'The Float Test,' by Lynn Steger Strong

1 month ago | nytimes.com | Jen Doll |Lynn Steger Strong

THE FLOAT TEST, by Lynn Steger StrongWriters are the worst, am I right? As a writer, I can say this. Whether we're following in the grand "everything is copy" tradition of Nora Ephron or quietly "borrowing" other people's stories, we cannot be trusted. But what happens when the writer is your beloved sister, and your whole family is kind of a disaster, with years of snubs, betrayals, and accidental and purposeful misdeeds between everyone, many of them aired in print by the writer?
I’ll Always Wish I Had More Kids

1 month ago | romper.com | Lynn Steger Strong

Once, in town to help me take care of our 6-month-old while her son was traveling, my mother-in-law and I watched a movie about a woman whose dad is dying. Nodding toward the baby asleep on my chest, she leaned in and whispered to me: “You don’t want her to have to deal with your death all by herself.”She was kidding, I think. But 14 months later, I gave birth again. It was intense, insane, having two kids under 2 in a tiny New York apartment.
'Didion and Babitz' fails to find the complicated truth

Nov 11, 2024 | theatlantic.com | Lynn Steger Strong

Writers are great gossips. Get one or three of us alone at a party; add a few gin or whiskey drinks. Ask a question about somebody’s professor from grad school, or about that (married) handsome writer who slept with that other (married) writer at a conference. Lord help the authors whose group texts get subpoenaed and then printed for the world to see.
Reading “King Lear” During Hurricane Season

Nov 7, 2024 | newyorker.com | Lynn Steger Strong |“The Float Test.”

As Hurricane Milton barrelled toward Florida last month, I taught a three-hour Zoom class and tried not to refresh my phone for updates. I grew up in Florida, and my parents, along with my sister and her family, still live on the Atlantic Coast, a hundred and fifty miles from where Milton hit. All day, I’d responded to worried friends, telling them my family was fine, not their side of the state. But the mass of the storm was so big.
Of Course the Week Before the Election Feels Terrible

Oct 29, 2024 | thecut.com | Lynn Steger Strong

Photo-Illustration: The Cut I have an old picture of my kids from October 28, 2016, the day the Comey letter dropped. They’re 2 and 4. We’re at the park. Both wear cheap sunglasses and clutch birthday-party goodie bags. Lollipops hang from their mouths. They jut their hips and grin. I love it because they’re adorable, because time has passed now and they’re big, because I still wish that I might have them infinitely.
Gillian Anderson Can Tell You What Women Want

Sep 22, 2024 | esquiresg.com | Lynn Steger Strong

Gillian Anderson isn’t a sex therapist, but for four years, she played one on television. From 2019 to 2023, she starred as Sex Education’s Dr. Jean Milburn, a lusty, complicated, sometimes manipulative (see: human) woman, bumbling and grasping through midlife while single-parenting her teenage son, Otis. But even though the role was pure fiction, something about Milburn’s funny, loving energy made people want to talk to Anderson about sex.