Calhoun and O’Hara give us hope that art will still be a life force
‘Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father, and Me’By Ada Calhounc.2022, Grove Press$27/259 pages Families.
Especially if your parents are acclaimed writers and artists, they can get under your skin. They love you, but sometimes withhold praise and suck the air out of the room.
You wonder if you’ll end up as a second-string imitation of your famous folks. That was what growing up was like for writer Ada Calhoun, author of the new memoir “Also a Poet: Frank O’Hara, My Father and Me.” BUY THE BOOK “Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way,” Tolstoy wrote in “Anna Karenina.” If you’re queer, you know not only how right Tolstoy was, but that family tension makes for riveting reading.
Calhoun, a lifelong New Yorker who grew up in the East Village, doesn’t disappoint. Her parents are creative and talented. Her mother Brooke Alderson started out performing stand-up comedy in lesbian bars.
