My Life at the Wheel: Toward a Memoir

In this collection of impeccably written essays, Schwartz tells us early on that she never thought of her life as a "continuous line" but rather a series of intertwined interrupted experiences. Hers is a life that has been bumped, tumbled, and smoothed by an endless stream of travel, fascinating people, and books: writing them, pondering them, translating them.Her essays range from musings about the art of translation, the tribulations of major surgery dissected with biting wit, a quest for recovery from the 9 /11 attacks at a music school, and hours spent with friends arguing, drinking and smoking in a neighborhood bar. Her personal narratives range from humorous childhood (an 8-year-old writer) and troubled revelations to learning to be an adult facing the difficulties of simultaneously writing and raising children. We see her as a daughter struggling to understand her parents through adolescent eyes, a mother startled at the all-consuming demands of motherhood and writing, and as an