is an arresting novel that explores the alchemy of contradictions that exist in all great works of literature.

Or so the narrator intervenes to say, confiding that she wants the reader with her, “figuring out this story” in “the self-conscious postmodernist way.”.

Fueling Judith’s emotional defenselessness is her relative lack of sexual experience. It’s also infused with longing, even if Merkin’s protagonist must learn to accept loss and move on. She is the author of a novel, Enchantment (1984)[1] as well as two collections of essays, Dreaming of Hitler (1997)[3] and The Fame Lunches (2014).

The main emotional takeaway is an obvious one.

A novel of unsurpassed candor, punctuated by bold ruminations on love, marriage, family, sex, gender and relationships, 11 Minutes of Unconditional Love depicts one woman's psychological descent into sexual captivity.

Observant and witty, Merkin makes each sentence pack a provocative wallop.

This is the story of the extremes to which she will go to achieve erotic bliss—and of her struggle to regain her soul.

She has a single close girlfriend, Celia, and a gay male friend, Gerald, both tolerant of her idiosyncrasies. She has also published two collections of essays, The Fame Lunches (2014)and Dreaming of Hitler (1997), as well as a memoir about her struggle with depression, This Close to Happy (2017). [1] In 1986, she became an editor with the publishing house of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. In both cases, a woman has periodic encounters with a near-stranger, who evades romantic attachment but leads her to new-to-her erotic heights (and depths). She’s married to a radiologist, with a daughter and another child on the way: in other words, already in possession of a conventionally happy ending. Merkin is a graduate of Barnard College and also attended Columbia University's graduate program in English literature.[1]. In her self-revelatory nonfiction, Daphne Merkin has written memorably about her bouts of depression and her sexual fixation on spanking. Egregious commenters or repeat offenders will be banned from commenting.

Munch, with whom she discussed her bad taste in men.

Howard is even worse: a thuggish criminal defense lawyer who seduces women with a mix of profanity, aggression, sexual directness and emotional elusiveness.

In the interest of maintaining a civil forum, The Forward requires that all commenters be appropriately respectful toward our writers, other commenters and the subjects of the articles. The New Yorker, February 26, 1996 P. 98. Merkin is a graduate of Barnard College and also attended Columbia University 's graduate program in English literature. Copyright ©2020The Forward Association, Inc.All rights reserved. The narrator describes herself as a writer. The postmodernist artifice and the off-putting romantic duo at the novel’s heart short-circuit the reader’s sympathies, perhaps deliberately so. That would be author and journalist Daphne Merkin, whose essay Spanking: A Romance caused a sensation when it was published in The New Yorker. What he possessed was simply the “allure of remoteness, affection edged in ice and always on the verge of melting away….” Perhaps it will help, the narrator says, to translate her experience into the third person and “pretend it happened to someone else.”.

So, come for the promise of a compulsively readable novel — “Obsession makes for good copy,” the narrator tells us — and stay for a fascinating lesson on the making of art." No question that Merkin’s tale does provide an erotic frisson or two, episodes sexy enough to keep the reader hooked through the novel’s stops and starts. Her parents were the philanthropists Hermann and Ursula Merkin.

Judith works as a book editor, as Merkin once did.

This is the story of the extremes to which she will go to achieve erotic bliss—and of her struggle to regain her soul. The number of authors I admire and enjoy are too numerous to list here, but I thought I might tell you about one writer who influenced the creation of Spank. All readers can browse the comments, and all Forward subscribers can add to the conversation.

Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 238 pages, $26.

Daphne Merkin—the woman who, a decade ago, wrote about wanting to be spanked—had confessed again, this time with the full oomph of the Sunday Times, and its millions of readers, behind her. In the interest of maintaining a civil forum, The Forward requires that all commenters be appropriately respectful toward our writers, other commenters and the subjects of the articles.

depicts one woman's psychological descent into sexual captivity.

We’re told that she scared away her first lover, a medical student, with “a barrage of criticisms.” For years, she had a therapist, Dr. In her self-revelatory nonfiction, Daphne Merkin has written memorably about her bouts of depression and her sexual fixation on spanking. Surely – one guesses — this chronicle of erotic obsession is some compound of recollection, invention and fantasy, an emotional purgative using characters and incidents shorn of identifying details.

Her latest novel 22 Minutes of Unconditional Love (2020)[6] came out in July of 2020.

[8] She married and divorced Michael Brod, and lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan with her daughter, Zoe. All readers can browse the comments, and all Forward subscribers can add to the conversation. There is, of course, another: the question of the relationship between the narrator and the author. Merkin knows that the Howard Roses of the world aren’t worth much. Her brother is J. Ezra Merkin, a hedge fund manager and philanthropist who was embroiled in the Bernard Madoff scandal. “11 Minutes of Unconditional Love  The Forward welcomes reader comments in order to promote thoughtful discussion on issues of importance to the Jewish community. Julia M. Klein, the Forward’s contributing book critic, has been a two-time finalist for the National Book Critics Circle’s Nona Balakian Citation for Excellence in Reviewing.

Daphne Merkin is the author of Enchantment (1986), which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for best novel on a Jewish theme and has just been reissued by Picador (2020). We’ll email you whenever we publish another article by J.J Goldberg. Observant and witty, Merkin makes each sentence pack a provocative wallop. By Daphne Merki n. February 19, 1996. Judith Stone makes the mistake of confounding obsession with love, wanting both to lose herself in a man and to perpetuate a passion dependent on its very evanescence. So, come for the promise of a compulsively readable novel — “Obsession makes for good copy,” the narrator tells us — and stay for a fascinating lesson on the making of art.". She began her career as a book critic for the magazines Commentary,[1] The New Republic, and The New Leader, where she wrote a book column and later, a movie column. Merkin has taught writing at the 92nd Street Y, Marymount Manhattan College, Hunter College and Columbia University’s MFA program.

Vigorous debate and reasoned critique are welcome; name-calling and personal invective are not and will be deleted. She also is a contributing editor to Tablet magazine.

It was Daphne Merkin, a staff writer at The New Yorker best known for publishing a confessional essay about the raptures of being spanked. While we generally do not seek to edit or actively moderate comments, our spam filter prevents most links and certain key words from being posted and the Forward reserves the right to remove comments for any reason. In 1997, after Tina Brown became editor of The New Yorker, Merkin became a film critic for the magazine.

Her latest novel, “22 Minutes of Unconditional Love,” tries to meld two traditions: the erotic tale of female submission and the metafictional conceits of postmodernism. She also wrote extensively on books and became known for her frank forays into autobiography; her personal essays dealt with subjects ranging from her battle with depression, to her predilection for spanking,[2] to the unacknowledged complexities of growing up rich on Park Avenue. Save this story for later. Daphne Merkin is the author of  Enchantment (1986), which won the Edward Lewis Wallant Award for best novel on a Jewish theme and has just been reissued by Picador (2020). Vigorous debate and reasoned critique are welcome; name-calling and personal invective are not and will be deleted.

The author labels these interludes “digressions,” and is well aware of how annoying they come to be.

She lives in New York City and teaches private writing classes. And she knows how to write a nice sentence. 50 shades of unconditional longing in a tale of erotic obsession. Daphne Merkin is a novelist and critic who has made a name for herself with her often-unnerving candor and forthright attitude towards issues of family, religion, money and sex. is an arresting novel that explores the alchemy of contradictions that exist in all great works of literature.

Daphne Miriam Merkin (born in New York City) is an American literary critic, essayist and novelist.

“You wanted a novel, not a philosophy course, right?” the narrator says at one point. But Judith – an entitled, pre-pandemic Manhattanite who is perpetually tardy and often consumed by anxiety – is hardly the most congenial of protagonists. Merkin knows his “bad boy” persona may be a problem for the reader: “Even Howard Rose, you’ve got to care about him in some way, too, or the game’s up.”. Munch, whom she loved, abandoned her by dying.

At frequent intervals, the narrator interrupts the story, which she admits is her own, to comment on it, halting the momentum and interrogating the reader’s involvement.